Chapter Text
The bus jolted forward with a shudder that rattled her teeth.
Samira barely reacted. Her forehead was pressed to the glass. The city slid past in streaks of light and shadow, unfamiliar streets she’d traveled so often they no longer registered as places.
On the bus, she didn’t have to make decisions. Didn’t have to scan faces or anticipate questions. She could go slack against the window and let momentum carry her where she was supposed to end up.
Her body was still humming like the shift hadn’t ended. Her shoulders tight, her jaw sore, and her fingers curled as if they were still waiting for instructions. She’d peeled the gloves off hours ago, but she could still feel the phantom pull of latex across her knuckles.
The case came back to her without warning.
Not as a memory. As a replay.
He’d come in clutching his chest, his breath shallow and fast. The kind of man who apologized for taking up space even while he was actively dying.
I didn’t want to make a fuss, he’d said. She could hear it again, clear as if he were sitting beside her on the bus. They told me it was probably heartburn and sent me home.
He was transferred over hours later, when the pain didn’t stop. When his wife finally insisted. When “probably nothing” stretched itself thin.
She remembered the EKG. The subtle elevation that wasn’t dramatic enough to scare anyone who didn’t know how to look twice. The labs that lagged behind the truth. The way time warped while they worked, everything technically correct and still not enough.
She’d watched the moment realization hit. The split second where he understood that this was bigger than discomfort.
She’d taken his history carefully. Thoroughly. Like she always did. Asking the questions people skipped when they were in a hurry.
It hadn’t saved him.
She saw it then, the way she always did, no matter how hard she tried not to.
Her Appa, sitting on the edge of the bed at home, rubbing at his chest like he was trying to warm something back to life. The way he’d waved Amma off. The way he’d smiled at Samira and told her not to worry, that he’d already been checked. That they said he was fine.
She’d been thirteen. Old enough to understand fear. Too young to understand how often being fine depended on who you were.
She remembered the hospital room. Too white. The machines speaking in beeps she hadn’t yet learned how to translate. The doctor’s face when they finally said the words out loud, already moving on to the next task.
It was missed.
That phrase followed her everywhere.
The anger had come later. Years later. Once she had the vocabulary for it. Once she understood how often pain like his was minimized. How often men like her father were sent home with antacids and reassurance instead of answers.
She pressed her eyes shut, but it didn’t help. The images stayed. They always did.
Every patient like that felt like a test she was doomed to fail, not because she wasn’t good enough, but because the system had been broken long before she touched it.
She’d told Jack once that she took every patient’s history like it was a lifeline, because she never wanted to be the person who missed what mattered.
She’d chosen emergency medicine because it promised immediacy and rewarded vigilance. Because it let her believe that if she stayed sharp enough, listened hard enough, and cared long enough, she could catch what others overlooked.
But nights like this peeled back the same scar.
The bus slowed near her stop. She barely noticed until the doors hissed open and cold air rushed in. She stood on instinct, legs stiff, and stepped out into the night.
Her apartment building loomed ahead, familiar and unwelcoming. Inside, the door clicked shut behind her with a finality that made her chest tighten.
She dropped her bag by the door and stood there, keys still in her hand, waiting for something to happen. For the shift to finally release its grip.
It didn’t.
She moved through the apartment on autopilot. Shoes kicked off by the door. Lights flicked on.
By the time she made it to the bathroom, exhaustion had settled into her skin like another layer of scrubs she couldn’t peel off.
Hot water beat down over her shoulders, steam blooming until the mirror fogged completely. She scrubbed harder than necessary, dragging the washcloth over her arms, her neck, and anywhere the day still seemed to cling.
When she finally shut off the water, her fingers were pruney and her lungs burned from the steam.
She pulled on a threadbare T-shirt from undergrad and a pair of sweats, her curls still damp as she padded barefoot back into the living room.
The couch sagged beneath her weight, the cushions folding around her like they’d been waiting. She tugged the blanket over her legs and let herself sink, her damp curls leaving dark crescents on the fabric.
For a moment, she just sat there.
Then her hand drifted into her bag.
She found the article Jack had given her and pulled it free.
The title stared back at her, familiar enough to make her stomach dip.
She’d already read this one two days ago, wedged between charts during a lull that never stayed quiet for long.
Back then, it had been interesting. Hazard ratios, mortality rates, and tidy columns of significance. Data she could understand easily.
Now it felt different.
It was personal.
