The Ghost of You

by reng

Summary:

Maya Bishop is a hardened war correspondent. Carina DeLuca is a globe-trotting trauma doctor with Doctors Without Borders. They meet by chance one night in New York—two strangers shaped by conflict, loss, and wanderlust—and fall into something fierce and fleeting. One night. No last names. No promises. Just a flash of something real.

Years later, fate throws them back into each other’s orbit in a conflict zone, forcing them to confront the past they never resolved and the feelings they never forgot. As borders shift and lives hang in the balance, Maya and Carina must decide if love is something they can choose in a world built on impermanence.

Notes:

Hi folks! Welcome to my new fanfic - leave a comment, give a kudo, and share with a friend!

Chapter 1: New York, Before the Storm

New York never really slept, but it did pause.

On a cold January evening, that pause came in the form of a quiet lull inside a tucked-away bar on the Lower East Side, where condensation beaded on windows and music thumped low enough to feel like a heartbeat rather than a melody. It was the kind of place people wandered into for warmth or anonymity—sometimes both.

Maya Bishop needed both.

She leaned back against the worn leather booth, one boot propped on the opposite seat, her jacket slung carelessly over her shoulder, revealing a worn gray tee that still smelled faintly of gunpowder and desert wind. She had just gotten back from Kabul three days ago, but the dust hadn’t fully left her lungs. It never did. Not after Fallujah. Not after Aleppo. Certainly not after the explosion in Syria six months ago that had torn through the convoy she’d been embedded with and left her with a stitched-up shoulder and a permanent ringing in her right ear.

Her bourbon sat untouched.

This wasn’t her kind of bar—too quiet, too hipster—but her usual dive had closed down. She wasn’t here to socialize. She was here to sit, maybe disappear.

Until she walked in.

Carina.

At the time, Maya didn’t know her name, only that she walked like she didn’t belong in the cold. She swept in with the wind behind her and the scent of something sweet—citrus, maybe jasmine. Her cheeks were pink from the weather, her dark curls slightly damp, and she had a tired but unmistakably kind smile when she asked the bartender, in lightly accented English, “Do you have Fernet?”

They didn’t, so she ordered a white wine instead and took a seat at the bar—one barstool away from Maya’s booth. Close, but not too close. Like the universe was teasing them.

Maya tried not to stare and failed.

The woman noticed and met her gaze head-on.

“You look like someone who’s seen too much,” she said, without preamble.

Maya huffed out a laugh. “You look like someone who’s about to tell me their therapist’s name.”

A smirk. “Not a therapist. A doctor. A real one.”

Maya raised an eyebrow. “And you just assume I’m not?”

“Your shirt’s stained with dust, your boots are military-grade, and your eyes…” She turned slightly to face her. “They don’t blink when someone drops a glass.”

The bartender had indeed just dropped a glass.

Maya blinked, finally. “Fair.”

She extended her hand. “Maya.”

“Carina,” the woman replied, taking it, her grip warm and firm. “And I wasn’t wrong, was I?”

“No,” Maya admitted, and took a sip of her bourbon. “I’m a journalist. War zones, mostly.”

Carina looked at her like she already suspected it. “And I’m a doctor. Médecins Sans Frontières.”

“No shit.”

Carina joined Maya at the booth and they clinked glasses.

And just like that, something shifted. The air between them grew electric, a mix of pain and laughter, recognition and something unspoken. They talked for hours. About Sierra Leone. Yemen. South Sudan. About the bodies they couldn’t save, the ones they left behind, and the guilt they carried in their chests like shrapnel.

Carina told her about her latest assignment in Port-au-Prince. About losing a six-year-old girl. About working fourteen-hour days in makeshift tents that smelled of antiseptic and blood. She spoke softly, with reverence and a kind of fatigue that felt permanent.

Maya told her about the time a sniper shot at her camera crew. About the screaming silence that followed bomb blasts. About holding a mother’s hand as she begged the world to notice her dying son—and how Maya had taken that photo, sent it to The Times, and won an award she never mentioned again.

Somewhere between their second and third drinks, Maya realized she hadn’t felt this kind of connection in years. Maybe ever. And judging by the way Carina was looking at her—with that mix of curiosity and caution and want—it was mutual.

—

By midnight, they were stumbling out into the icy night, laughing too loudly, both a little drunk and a little in awe.

“My place is ten blocks away,” Maya said, pausing under a flickering streetlight. “But we could take a cab.”

