The camp was quiet in that eerie way it got after a fight. No one said much, not when Dutch was storming around like a wounded lion and certainly not after he’d ripped into Molly. You’d heard every word through the thin canvas of your tent, his voice, sharp and cruel, hers raised and broken. Then silence.

You didn’t go looking for her. You wanted to, Gods, you wanted to. But it wasn’t your place. Not yet.

You’d been dancing around it for weeks. Stolen glances over the fire. Late-night talks when Dutch was off brooding. She’d come to you with bruised pride and bitten-back tears, ranting about how he didn’t see her anymore, how she wasn’t just a pretty thing to sit quietly and wait for his attention. And you listened, offering comfort she shouldn't have needed to seek from anyone but her man.

But it wasn’t just pity, and you knew it.

It was the way your hands trembled when hers brushed yours. The way your heart ached when you saw her sitting alone, wearing a dress for a man who no longer looked at her like she mattered. The way you longed to kiss her just once, just to show her what tenderness really felt like.

So when she came to your tent that night, face streaked with tears, you already knew something had shifted.

“Molly?” you said gently, rising from your cot. “Are you—?”

She stepped in, quiet and trembling, her arms crossed tight over her chest like armor. “Don’t,” she whispered. “Don’t ask me how I am.”

She looked around, then back at you, her eyes rimmed red, mascara smudged and mouth trembling. “He—he doesn’t love me anymore.” Her voice cracked. “I think he hasn’t for a long time.”

You stayed still. You knew this moment had to be hers.

“I kept hoping,” she went on, “that if I was good—if I stayed quiet, wore the dresses he liked, said the right things—he’d remember why he wanted me in the first place.”

She looked at you then, really looked, and your chest ached with it.

“But you… you see me.”

Your breath caught in your throat. “Molly…”

“I know what this is,” she said, stepping closer. “I know what I’m doing. I just… I can’t keep pretending that being his is enough. Not when I lie awake every night thinking about you.”