This wasn’t about populations or trends anymore. It felt like it was about her. Like someone had taken her life and flattened it into columns and footnotes.
Social isolation.
Loneliness.
Objective versus subjective, the paper had said. Two different mechanisms.
She’d almost laughed when she’d first read that part. As if the body cared about the distinction.
The letters blurred. She blinked once, twice, trying to force them back into focus.
She knew what loneliness did to a body. She didn’t need a meta-analysis to tell her that. She’d lived it long enough to recognize the symptoms.
The slow creep of it after loss, the way silence became sediment, settling in the spaces between years until you couldn’t tell where it ended and you began.
She’d built her life to keep it at bay. Filled every hour with work, movement, and purpose. Anything that kept her from sitting still long enough to feel it.
Thirty years old, and her world revolved around stretchers, charts, and fluorescent lights. Her mother was still in New Jersey, checking in every few days. How’s work? Are you sleeping? Eating enough? The texts were polite. Neither of them ever pushed past the surface.
Phone calls were worse. Too many things circling that neither of them wanted to touch.
People she’d grown up with were getting married. Having kids. Posting smiling pictures she scrolled past too quickly, as if speed might dull the ache. She told herself she’d get there later. After residency. After fellowship. After she had her footing.
Later kept moving.
And tonight, for the first time, she wondered if the window had already closed. If she’d let the door lock behind her without noticing.
Every patient who came in alone, every one who died alone, clawed at her. Was that where she was headed too? A body on a gurney, chart tagged no next of kin?
She didn’t even know what she wanted anymore. Marriage. Kids. A person to come home to. A hand reaching for hers at the end of a long day.
The article stopped feeling like research.
It felt like a prophecy.
Her thumb caught on the margin, where Jack’s handwriting curved into the page. She’d started looking for it without meaning to, those small marks that felt like proof he’d been thinking alongside her.
Her thumb slid lower and stilled.
What about people who choose it?
Choose it.
Was that what she’d done?
After her father died, her world had shrunk to the size of a hospital room and never fully expanded again. Amma worked constantly. Samira filled the gaps with whatever made sense. Studying was easier than grieving. Achievement looked better on paper than pain ever did.
In high school, she stayed home while everyone else went out. SAT prep. Flashcards. Applications. A girl with too much to prove and no one left to say it was enough.
College hadn’t changed that. Neither had med school. She’d built her life around control, and control didn’t leave much room for people.
She told herself it was necessary. That she was focused. That she didn’t have time for distractions. That she didn’t need anyone.
But sitting there now, staring at that question in the margin, something twisted low in her chest.
Maybe it had been a choice.
Or maybe it had happened so slowly she hadn’t noticed until one day it felt easier not to expect anyone to stay.
When she’d first read the article, she’d thought about sharing it with Jack.
She hadn’t.
Something about it had felt too raw, like handing him a prognosis instead of a paper.
And now here it was again, the same study, but with his handwriting bleeding through the page.
He’d read it too, and maybe it hadn’t been random that he’d given it to her.
Maybe he’d seen something in her she’d been pretending wasn’t there. The same hollow ache she’d been trying to fill with twelve-hour shifts.
If he’d recognized it, that meant he understood.
That he knew.
Shifting the paper in her lap, she noticed another page tucked inside.
He’d done this before, whole sheets crammed with notes, his thoughts too big for the margins.
She smiled faintly, expecting that again.
She unfolded it carefully.
The ink was pressed deep, his handwriting crowded and urgent, like it hadn’t wanted to wait.
Her eyes caught on the first line.
I don’t know how much longer I can keep doing this.
I think about the roof.
She read the lines again, slower this time, as if pacing herself might change their meaning.
It’s not just an idea anymore. My feet know where to stand. I know how high it is. I know where the camera doesn’t reach.
The hospital rooftop flashed in her mind. The same one they’d stood on earlier tonight. The same place they’d gravitated to a hundred times before without ever needing to say why.
Sometimes it feels less like wanting to die and more like wanting everything to stop asking things of me.
Her throat burned.
She could still remember the first time he found her up there after a brutal shift that had left her shaking. She’d thought she was alone until his voice broke the wind behind her.
“You’re supposed to be home.”
She’d laughed. “I can’t feel my hands.”
He’d looked out at the skyline and told her, “It helps to remember we’re still here.”
She’d thought he meant it figuratively.
Her fingers tightened around the paper.