Carina looked at her for a long moment. “I don’t usually do this.”

“I don’t usually ask.”

They took the cab.

—

Maya’s apartment was small and cluttered with memories. A photo of her and someone at an Army base. An old flak jacket hung on the back of a chair. A bulletin board full of conflict maps and scrawled notes, like she couldn’t let go of the chaos.

Carina noticed it all, but didn’t comment.

Instead, she walked to the window, staring out at the frozen city, her back to Maya. “Do you ever feel like you’re just…passing through the world, not really living in it?”

Maya stepped up behind her. “Every day.”

Their lips met like a question. Then an answer.

The night was a blur of urgency and tenderness. Carina’s skin was warm beneath Maya’s calloused hands. Maya kissed her like she’d been starved for softness. They undressed each other slowly, reverently, like the moment might dissolve if they moved too fast.

In the silence between breaths, in the way Carina cupped her face, in the soft Italian words whispered against her neck— sei bellissima —Maya found something dangerously close to peace.

They fell asleep tangled together, the city quiet outside, the morning impossibly far away.

—

But morning always comes.

When Maya blinked awake, the light was pale and the bed beside her was empty. Carina’s side still smelled like jasmine and sleep, but the sheets were cold.

She sat up, heart immediately racing. “Carina?”

No response.

She checked the bathroom. Empty. Kitchen. Empty. Door—unlocked.

Gone.

No note. No text. No trace.

Just the faint imprint of a stranger who’d somehow known her better than most people in her life.

Maya stood in the middle of her apartment in silence, arms folded tightly across her chest.

And then she laughed. Bitterly. Of course.

That was what they did, people like them. Touched down for a night, for a breath of something real, before disappearing again into the fire. Before the war called them back. Before the heart had time to hope.

She didn’t know her last name. Had no way to find her.

Just Carina. Just the echo of jasmine and the ghost of a night that shouldn’t have meant anything, but somehow did.

Maya pulled on her boots, poured herself coffee that tastes like ash, and sat by the window, watching New York come alive again.

Carina was probably on a plane already. Port-au-Prince. Or Sudan. Or fuck it—maybe gone back to Italy. Gone anywhere that wasn’t here.

And Maya?

She had an assignment in Kyiv. A departure in two days. Another story to chase, another scar to collect.

Chapter 2: Aftershocks

Three years later

The sky over Gaza was the kind of gray that pressed on your lungs.

Maya had grown used to the different shades of war—desert tan, jungle green, scorched concrete black. But here, in this bombed-out stretch of land with smoke curling through the skyline and the air vibrating with drone surveillance, everything was washed in ash.

She hadn’t meant to end up here.

Originally, the assignment had been a two-week embed with a UN peacekeeping unit in East Jerusalem. She was suppose to write a feature about humanitarian corridors and show the world something hopeful.

But hope, Maya has learned, had a habit of slipping right through her fingers like sand.

A roadside bombing on the northern border had changed everything. One moment she was in the back of a UN convoy truck, flipping through her notes. The next—heat, light, and screaming. Her camera guy was gone. Her leg is on fire. Blood seeping through her jeans.

She didn’t remember passing out.

She did remembered waking up to pain. Blinding, white-hot, bone-deep pain.

And then, movement. Voices. Hands lifting her. A stretcher. Tents. A woman shouting in rapid Arabic. The kind of field hospital that ran on adrenaline and duct tape.

But it wasn’t until the morphine started to wear off that Maya opened her eyes and saw her.

Her.

Carina.

Hair pulled back messily, sleeves of her scrubs rolled up to the elbows, hands already stained with blood. But that face—that voice—it carved through Maya’s consciousness like lightning splitting a night sky.

“BP is dropping. Get another line in—now. I need suction!”

Maya blinked, once. Twice.

“Carina?”

The name fell from her lips like a secret.

Carina’s hands didn’t stop moving, but her head whipped towards her with such force it was a wonder she didn’t collapse.

Their eyes met.

Shock. Recognition. Confusion.

And then, just like that—Carina turned back to the bleeding leg and muttered something in Italian that Maya couldn’t quite translate through the haze.

—

The world steadied eventually. Enough for Maya to know she wasn’t dead.

The tent was gone. She was in a mobile trauma ward with IVs in both arms and her bandaged leg elevated. The lights above her were humming, too bright, and the bed was narrow, but clean. She feels the cooler air - Gaza City’s edge, maybe. Hours passed. Maybe a day. And morphine pulled her under again and again.

