Page 67 of Stream & Scream
Then, only then, do I allow myself to collapse.
I curl into a ball on the floor, pulling my knees to my chest in a fetal position, seeking a moment of peace… a moment of silence after the storm.
My mind is a battlefield where shame wars with arousal.
I hate it here.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Jaxen
Sunday night
She’s curled on the splintered floorboards, back to the rotting baseboards, shivering like the cabin itself is breathing cold into her bones. Eyes glassy. Lips swollen. A arms wrapped around herself like a shield keeping the world out. She looks wrecked, filthy, scraped, exhausted, and still the best thing I’ve ever seen.
Fucking mine.
I kneel beside her and run my hand down the ridge of her arm, slow enough that she feels the choice in it. Not a strike. Not a grab. Contact. She flinches anyway, instincts firing on ghosts, then steadies when nothing bad happens.
“Easy,” I say, voice low. “Breathe.”
Her throat works. She’s trying. Hands won’t stop trembling, fingertips gone white with the chokehold she’s got on that blanket. I peel a wipe from my kit, crack a water tab into a dented canteen, and dampen the cloth until it drips. I clean the grit from her cheek, the mud along her jaw, the rust-brown smear at her hairline where a branch caught her earlier. Withmy helmet off, there’s nothing between us but air, and I see it, every twitch of her lashes, every ragged swallow, every war she’s fighting in her own skin.
Her lip curls. “Don’t touch me.” Her voice is raw but sharp. “Go to hell.”
I bare my teeth in something close to a grin, though it’s more knife than smile. “Already there. Dragged you with me.”
She lifts her chin, green eyes flaring even through exhaustion. “You think you can break me and then act like you care? Fuck you.”
“Watch your mouth,” I growl, the command cutting through the space between us. “I don’t care how bad you want to bite, Olivia. You need me, and you fucking know it.”
Her grip on the blanket tightens. “I don’t need shit from you.”
“Bullshit.” My voice drops, firm, final. “You’d be dead in the dirt without me. Don’t confuse survival with choice.”
She glares, teeth clenched, but her body betrays her, weak, trembling, too dehydrated to keep up the fight for long.
I drop a ration packet onto the floor beside her. “Eat.” Another follows. “Drink.” I tear the seal and press the canteen to her palm.
She mutters, “I said fuck off.”
I shove it harder into her hand. “And I said eat. One of us is giving the orders here, and it isn’t you.”
She stares at me like she wants to throw it back in my face. I let the silence stretch, let her feel how little patience I’ve got for her games. Finally, she bites into the bar and chews. Drinks when I tip the canteen.
I don’t ease up, don’t soften my tone. She can spit curses all night if she wants, but she’ll still do what I tell her. Because whether she admits it or not, she fucking needs it.
I strip my vest from the chair, re-seat plates, check straps, count magazines by weight. Knife edges with my thumb. Sidearm cycles clean. Rifle gets a quick press-check and goes back over my shoulder. Routine. Religion. Control.
The tablet, the suits bolted into the wall, flickers when I wake it. Static, then a grid, then a pulse.
One heartbeat left.
Tara Nguyen. North ravine sector. Slow drift east like her legs forgot how to be legs. Not hiding; running out of run.
I’m halfway to the door when the comm I ditched earlier squeals back to life.
“You step outside that door without finishing her and you’re fucking done, Jaxen,” Milo snaps. All clipped vowels and cheap authority. “Terminated,” Milo sneers, voice slick with static. “We’ll drop a secondary to wrap this up. End the show the way it’s supposed to end. You, and that trembling wannabe ‘final girl’ curled on your floor. She’s not a survivor, Jaxen—she’s just filler. Meat dressed up to die pretty. And if you won’t put her down, someone else will.”