She should stop reading. This felt intimate in a way that bordered on invasive. Like she was standing somewhere she hadn’t been invited, listening to something she wasn’t meant to hear.
She kept going anyway.
Samira does this thing before a code. She stills her hands. Just for a second. I noticed it because I do the same thing.
Her breath stuttered.
He’d noticed that?
The way she tried to gather herself before stepping into the chaos. The half-second where she forced her hands to behave and her mind to focus. She’d always assumed no one saw that moment, that it happened too fast to register.
Her eyes blurred.
She doesn’t rush. Even when someone’s shouting. Even when the room’s loud and everything’s going wrong. She moves when she’s ready. I trust her.
Trust.
She wasn’t used to that word being applied to her without conditions.
A tear slipped free, landing on the page and darkening the ink. She barely noticed. Her gaze was already dragging lower.
I think about Pittfest more than I should.
Not because of what went wrong.
Because of how little I doubted her.
I watched her do it and knew she would finish it.
Her chest expanded painfully, like her lungs were trying to take in too much air at once.
Pittfest.
One of the worst shifts of her life.
She remembered Jack watching her.
A part of her still couldn’t believe that he actually let her do the procedure.
He didn’t intervene or take over even when Emery was waiting to step in.
The procedure had felt unreal even afterward. She’d actually done that. She still felt it sometimes, that flare of pride that caught her off guard in quiet moments.
She’d never told anyone how much that had meant.
When she’s not on shift, I notice.
The days feel longer.
I’m more tired than I should be.
Her fingers trembled now, the page wavering.
She thought of how she never felt small around him. How the constant self-correction she carried around other attendings eased in his presence. She wasn’t bracing for criticism. Wasn’t waiting for the nitpicks. She felt capable.
I don’t know when that started to matter this much.
Her heart thudded painfully against her ribs.
I think I love her.
The word sat there, unadorned and devastating.
Love.
She read it once.
Again.
The air felt thin, like she was breathing through gauze. The room seemed to recede, everything blurring.
Her rational brain wanted to file it under something clinical.
A depressive episode. A trauma response. The product of exhaustion. But those terms felt dishonest. Because beneath every word she saw him, the man behind them, breaking in the spaces no one looked.
Guilt flooded through her.
She shouldn’t be reading this.
But she couldn’t unread it either.
She wanted to reach him. To tell him she’d have listened. That she was here.
The page felt too heavy for its size, like it carried his heartbeat.
Samira set it down on the coffee table, the edges crumpled where her fingers had pressed too hard.
She stared at it for a long time, the ink still swimming before her eyes.
It felt wrong, seeing something that private, sitting under the soft lamplight of her apartment. The kind of words that shouldn’t exist outside of someone’s chest.
Samira rose before she realized she’d moved. Her pulse drummed against her ribs as she started pacing, each turn tighter than the last.
Inhale. Exhale.
Her doctor’s mind whispered the instructions like a mantra, but her body didn’t listen. Every time she blinked, she saw the handwriting again. The words that shouldn’t have been hers to read.
The intimacy of it felt almost illicit, like she’d undressed him without permission.
Her thoughts reeled back through every shift, every quiet exchange. The way he lingered by her longer than necessary. The half-smiles that never quite reached his eyes. The way his voice always softened when he said her name.
It had taken her months to get him to call her Samira instead of Dr. Mohan. He’d said it was about professionalism. She’d teased that it made him sound old. But when he finally gave in, the first time her name left his mouth, something in her fluttered. She hadn’t known why then. She did now.
She’d brushed it off each time. She’d been too busy, too tired, and too buried in survival to let herself believe that anyone looked at her like that, least of all him.
Now, all those moments lined up in her mind like evidence.
He hadn’t just seen her. He’d been watching her, the way no one else had in years.
And she’d missed it.
Her heart ached, not just from shock but from recognition. Like some part of her had always known and hadn’t let herself see it until now.
By the time she crawled into bed, the sheets were cool against her skin, but her body refused to rest.
She turned on her side. Then her back. Every position was wrong.
Her heart kept racing, her mind caught in an endless loop of his words.
She curled tighter, her knees drawn up and her arms wrapped around herself like that could keep her heart from spilling out.
It wasn’t just about him anymore.
It was about her, too.
Because his loneliness mirrored hers. They were the same disease wearing different names.
She thought of her father’s empty hospital bed.
Of the years she’d spent chasing excellence because grief had nowhere else to go.
And somehow, Jack had slipped in anyway.