When she came to properly, it was late. She turned her head slowly, every movement making her grit her teeth. She was alone.

Well—sort of. Alone except for the figure sitting silently at the far end of the room, hunched over a patient file, lips moving silently as she read. There was a faint smudge of dried blood on her cheek, and Maya wasn’t entirely sure if it was hers.

Carina. She looked the same and completely different at the same time.

Still in scrubs. Still stained. Still beautiful in the way people were when they’d stopped trying to be.

Maya groaned, “Hmm...”

Carina’s eyes snapped to hers.

“You’re awake,” she said quietly.

“I guess you saved me.” Maya said, voice dry.

Carina didn’t smile. “I didn’t know it was you. Not at first.”

There was a beat of silence, filled with unspoken questions. And everything between them—the night in New York, the silence that followed, and the years of wondering—crashed back into the room like a second explosion.

Then: “How bad is it?”

“You lost a lot of blood. The femoral artery was nicked, but we stabilized it. You were lucky.” She paused. “You’ll need rehab but you’ll walk again.”

Maya swallowed. “Camera guy?”

Carina shook her head.

Maya stared at the ceiling. “Figures.”

Carina stood slowly and poured a cup of water, then brought it to her. She didn’t speak as she helped Maya sip through a straw. Her fingers brushed Maya’s, and both of them froze for a fraction of a second.

When Maya leaned back, she looked at her again. Really looked. Her brows were pinched. There were new lines at the corners of her eyes. And—there, around her neck, tucked partially into her shirt—something glinted. A chain. A ring.

Maya didn’t comment. Yet.

Carina sat again. But not too close.

“You left,” Maya said finally, eyes still on the ceiling. “I woke up and you were gone.”

“I didn’t plan to stay,” Carina said, the words more tired than cruel.

Maya turned her head to look at her. “You could’ve left a note.”

Carina’s eyes flickered. “And say what exactly?”

Maya scoffed. “I don’t know. Give me your number or something.”

Silence stretched between them like barbed wire.

Finally, Maya broke it. “You were the only good thing in a long time.”

Carina closed her eyes. “And you were the only thing that scared me.”

They both breathed, shallow and shaky.

Maya’s voice dropped. “Why didn’t you stay?”

Carina looked down at her hands. “Because I knew I’d fall in love with you.”

Maya didn’t answer. Her heart thudded unevenly in her chest, louder than the monitor beside her.

“I was leaving for Haiti two days later,” Carina continued, her accent thickening with emotion. “It wouldn’t have been fair to you.”

“I would’ve let you go.”

“I wouldn’t have wanted to.”

Maya’s mouth went dry.

Carina stood abruptly, needing space. “I’ve seen too many people die to believe in timing. But that night… you made me want to believe.”

They stared at each other in silence. Maya’s voice dropped. “I thought about you.”

Carina looked up.

“I’d be in some burned-out building in Syria or watching families pick through rubble in Mosul, and I’d wonder where you were. If you were okay. If I imagined that night.”

“You didn’t,” Carina whispered.

“I didn’t know anything else about you,” Maya said, almost laughing. “Just Carina. No number. No email. You ghosted me in my own damn apartment.”

Carina wiped her eyes. “I didn’t want you to find me.”

Maya flinched. “Right.”

“I’m not saying it was the right thing to do. I just—felt too much. Too fast. And I was already scheduled to leave. I thought walking away would make it easier.”

A long silence fell between them. The only sounds were the generator and the distant shouts of other medics.

Then Maya spoke, hoarse and quiet. “So…I guess you’re married now.”

Carina exhaled, like she’d been holding that breath for three years.

“We’re engaged,” she admitted. “Her name is Arizona. She’s a surgeon. We’ve worked together for a few years. It just… happened.”

That confession hit like a secondary blast. Maya blinked, fighting the sudden pressure behind her eyes.

“That’s what people say when they’re trying to convince themselves they’re happy.”

“I am happy.”

Maya nodded once. “Okay.”

Carina reached for her hand, but Maya shifted slightly, enough that their fingers missed.

“It’s okay,” Maya said quietly. “You don’t owe me anything.”

—

Later that night

Maya couldn’t sleep. Between the pain and the noise and the weight of Carina’s return, her mind wouldn’t quiet.

She stared at the ceiling above her bed.

