Chapter eighteen
Simon Riley
War teaches you not to get comfortable.
Don't linger. Don't soften. Don't get used to anything you're not willing to lose.
But she ruins that for me.
And I don't even care.
It's in the way she hums when she brushes her hair. The way she always tucks my dog tags under my shirt when she thinks I'll forget. The way she sits on my cot with her knees pulled to her chest, wearing one of my shirts like she's always belonged there.
It's not the big things.
It's the little ones.
⸻
Every morning, she brings me coffee—real coffee when she can scavenge it, and the awful instant stuff when she can't. Always in the same chipped black mug she swiped from the officer's tent. Always with that sleepy smile that makes my chest ache.
"You always look at me like that," she teases one morning, curling up beside me on the cot after handing me the cup.
"Like what?"
"Like I'm the first sunrise you've ever seen."
I brush a hand through her hair, still messy from sleep. "You are."
She laughs softly, but I can tell it hits her somewhere deep, because she buries her face in my neck and just breathes me in for a while.
And I hold her like I'll never let go.
⸻
When we're not in the field, we steal time in quiet corners. My tent. The back of a supply truck. Even once, up on the old comms tower, where the stars stretched out like fireflies and the wind didn't matter because she was warm in my arms.
We don't always talk. Sometimes it's just being near each other. Her fingers running over mine. My hand curled around her ankle as she sits beside me, reading.
And other times, she gets this look in her eyes—mischievous, daring.
Like the time she dragged me behind the motor pool and kissed me breathless just because she could.
"You're getting reckless," I mutter after, her hands under my shirt, her smile addictive.
"No," she whispers against my throat, "I'm falling in love."
⸻
One night, she has a nightmare. I wake to her calling out in her sleep, body tense, fists clenched in the sheets. I pull her into my arms, heart pounding, voice steady even though my chest is tight.
"I'm here," I whisper. "You're safe. I've got you."
She wakes up with tears in her eyes, and for a moment, I feel completely powerless—because I can fight off anything but that look on her face.
She curls into me, trembling, whispering fragments of what she saw. Lost soldiers. Blood. Me not coming back.
"You're not invincible," she says against my chest.
"No," I agree, pressing a kiss to her hair. "But I've got something to live for now."
⸻
Another morning, I find a note tucked into my jacket pocket.
You smiled in your sleep. I think that means you're starting to believe this is real.
Come find me. I miss you. – L
And I do.
God help me, I do.
⸻
The days are still hard. The world outside is still brutal. We still have to play our parts—lieutenant and medic, soldier and field staff. We still nod coldly in passing when anyone's watching.
But every second behind those zipped-up flaps, every quiet breath shared between whispered kisses and tangled limbs, every laugh she steals out of me—those are the moments I live for now.
Because with her?
I'm not a ghost.
I'm a man.
And I'm falling, every damn day.