He’d become her person without her even realizing it. The one she could talk to without explaining.
When had that happened?
She tried to breathe through it, but every inhale dragged against the memory of his handwriting.
She flipped her pillow and forced her eyes shut. It didn’t help. All she could see was that one line.
Finally, Samira threw the blanket back and swung her legs over the side of the bed.
She couldn’t do this. Couldn’t lie there while his words tore into her.
She sat there for a long moment, gripping the sheet until her knuckles ached.
He’s fine, she told herself. He’s working.
But another voice answered back. Then why does it feel like if you don’t go, something will break?
She stood abruptly, the decision hitting her bloodstream like adrenaline. She tugged a hoodie over her head and shoved her feet into sneakers. Her movements were jerky and uncoordinated, her body already ahead of her mind.
She crossed the parking lot in long strides and slipped into her car. The key trembled in her fingers as she pushed it into the ignition. The engine hummed to life, headlights spilling across the asphalt.
For a second, she just sat there, gripping the wheel.
This was reckless. Irrational. Maybe even a mistake.
By the time the hospital came into view, it glowed against the night like a beacon. Her stomach twisted tight. Her body knew before her mind did that she was about to walk into something she couldn’t take back.
The automatic doors sighed open for her, and the smell of antiseptic hit like an impact. The ER looked the same, but it didn’t feel the same. Not tonight. Everything sounded like it was coming from underwater.
She hugged her bag to her chest, her pulse drumming hard enough to feel in her fingertips. It was like everyone could see through her. The nurses at triage, the tech wheeling a gurney past, and the patient slumped in a chair with a bandaged arm. Like they all knew what she carried.
And then she saw him.
Jack stood at the hub, his shoulders set. There were new circles under his eyes, faint but deep. He looked like he hadn’t slept, like the weight of the whole damn hospital was hooked into his spine.
Her feet stopped moving.
He looked the same, but she saw him differently now. The man who wrote those words was right there, breathing and pretending to be fine.
Her throat closed. She opened her mouth, but nothing came out.
Then he looked up.
For a heartbeat, the noise of the ER dropped away. His eyes met hers, confusion hitting first, then concern.
“Samira?”
He was moving toward her, his voice low but urgent. “Hey. What’s going on? Are you okay?”
Her mouth opened, but nothing came out. Her brain couldn’t catch up. She hadn’t thought this far ahead. Now all she could see was the alarm in his face and the way he was already cataloguing her breathing.
He took another step, his voice gentling. “You left hours ago. Did something happen?”
She shook her head, clutching the strap of her bag tighter. “No. I’m fine.” Her voice cracked. She swallowed hard and tried again. “I’m fine, I just… I need to talk to you.”
For a second, he just looked at her. His eyes scanned her face, searching for the source of the damage he couldn’t see.
Then he nodded. “Alright. Come on.”
Jack pushed open the door to an empty on-call room and flicked on the light. “Here.”
Samira sat on the edge of the narrow bed, her bag clutched to her chest like it could shield her. The papers inside might as well have been made of lead. She couldn’t seem to lift her eyes to him.
Jack stood near the door, his posture held tight, though his hands hung loose at his sides.
“Samira.” His voice was soft but strained. “You’re scaring me a little. What’s going on?”
Her vision blurred as she stared at the floor. The first word scraped out before she could stop it.
“The article.”
He blinked. “What?”
“The one you gave me. I’d already read it. I saw a paper inside.” Her chest hitched. “I didn’t mean to read it, Jack. I swear I didn’t.”
He frowned, confusion shadowing his face. “What paper?”
“I shouldn’t have. I thought it was your notes.”
He stepped closer, slower now, his tone careful. “Samira. You’re shaking. What did you read?”
Her hand shook as she reached into her bag, pulling the folded page halfway out. The sight of it made her stomach twist. “I think you didn't mean for me to see it.”
His eyes dropped to the page. His handwriting showed faintly through the crease.
Something in his face shifted. Recognition. Then stillness.
“You read it?”
Samira’s fingers clenched on the paper. “I did.”
He didn’t answer. Didn’t even seem to breathe.
He pulled in a rough breath, his hand scraping across his jaw. “Christ,” he muttered, the word a rasp more than a curse.
Something inside her shrank. Her fingers twitched, wanting to fold the papers back into her bag, to undo what she’d done. But the damage was already there.
He wasn’t yelling. He wasn’t even angry. That was somehow worse.
“Samira, I need to know exactly what you read.”
