Sound drained out of the room, leaving only the hum of the refrigerator and the pounding of my own heart, and for one terrible second, I thought I had misheard him, that my brain was trying to protect me from understanding what a child had just asked a stranger to do.
But then he added, softer, as if embarrassed for wanting such a thing.
“Because if I go home again, I won’t make it.”
He closed his eyes.
That was the moment everything I had built around myself — the armor, the reputation, the convenient excuse of being irredeemable — collapsed into nothing.
A Different Kind of War Begins
I didn’t stand up fast.
I knelt.
My knees hit the diner floor hard enough that one of the plates rattled, and the boy flinched instinctively, arms flying up to protect his head, a reflex so practiced it made my throat close.
“No,” I said, my voice shaking despite every effort to control it. “No one is killing you. Not today. Not ever.”
