The moon is thin and sharp and it cuts through the clouds above your house just as I step out of the hedgerow. There’s mud on my boots and it’s drying in thick crusts, cracking with every step I took on the long walk here. I'm already wearing the uniform and my hands…hell, I can’t stop them shaking, might be the cold, but I know better. Your window glows faint through the curtains, you’re awake.

Your father would have my hide for coming like this—dead of night, no knock, no warning—but I can’t bring myself to care because Edward’s gone already, shipped out yesterday, and I’m going tomorrow. They say we’ll be near the French coast, Dunkirk, they say it like it’s a place on a map, not a trap waiting to snap its jaws shut on us.

Your house is quiet when I slip through the side gate. I remember the cracked stone by the porch where you fell when you were twelve, crying until I gave you my handkerchief and told you only proper ladies were allowed to scream like that. You hit me square in the gut, I think I laughed for hours.

You used to follow me and Edward around like a shadow. Ten years old, all ribbons and scraped knees. I was twelve and thought you were a pest. Then you weren’t. You grew too fast and I hated it, hated how you started looking at me like you saw something worth seeing and I saw you too.

I knock, soft, once. You open the door with your dressing gown wrapped tight, your hair down, a little surprised—like you knew I’d come but still prayed I wouldn’t. You’re still untouched by this world, the dirt. A good woman, my ruin. Your lips part but no sound comes out.

I look at you and feel all the years like a stone pressing against my chest. “I shouldn’t be here,” I say “I know that.”

You step aside and just like that I’m in your hallway again, breathing in whatever it is that always smells like home here. Your family’s asleep upstairs, that’s why I came. You’re quieter now than you used to be, all grown up, but I still remember you at thirteen, chasing us down the hill outside the train station, cheeks flushed with heat and fury, calling me a “filthy flirt” when you caught me kissing that girl behind the tree. You weren’t wrong, I’ve never been good, not really, not since I was fifteen and I looked at you and knew I’d never see you the same again.

That was the beginning of the end.

“Is it true?” you ask “Are you…going?”

I nod, jaw clenched, you swallow hard “Why are you here, Alex?”

Because I might not come back, because I can’t keep pretending you’re just Edward’s sister, like I haven’t carried you in every godforsaken thought since I was fifteen. You don’t know what it was like, being told to keep away from the one good thing I ever wanted, to watch you grow from some sweet, sharp little girl into a woman who looks at me like I’m a stranger now.

“I don’t think I’ll make it back" I say honestly. I sit on the edge of the couch, elbows on my knees, hands in my hair like that might still hold them steady. “I didn’t want to leave without seeing you, without saying something.”

You’re the woman I’ve avoided for three years because I knew if I looked at you too long, I’d never stop. Because I love you, I’ve loved you since I wasn’t old enough to say it out loud and I’ve wasted years pretending I didn’t. You deserve better than a boy who only came back to say this because he might not survive.

“I was going to go to one of the girls in the village tonight” I admit “But I couldn’t do it, because I want to feel something good before I go and I want it to be you.” I pause “Because it’s always been you.”

You blink. I’m sure you’ll throw me out, slap me, maybe, tell me I don’t get to say that now, not after everything, not after the years I’ve been cold, cruel, distant. But you don’t.

You just ask, quietly “Why now?”

“Because I can't keep pretending,” I whisper and my voice cracks. “I tried to be Edward's mate first, to be good. But I’ve never stopped loving you and when he told me I couldn’t, that I shouldn’t even look at you like that when I was barely 17...I stopped looking but it didn't change how I felt."