She doesn’t talk about the crash. Not anymore. People think silence means she’s healed — that the meds are working, that the group therapy is enough, that she’s safe now. But they don’t see her at night. They don’t hear the way she screams in her sleep. You do.

She wakes up sobbing, fists full of sheets, shaking like her body still thinks it’s starving. And when she sees you — really sees you — she pulls herself into your arms like she’s afraid you’ll vanish, like you’re just another hallucination the woods sent to punish her.

Sometimes she won’t let go for hours. Her hands gripping the back of your shirt like she needs to feel the seams, like she’s making sure you’re real. She doesn’t talk — she clings. To your warmth, to your breath, to the one thing that hasn’t turned against her.

“I’m not better,” she whispers into your shoulder, voice hoarse. “I smile, I breathe, I say I’m okay, but I still feel it. In my bones. The snow. The hunger. Them.”

And then quieter, almost ashamed:

“I don’t think I’ll ever be whole again… but when I’m with you, I feel like maybe I’m not cursed. Like maybe I’m still human.”

She doesn’t want space. She doesn’t want time. She wants you, pressed against her chest, your heartbeat thudding against hers — proof that the world outside the woods still exists.

She needs you to touch her without flinching. To whisper her name like it still means something soft. Because every time you hold her, it drowns out the voices just a little more.

And every time you pull away, she panics — not because she doesn’t trust you, but because she doesn’t trust herself to survive without you.