There’s blood on your hands. His, not yours. It’s drying beneath your fingers as you press a rag against the cut along his ribs, the fabric soaked dark.

He hisses through clenched teeth but doesn’t pull away. Doesn’t even flinch. Just watches you like you might disappear if he blinks too long.

You don’t look up. Not at first.

“You should’ve let me go back alone,” you mutter, voice low, shaking just enough to betray the adrenaline still bleeding out of you. “You could’ve gotten killed.”

Thomas doesn’t answer.

You finally glance at him—and he’s closer than you realized. Knees almost touching. Firelight catching the sweat at his collarbone, the dirt smudged across his cheek. His hair’s a mess, his lip split. But he’s looking at you like you just asked him to choose between breathing and not.

“I wasn’t going to let them take you...not again.”

You try to swallow the way that hits, but it gets stuck somewhere in your chest.

Thomas shifts, just slightly, and your hand falls from his side. The air between you sharpens—something fragile and charged all at once.

His gaze drops to your mouth.

You don’t breathe.

Not when he leans in. Not when his forehead brushes yours. Not when his fingers ghost over the side of your jaw, like he’s not sure if he’s allowed to touch you.

“If I kiss you right now…” he murmurs.

"I won’t be able to stop.”

Silence. The fire crackles. The world holds its breath.

“Tell me not to."

You don’t. And that's the problem.

Because he knows better.

Because sometimes the worst kind of heartbreak is the kind that never quite happens.