“Still awake?” Carina’s voice was soft, somewhere in the dark.

Maya turned slightly, wincing. “Yeah.”

Carina stood and came to her side, her lab coat draped over her like a blanket. “Pain?”

“Not the kind you can fix with morphine.”

She wasn’t sure what hurt more—the wound in her leg or the one Carina had left three years ago, now reopened and raw.

Chapter 3: What We Carry

Tel Aviv was too quiet.

It wasn’t the quiet of peace—it was the quiet of recovery, of waiting rooms and wheeled gurneys and salt air seeping through cracked-open windows. Maya hated it because her body ached in places morphine barely touched, and her leg throbbed constantly.

But none of that compared to the ache that settled low in her chest when Carina walked into the room.

Again.

Carina wasn’t supposed to still be here.

The transfer had happened just after midnight, a chaotic blur of medical personnel, security clearances, and a military chopper that smelled like fuel and old blood. Maya had been sedated for most of it, in and out of consciousness, the pressure cuff squeezing her arm was the only grounding sensation.

But somewhere between Gaza and Tel Aviv, she remembered Carina’s voice. Low, calm, in her ear.

“You’re going to be okay.”

Maya didn’t remember replying, but she did remembered holding on to that voice like a lifeline.

—

Now, two days later, Carina was still here. Still wearing that ring around her neck. Still not leaving.

Maya lay in a narrow hospital bed with her leg elevated and a dull headache gnawing behind her eyes. Outside, the late afternoon light filtered in through the blinds, painting faint stripes across the sheets. The room was neutral—white walls, beige curtains, a potted plant someone had tried to keep alive.

Carina sat in the chair by the window, legs crossed, tablet open on her lap. She was charting, or pretending to. Occasionally, she looked up at Maya like she wanted to say something, but didn’t.

Maya finally broke the silence. “You really didn’t have to come, you know.”

Carina looked up. “I know.”

Maya’s voice was rough. “And yet, you’re still here. Why?”

Carina’s eyes didn’t waver. “Because I wanted to.”

“That’s not a good enough reason when you’re engaged.”

Carina exhaled slowly and closed her tablet. “Arizona is in Amsterdam right now. She knows I’m here.”

Maya studied her. “And she’s okay with this?”

“She trusts me.”

“That’s bold,” Maya muttered.

A pause.

“She doesn’t know everything, ” Carina admitted. “Just that we knew each other. That you got hurt and that I wanted to make sure you were okay.”

Maya scoffed, bitter. “You left without a word three years ago. I think that ship has sailed.”

Carina’s voice softened. “Look, I’ve made a lot of mistakes and leaving you was one of them.”

Maya looked away. “Too late to take it back now.”

“I know,” Carina said quietly. “But that doesn’t mean I’m not allowed to care.”

“Caring isn’t the same as staying.”

“I am staying.”

Maya turned to look at her. “Yeah. And then what? You fly back to your fiancée and forget about this all over again?”

Carina’s jaw tensed. “That’s not fair.”

“No, you’re right,” Maya said, eyes gleaming. “What’s fair is showing up three years after you disappeared, saving my life, and then hovering like some... ghost of something that almost meant everything.”

“Maya...”

“No,” Maya said, her voice hardening. “You don’t get to come back into my life and make it more complicated. I was fine. I’d finally stopped replaying that night in my head. And then you show up with your perfect ring and your perfect fiancée and act like you still have the right to touch my hand like it means something.”

Carina stood slowly, as if the weight of everything unspoken had finally pulled her upright. “You think it doesn’t mean something to me?”

Maya looked away.

“You think I’d have climbed onto that helicopter for anyone else ? I could’ve let you go, Maya. I could’ve let the field team handle it but I didn’t. Because you still matter. Because I never stopped wondering what it would’ve been like if I had stayed.”

Maya’s throat felt tight. “Then why didn’t you?”

Carina took a single step closer. “Because I was terrified.”

“Of what?”

“Of how much I wanted you. How much I still do.”

Silence. Thick. Drenched in history.

Maya finally whispered, “But you’re marrying someone else.”

Carina’s voice cracked. “I know.”

—

The following day passed slowly.

Maya pretended to be asleep when Carina came in. She answered texts from her editor with clipped words. She refused her pain meds longer than she should have.

But Carina stayed.

