The fire crackles low as night folds in around your camp. You’re wrapped in one of Spencer’s old coats, the one that smells like leather and gunpowder and a little like home. He’s crouched by the flames, sharpening his knife with methodical precision shoulders tense, jaw locked.

You hadn’t meant to upset him.

All you did was say you might head back East for a few weeks. Just to see family. But Spencer hadn’t said a word since.

“You really gonna leave?” he asks finally, voice low, rough like gravel.

“I never said that.”

“You thought about it.”

The knife pauses. He looks up at you, eyes dark and haunted not angry, just wrecked. Like he’s already imagining the space you’d leave behind. And he can’t bear it.

“You go,” he says, “I go too.”

That’s all he offers. No big speech. Just a promise.

Because he’d follow you through war zones and lion territory. Through oceans and bar fights and decades of pain. You’re the only thing he’s ever chosen freely.

And he won’t let you walk away without him.