She opened her mouth, but no sound came. How did she pick which wound to name first? Which part of him she’d stolen.
“The part about the rooftop,” she answers at last, barely audible. “And… about me.”
Jack went still. Every line of his body locked. Then, slowly, he reached for the paper.
He looked down, his eyes scanning his own handwriting, and she saw the moment it hit him. Everything in him seemed to fold inward, his shoulders curling like he was trying to make himself smaller.
Watching it hurt.
Samira felt it in her chest, an ache that wanted to reach across the space between them but didn’t know how.
She’d come here because she couldn’t stand not knowing if he was okay. But now, seeing him like this, she wasn’t sure how to hold the knowledge she carried.
He had written his breaking point down and handed it to her without realizing it. And now both of them had to live with what that meant.
“You weren’t supposed to…” His voice caught. He swallowed hard. “God, Samira.”
Jack dragged both hands over his face, through his curls, pacing a short, uneven line like he couldn’t find enough air in the room.
“I wasn’t…” He stopped again, exhaling roughly. “Those weren’t for anyone to see.”
Jack’s hands dropped to his sides, his fingers flexing like he didn’t know what to do with them anymore. He looked everywhere but at her, the floor, the wall, and the door, like it might offer an escape route.
“I’m sorry.” The words came out rough. “I shouldn’t have… I didn’t realize that was in there.”
Samira shook her head. “I’m not mad.”
His gaze snapped back to her, disbelieving. “You should be.”
“I shouldn’t. I didn’t come here because I’m angry.”
“Then why are you here?” he asked, and there was something naked under the question. Fear, maybe. Or hope.
She looked down at the paper in her hands. “Because I read it, and I couldn’t just… go to bed after that. I couldn’t pretend I didn’t know.”
His jaw tightened. “That wasn’t fair to you. None of that should’ve been on you.”
“But it is now,” she replied. “You didn’t mean for it to be. I get that. But it is.”
Jack sank down into the chair by the desk like his legs had finally given out. He leaned forward, his elbows on his knees and his head bowed.
“I write shit I don’t mean. Or… I mean it in the moment. But it’s not… it’s not meant to be real.”
Samira frowned. “What does that even mean?”
“It means it’s how my brain vents. Thoughts I don’t let live anywhere else.” He scrubbed a hand over the back of his neck. “If I don’t put them on paper, they get louder.”
She swallowed. “That doesn’t make them nothing, Jack. You think about the roof.”
“Sometimes. Not like you’re probably imagining.”
“I’m an ER doctor. I imagine worse.”
That earned the faintest huff of breath from him. Not quite a laugh. But something close.
“I don’t want to die. Sometimes I just want everything to stop.”
Her chest ached at the familiarity of it.
“I know that feeling,” she said.
He looked up at her then, and something shifted in his expression. Recognition. The kind that doesn’t feel comforting so much as alarming.
“That’s what scares me. That you read that and thought, yeah, same.”
She crossed the room before she fully realized she was moving and stopped a few feet in front of him.
“I read it and thought, he’s been carrying this alone.”
Jack’s throat worked.
“You shouldn’t have to,” she added.
He shook his head. “Samira…”
“No,” she said, firmer now. “You don’t get to tell me that after everything.”
His mouth opened. Closed.
She pressed on, her heart pounding. “You’ve stood with me on that roof more times than I can count. You’ve let me talk in circles until I ran out of words. You’ve never once made me feel like it was too much.”
“That’s different,” he said hoarsely.
“How?”
“Because I’m supposed to be the one who has it together. I’m the attending.” His voice broke. “Because if I let myself lean the way you do, I don’t know if I’d stop.”
She glanced down at the paper again, then back at him.
“You wrote about Pittfest.”
His breath hitched.
“You wrote that you trusted me,” she continued. “That you didn’t doubt me.”
He closed his eyes.
“I didn’t. I still don’t.”
“That day,” she said, her voice shaking now, “was one of the worst shifts of my life. That case… I thought I was going to fail. I thought I was going to freeze and he was going to die because of me.”
“You didn’t.”
“I know because you didn’t let me quit. You didn’t take over. You didn’t talk down to me or look for something I did wrong.”
She swallowed.
“I’m not used to that,” she admitted. “Especially not from someone like you.”
“You were capable. You still are.”
Samira took a breath that shook all the way through her.
“And the part about me. About… loving me.”
Jack flinched like she’d struck him.