She brought tea. She helped adjust the pillows. She read aloud for a while from a battered copy of The Little Prince she’d found in the hospital library, her voice soft and laced with nostalgia.

Maya watched her from under heavy eye lids.

In another life, this could have been something else.

A moment. A beginning.

But this wasn’t another life. This was this one.

And in this life, Carina had chosen someone else.

—

That night, after the hallway quieted and the nurses dimmed the lights, Maya stirred.

She couldn’t sleep. The hospital bed felt too clean, too unfamiliar. And her thoughts kept catching on the same loop—Carina’s voice, the curve of her neck, the gold ring that glinted like a wall between them.

“You okay?” Carina’s voice broke the silence.

Maya opened her eyes. Carina was seated in the chair again, legs tucked up, hair slightly messy.

“Yeah.”

“Pain?”

“No.” Maya paused. “Not that kind.”

Carina stood slowly and crossed to her bedside.

“You should get some sleep,” Maya said.

“I can’t.”

They looked at each other in the half-light.

Maya didn’t move when Carina reached out and brushed a loose strand of hair from her face.

“I hate that you’re hurt,” she whispered.

Maya’s breath hitched. “I hate that you’re engaged.”

Carina exhaled, pained. “I didn’t come here to make this harder.”

“But you did.”

“I’m sorry.”

They stood like that—still, close, aching—for a long time.

Then Maya asked, voice barely audible, “Do you love her?”

Carina closed her eyes. “Yes.”

Maya swallowed, nodding.

“But not like this,” Carina added.

Maya’s heart jolted.

“Not like what I felt for you that night. Not like what I feel right now. ”

Carina was still touching her. Fingertips grazing her cheek like they remembered everything. And Maya—despite herself, despite the ring, the years, the wreckage—leaned into it.

For a moment, the world stopped spinning.

Then Carina whispered, “If I kiss you now, I won’t be able to forget it.”

Maya looked up, eyes glassy. “You already didn’t.”

A beat.

Then Carina stepped back.

And it was the cruelest mercy Maya had ever known.

—

The next morning

Carina was gone.

For a terrifying moment, it felt like New York all over again. The empty chair. The untouched cup of tea. The echo of absence.

But this time, there was something else.

A note on the table.

Just one sentence, scribbled on hospital stationery.

“I’m still here. I just needed air.”

Maya stared at it, heart thudding, torn between anger and relief.

She didn’t know what they were. What they could be.

But for now—for just a little longer—Carina was still here.

And that was more than she had dared to hope for.

Chapter 4: The Space Between

Outside the Hospital

The courtyard smelled like citrus trees and sea salt, the kind of scent that should’ve calmed Carina but didn’t.

She sat on a low stone bench, phone resting on her knee, one hand wrapped around a paper cup of coffee that had gone cold an hour ago. She twisted the ring around her neck once, then again, then finally tapped the screen to make the call.

It rang twice before Arizona’s face filled the screen.

“Hey,” Arizona said warmly, hair damp from a shower and her blue scrubs visible in the background. “How are you holding up?”

Carina nodded. “I’m fine. Just… outside. Needed some air.”

Arizona tilted her head. “You look tired.”

“I am.”

A pause.

“Is your friend okay?” she asked gently.

Carina’s breath caught, and she nodded again. “She is stable and recovering faster than anyone expected.”

Arizona smiled faintly. “Well, that sounds promising.”

Carina hesitated. “I need to tell you something.”

Arizona straightened a little. “Okay.”

Carina looked down at her lap. “Three years ago… Maya and I met in New York. It was brief - just one night. But it wasn’t nothing.”

Arizona’s face didn’t shift much, but something behind her eyes sharpened. “I see.”

“I didn’t tell you because...I thought it didn’t matter. I thought I’d left it behind.”

“And now?”

Carina’s voice dropped. “Now she’s here. And it’s like everything that I had buried came back the second I saw her on that table.”

Arizona nodded slowly. “What are you saying then? That you’re in love with her?”

“No,” Carina said immediately. “But I almost kissed her last night. I didn’t.”

Silence stretched across the connection.

Carina swallowed hard. “I’m telling you because I don’t want there to be lies between us.”

Arizona’s voice was steady, but quiet. “Thank you for telling me.”

“I’m coming back tomorrow. I’ll be in Amsterdam by morning. This… I just wanted to make sure she was okay.”

“But it’s more than that.”

Carina closed her eyes. “I thought it wasn’t. But I was wrong.”

Another long pause.

