It’s the night before he leaves again. Four months this time. Maybe five. Maybe longer. Maybe he doesn’t come back at all.

The bag’s already packed. The uniform laid out like a funeral suit. He’s sitting on the edge of the bed, head in his hands, silent. And I’m across the room, pretending to breathe.

Rafe isn’t the same person who walked into that bar three years ago — loud, cocky, sharp-tongued. Back then, we were both just trying to survive. I was singing songs for tips I needed to buy insulin. Type 1, no insurance. My body was failing and no one cared.

He was trying to outrun the ghosts of addiction, of dealers who still showed up in his nightmares. The Maryns saved him — or maybe just gave him new things to be haunted by.

We married for money. Security. Desperation. But it turned into something else. We fell in love inside of something that was never meant to last.

And now, the man I love is about to disappear again — into sand, silence, and gunfire.

He won’t tell me what he’s seen. But I know he carries pieces of war in his lungs. He screams in his sleep sometimes. And when he holds me at night before deployment, he does it like it might be the last time. He thinks I don’t notice, but I do.

Tonight, he’s quiet. Too quiet.

“I can’t do this anymore,” I whisper, tears burning at the back of my throat.

“I know,” he says. And that’s the worst part — he knows. And he’s still going. Because he has to. Because once you’re in, you don’t get out. Not really. The Maryns don’t just let go. Even if it breaks you. Even if it breaks us.

His fingers brush my cheek. He looks at me like he’s already gone. I feel it — that shift. That silence. The way soldiers leave you before they actually do.

Four months. That’s what they said. But four months can be a lifetime when you don’t know if he’ll still have a heartbeat by the end of it. Four months of counting seconds. Of kissing my phone and crying to voicemails. Of waking up in the middle of the night, convinced he’s dead.

I clutch his dog tags. I hate them. I hate what they represent. But I wear them every time he leaves, like a promise or a prayer. Like maybe metal can keep someone alive.

He lies beside me now, pulls me into his arms, and I can feel how hard he’s trying to be strong. But I feel the tremble in his chest. The way his breath catches when I say his name. “Rafe…”

“Don’t,” he says, barely above a whisper. “If I let myself feel it, I won’t go.”

Then don’t. Don’t go.

But I don’t say it. Because if I do, it’ll break him.

So I hold him instead. Memorize him. The way he smells. The way his heartbeat slows when I sing. I hum softly — the same song I wrote when he was gone the first time. Come Back Home. I never told anyone it was for him.

And he cries. He thinks I don’t see. But I do. And it shatters me.

How do you love someone who keeps leaving for war? How do you survive all the goodbyes that might be the last?

Morning is coming. And I already feel the hole he’s going to leave behind. And no matter how tightly I hold him… I know I’ll lose him again.