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Because she trusts me, and that trust cost her something.

Because she needs to feel safe with me before she ever needs to feel wanted by me.

Because if I turn this into wanting too soon, I could ruin the one thing that might keep her alive.

That is the part that matters.

Not my feelings. Not my hunger. Not the years I’ve spent wanting her from a distance.

Her survival.

If she freezes again, it might not be me on the ground next time. It might be her. It might be Poppy. It might be a blade, teeth, hands around her throat, or Russ standing in front of her with another bullet and no one close enough to stop him.

And if my training is what teaches her to move, to fight, to get free, then I will not take that from her just because I want more.

Even if more never comes.

Even if all I ever get is standing beside her, teaching her how to survive long enough to walk away from me.

My hands move slower, each sign hitting harder than the last. “Training her is more important.”

Jacob watches my hands, then my face.

I keep going. “She doesn’t need me distracting her.”

He stares back, refusing to let me hide in the space between words. The same way I do when he gets too deep in his own head.

No wonder he finds it annoying.

Doesn’t mean I’ll stop.

Jacob keeps his voice low. “You know what I think?”

“Unfortunately, always.”

He ignores that. “I think you’ve spent a lot of years treating wanting something like it’s dangerous.”

My hand stills on the truck door.

The joke leaves Jacob’s face. “I get why.”

He does get it. Not all of it. Not the exact shape of hospital lights or the taste of blood in my mouth after the crash. Not the silence where my voice used to be. Not waking up to a police officer sitting beside me, trying to explain that my parents weren’t coming back and the person who hit us fled the scene.

But Jacob knows loss.

Everyone left does.

Past him, the campfire disappears into wet pavement.

Shattered glass.

My father’s hand reaching across the center console for my mother and me because even at the end, even in that last split second, his instinct was us.

Proof.

That’s what the memory is.

Love looked like that before I lost it.