Arizona exhaled. “I’m not mad, Carina. But I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t… worried.”

“About?”

“About whether your heart is still with me. Or if it ever really left her.”

Carina’s hand tightened around the coffee cup. “I love you. I choose you.”

“But you’re not the one lying awake wondering why someone else’s name was the first thing you said on that video call from Gaza.”

Carina didn’t answer.

Arizona’s voice softened. “Come back. We’ll talk through it. We always do.”

“I will,” Carina said. “I just… needed to tell you first.”

Arizona nodded. “Okay. I’ll see you soon.”

The screen went dark.

And Carina sat there for a long time, still turning the ring around her neck, trying to remember what certainty used to feel like.

—

Inside the Hospital Room

Maya knew the moment Carina walked back in that something had shifted.

She didn’t need to ask. Carina’s expression was too controlled, her movements just a little too careful. Like a boundary had been redrawn in her absence.

Maya was sitting up in bed with her leg still elevated, flipping through an outdated copy of Foreign Affairs that some kind nurse had left behind.

“You were gone for a while,” she said without looking up.

“I needed air,” Carina replied softly.

Maya set the magazine aside. “And?”

“I called Arizona.”

Maya’s throat tightened, but she didn’t flinch. “I figured.”

Carina crossed to the bed and sat down in the chair that she’d occupied for the past six days. Her hands folded in her lap. Neat. Precise. Guarded.

“I told her everything,” Carina said. “About New York. About what happened three years ago. About what’s happened here.”

Maya’s eyebrows rose faintly. “That must’ve gone over well.”

“She was calm. But she’s… hurt and confused.”

“I’m not surprised.”

Carina looked up. “I’m flying back tomorrow.”

Maya nodded slowly. “Right.”

“I need to go back to her.”

“Okay.”

“It doesn’t mean that I don’t care about you.”

“But it means you choose her,” Maya said, her voice hollow but even.

Carina’s eyes glistened, but she didn’t deny it.

“I have a life with her, Maya. A future. I can’t just throw it away like it never happened.”

“No one’s asking you to.”

Carina exhaled. “I’m asking myself.”

Maya leaned her head back against the pillow, her jaw tight.

“I wanted to stay,” Carina said after a moment. “I wanted to crawl into this room and never leave.”

“But you can’t.”

“No.”

Maya let that settle between them. “Then let’s not make this harder than it already is.”

Carina looked down. “I’m sorry.”

Maya smiled faintly, bitter. “Don’t be. You saved my life. You held my hand in the dark and told me I wasn’t going to die. That’s more than anyone’s ever done for me in a long time.”

Carina blinked fast.

“You’ve done enough,” Maya said, quieter now. “You can go.”

They sat there, neither of them moving. The hospital monitor beeped steadily in the background. A machine hummed softly by the bed. Somewhere down the hall, a patient coughed.

Then Carina pulled a pen from her coat pocket and reached for a slip of paper from the nightstand.

She scribbled something, slow with deliberate strokes. Then folded it neatly and set it down on the edge of the tray table.

“My number and email. In case you ever want to…”

Maya didn’t touch it. Didn’t look at it.

Carina stood. Her hand hovered for a second, like she might reach out, but then she dropped it back to her side.

“Take care of yourself, Maya.”

Maya didn’t answer.

Carina lingered in the doorway just a moment too long before stepping out into the hallway and disappeared.

—

Later That Night

Maya sat alone in the dim hospital room. The paper still sat untouched where Carina had left it.

She stared at it for a long time.

She thought about New York.

About waking up alone in a bed that had felt like hope for half a second.

She thought about Gaza. About the moment she opened her eyes and saw Carina’s face again, haloed in urgency and light.

And she thought about Tel Aviv. The conversations. The silence. The goodbye.

Maya reached out and took the paper.

Read the number once.

Then again.

And again.

She held it between her fingers for a long moment, then tore it clean down the middle and tossed it into the trash beside the bed.

But as she lay back, eyes closed against the burn of unshed tears, she whispered the number to herself under her breath.

Once. Twice. A third time.

She’d already memorized it by heart.

Chapter 5: The Fault Line

One Year Later

New York

There were scars Maya could see - raised and pink down the length of her thigh, thinner ones across her shoulder and wrist - and then there were the ones that no mirror could show her. The ones that had nothing to do with shrapnel or war zones or near-death.

The ones named Carina.