“I didn’t mean to…” he started. “That wasn’t…”
“I’m not asking you to explain it. I just need you to know that reading that didn’t scare me.”
He stared at her.
“It scared me for you,” she added. “And a little for me. But not in a bad way.”
His voice dropped to almost nothing. “Samira…”
“You don’t get to disappear on me. “Not after this.”
His eyes burned.
“I don’t want you to fix me or save me.”
“I know, I just want you to stay.”
Jack bowed his head, his breath shuddering out of him like he’d been holding it for years. When he looked up again, his eyes were wet and unguarded.
“I’m trying, I swear to you, I’m trying.”
She nodded, tears finally spilling free. “I know.”
She moved before she could talk herself out of it.
Jack lifted his head at the sound of her steps. “Samira…”
She didn’t answer. If she opened her mouth now, she knew she’d lose the nerve and drown in all the reasons this was complicated.
She stopped between his knees.
His hands flexed at his sides, hovering, uncertain.
“Look at me.”
He didn’t.
So she reached for him.
Her palms cradled his face, her thumbs brushing over the rough line of his jaw. She felt the scrape of stubble beneath her skin, the way he leaned into her touch like it was something he’d been denying himself.
Jack’s eyes lifted to hers, glassy and wide. There was fear there. Want. Relief. Too much of everything.
“Samira,” he murmured, her name fragile in his mouth. “We shouldn’t…”
“I know, I just… need this.”
She didn’t give him time to talk himself back into distance.
She kissed him.
Her mouth pressed into his with a desperate certainty that surprised even her.
Jack went still for one breath.
Then he shattered.
His hands came to her hips like they’d been waiting there all along, gripping tight. He kissed her back with an urgency that stole a soft sound from her throat, his mouth moving against hers like he was trying to say everything he’d swallowed down over the past weeks.
She felt him exhale against her lips.
Without thinking, she shifted closer, the last inch of space disappearing. Jack made a low, involuntary sound when she pressed into him, his grip tightening reflexively as she climbed into his lap, her knees settling on either side of his thighs.
He pulled back just enough to breathe, their foreheads resting together.
“Samira,” he said again, rougher now. “If we do this…”
“I’m not fragile, and I’m not confused,” she argued, her fingers sliding into his curls.
She pressed her lips to his again before he could find another reason to stop them.
This kiss was slower. Her thumbs brushed beneath his eyes, along the lines carved there by years of holding himself together for everyone else.
When he finally pulled back, his breath was uneven.
“I meant what I wrote. I just don’t know how to do this,” he admitted. “Not without screwing it up.”
A small, shaky smile curved her mouth. “Good. Neither do I.”
“You know me better than anyone,” she told him. “You see me even when I’m trying not to be seen. Especially then. You make me feel like… maybe I don’t have to keep it all together all the time.”
His thumb brushed gently at the corner of her mouth. “You don’t. You don’t have to hold everything up. Not with me.”
“I’m lonely too,” she admitted, the words barely louder than a breath. A laugh slipped out, thin and shaky. “I think I’ve been waiting for you without even realizing that’s what I was doing.”
Jack inhaled sharply, like the confession had knocked the air straight out of him. His eyes closed for a second, his forehead dipping toward hers.
After a moment, he leaned back against the narrow bed, tugging her with him without urgency.
“Come here,” he murmured. “Just… lay with me for a few minutes.”
She hesitated only long enough to look at him.
“They can page me if they need me.” A faint smile tugged at his mouth. “They owe me one hour of peace.”
She smiled, pressing her cheek to him.
His arm wrapped around her fully then, holding her like he’d been doing it forever. Samira let herself sink into the steady rhythm of his breathing, her fingers tracing slow, idle patterns over his shirt, feeling his heartbeat beneath her palm.
The ache in her chest, the one she’d been carrying through every shift, finally eased.
Jack’s hand found hers, their fingers threading together naturally.
“You should get some rest,” she whispered.
“Not yet,” he murmured. “Don’t wanna miss this.”
Her throat burned again. She pressed a gentle kiss to the corner of his mouth.
“You won’t. I’m not going anywhere.”
His fingers tightened faintly around hers. “Promise?”
“I promise.”
His breathing deepened soon after. Samira stayed awake, tracing slow circles over his chest, memorizing the rise and fall beneath her hand like proof that this was real.
Sometime later, he murmured her name in his sleep.
She smiled, her eyes stinging.
“I love you, Jack,” she whispered.