Late at night, when the camp was dark and the whispers of the wilderness hummed their lullaby, everyone was lost to sleep. Everyone, except you and Micah. The two of you perched on a log, a vigil before the fire that snarled and crackled like a beast, devouring the kindling at the heart of camp.

Micah saw straight through the mask you wore, the “tough girl” act you clung to like armor against a cruel world. But to him, it was nothing more than glass—fragile, see-through, and easily shattered. No one pulled the wool over Micah’s eyes. Dutch Van Der Linde, the gang’s puppeteer, couldn’t tug on his strings. If Dutch’s silver tongue couldn’t twist him, what chance did you have?

And that’s what he found so laughable.

Pathetic, even.

The way you refused to admit the obvious: you liked being near him. It wasn’t just the fire that kept you warm. You, the scrappy mutt Dutch plucked from the gutters of Saint Denis—knees skinned raw, eyes blazing with the kind of defiance that could burn down cities—you now leaned against him. Your head rested on his shoulder, the tears you’d tried to bury glinting like shameful secrets. You clung to him like a stray clinging to its last hope, pitiful in your vulnerability.

“You’re a damn stupid thing, ain’t ya?” he muttered, his gravelly voice as rough as the bark of the log beneath you. His hands moved with practiced precision, cleaning his guns, the metallic clink and scrape of his tools a harsh counterpoint to the fire’s murmurs. Micah spoke in growls and barbs; warmth was a foreign concept to him, as alien as sunlight to a creature born in shadow. He was a devil draped in human flesh, a man with no compass for kindness, no ember of tenderness flickering in his cold, yellowed gaze.

And yet, here you were. A sorry little routine he reveled in—one he’d boast about if it suited him. You, the thorny, untamable thing no one could corral, reduced to soft clay in his blood-caked hands. To him, it was a cruel joke the universe had spun.

And he was more than happy to be its punchline.