It had been twelve months since the explosion. Twelve months since the hospital in Tel Aviv. Since the note. Since the number she never called but still knew by heart.

Maya Bishop had always believed in momentum: forward, always forward. But the recovery process had slowed her to a crawl. Months of physical therapy, endless follow-up scans, awkward showers, and quiet breakdowns. Andy Herrera, her oldest friend, had taken her in when the walls of her apartment started closing in. There were takeout nights, walks with a limp around Central Park, and uncomfortable blind dates with charming women who talked too much and listened too little.

She tried. She really did.

But nothing stuck because nothing fit .

“I think I’m broken,” she had admitted to Andy once, half-drunk, half-joking.

Andy had rolled her eyes. “You’re not broken. You’re bruised. There’s a difference.”

But Maya had stopped letting people in the way she used to. She buried herself in freelance projects - photo essays on domestic abuse shelters, immigrant youth programs, flood recovery efforts - anything she can get her hands on. Her work had changed. Sharper. Less detached. She used to document stories; now she inhabited them.

And lately, she’d stopped saying no to the more dangerous assignments.

When the offer came through - Congo, six weeks, embedded in a refugee camp on the edge of a growing civil conflict - she didn’t hesitate.

She booked her flight the next day.

—

Washington, D.C.

Carina stirred a pot of sauce on the stovetop, listening to Arizona hum quietly in the next room while folding laundry. A playlist drifted through the apartment - Billie Holiday, soft and sentimental.

The apartment was beautiful. Hardwood floors, sunlight pooling on every surface, bookshelves built into the walls. It was the kind of place where people built a life.

They had moved in together six months ago, after months of careful conversations and quiet reassurances.

Yes, I’m committed.
Yes, I want this.
Yes, I’ve let it go.

And mostly, Carina had believed it.

Except for the moments she didn’t.

Planning the wedding had helped. Victoria Hughes, a close friend and an editor of a popular online news website, had flown in for the engagement party. There were brunches, Pinterest boards, and cake tastings. Carina had said the right things, smiled at the right moments. Arizona was happy. Arizona was steady. Arizona was everything she was suppose to want.

But sometimes, late at night, Carina would wake to the sound of rain against the windows and remember a New York night that smelled like bourbon and snow and ash. A narrow bed. A laugh that felt like relief. Hands that held her like she was the only thing anchoring someone to earth.

And she would hate herself a little for still remembering.

She had gone a year without contact. She never Googled Maya’s name, never asked Victoria to dig. She didn’t have to. Maya Bishop’s photos kept showing up, raw and unfiltered, sometimes gracing the front page of The Times or buried deep in independent photojournalism exposés.

She looked harder. Risked more. Pushed limits. Her name appeared more and more beside conflict zones.

Carina pretended not to notice.

—

New York–>Addis Ababa–>Kinshasa–>Eastern Congo

Maya didn’t sleep on planes anymore.

Something about being in the air - neither here nor there - always left her restless. She watched the flickering flight map instead, one leg bouncing restlessly under her seat.

By the time she landed in the Congo, it was late afternoon. The humidity hit her like a slap, thick and clinging. Aid trucks lined the dirt road, and UN flags flapping from makeshift posts. Her contact met her outside the logistics tent, a tired man named Hamza who barely glanced at her credentials before pointing toward the transport truck.

“We’re short-staffed,” he said. “You’ll meet the medical team when we get there.”

“Do I need to prep for any red zones?”

He gave a grim smile. “You’ll know them when you see them.”

—

Refugee Camp – 48 Hours Later

Dust caked her boots. Sweat ran in rivulets down her back. Maya hadn’t showered in three days. Her camera lens was already scratched. Her notes were soaked with blood and rainwater.

It was perfect.

She moved like a shadow between tents - snapping moments, logging names, talking to aid workers, listening to mothers tell stories of lost husbands and teenagers who still screamed in their sleep.

Then, in the chaos of triage one afternoon, she caught a familiar voice.

Italian-accented. Calm and clipped. Giving orders with quiet authority.

Maya froze. She turned slowly.

And there - across the makeshift ER tent, her curls tied back, sleeves rolled up, hands steady as ever - was Carina DeLuca.

Next to her, bent over a surgical tray, equally focused, was Arizona Robbins.

Maya’s heart slammed into her ribs. The world narrowed, then exploded outward in noise and motion.

She backed up and stumbling slightly over a loose water canister, catching herself just in time.

