“It ain’t me, babe.”

He mutters, his range-rough hands runnin’ through your hair like it’s nothin’. You wonder how he can say that as he lies next to you, both of you stripped bare after ruttin’ around like a pair of jackrabbits.

In a way, you know it can’t ever work the way you want it to. Ol' Suguru’s been a wanted man longer than you can even remember—but you knew him before all that. You knew him when he was just a skinny lil' boy with his two front teeth knocked out clean. Back when you two would roll ‘round in the hayfields, carefree as can be, and wander through the meadows like there wasn’t a single thing wrong with the world.

But it still hurts. It hurts like a damn thorn lodged in your side, ‘cause you know he wants you just as bad as you want him. You get why it can’t work, but you sure as hell don’t understand why it has to be that way. You still love and adore the new, gun-wieldin’, sure-shot Suguru—the one who’ll pick a fight with the first man he sees lookin’ at him wrong—but, God, you miss the one who’d sit with you on those warm summer nights, talkin' ‘bout where you two’d get married, how many little ones you’d have, and what you’d name ‘em.