Carina didn’t see her - too absorbed in the moment. But Maya saw everything.

The quiet coordination between them. The efficiency. The way they didn’t have to speak to understand each other.

She turned and walked away before she was seen.

—

Later That Night

She was rinsing her face at a pump near the outer edge of the compound when she heard footsteps behind her.

She didn’t turn.

“You weren’t going to say anything?” Carina’s voice - low and breathless - cut through the night.

Maya straightened, blinking water from her lashes. “Didn’t want to make things awkward.”

Carina stepped closer. “Too late for that.”

Maya finally turned to look at her.

She looked the same. But different as well. Her features were sharper somehow. Or maybe Maya just remembered them softer. Her sleeves were rolled up, sweat along her temple, but her eyes - God, her eyes still wrecked her.

“What are you doing here?” Carina asked.

“Assignment,” Maya said simply. “What about you?”

“We were rotated here a week ago. Emergency coverage. Arizona’s running the surgical unit.”

Maya didn’t flinch at her name. Not this time.

“Small world,” Maya muttered, her voice dry.

Carina’s expression twisted. “I had no idea. I wouldn’t have...”

“I know,” Maya interrupted.

They stood in silence for a beat, dust swirling around their ankles.

Finally, Carina said softly, “You look different.”

“Yeah,” Maya replied, brushing hair back from her damp forehead. “Getting blown up’ll do that to you.”

“Maya…”

“I’m fine,” she lied.

Carina took a step closer. “Are you?”

“No,” Maya admitted. “But I’m used to it now.”

Another silence.

“I’ve seen your photos,” Carina said. “You’re not just covering war anymore. You’re living in it.”

Maya looked away. “It’s easier than feeling anything else.”

Carina flinched, just a little.

And still - still - there was that space between them. Charged. Fragile. Unspoken.

Finally, Maya said, “You should go. Arizona might wonder.”

Carina’s eyes softened with something like grief. “Right.”

She turned.

Paused.

Then, over her shoulder: “We’re here for another two weeks. Maybe less.”

Maya didn’t respond.

Didn’t have to.

The line had been drawn.

And already, both of them were inching toward it.

Chapter 6: What We Don’t Say

Refugee Camp, Congo

The camp moved like a living organism — never truly asleep, only shifting through degrees of urgency.

Days blurred together in heat, dust, and exhaustion. Every hour brought more injuries, more patients, more needs than supplies. Maya had stopped keeping count. She recorded everything — from the overloaded intake tent to the wails of mothers with feverish children, to the quiet, stunning moments of resilience: a child sharing a biscuit, a teenager translating between doctors and villagers with practiced calm.

Her camera captured it all.

So did Carina’s eyes.

They barely spoke. A nod from a distance. A brush of shoulders when passing through triage. But proximity was its own language.

Maya had been assigned to shadow the camp’s medical response unit, which meant Carina… and Arizona.

Arizona had been cordial. Professional. Too professional. She spoke to Maya in clipped sentences with polite detachment wrapped around her like a second coat. Maya respected it because she would’ve done the same. But she couldn’t help noticing the way Arizona occasionally watched them—her and Carina—as if waiting for a line to be crossed.

Maybe she was right to.

Because Maya felt it too: the magnetic pull, the tension strung tight enough to hum. Every time she and Carina shared space, it coiled tighter. The glances that lingered. The silences that stretched. The memories neither of them named.

And it was killing her.

—

Day Ten

“You should eat something.”

Carina’s voice was quiet, almost scolding, as she handed Maya a protein bar. They were sitting under the only patch of shade outside the medical tent, the sun an unforgiving weight overhead.

“I’m good,” Maya replied, not looking up from her notebook.

“You’re shaking.”

“It’s just hot.”

Carina knelt beside her. “Your hands are trembling.”

Maya exhaled. “So are yours.”

Their eyes met.

Carina didn’t deny it. “Everyone’s burning out. We’re trying to hold back a flood with paper cups.”

“Welcome to my world,” Maya said dryly.

“You haven’t slept,” Carina added.

“I could say the same about you.”

Carina hesitated, then sat down fully beside her, knees tucked in, hand resting close but not touching. “This is the first time in a year that I’ve felt something close to what we do best.”

“Survive?”

Carina’s gaze dropped. “Help.”

That silenced them both.

Maya finally bit into the protein bar and said, “Thanks.”

They didn’t move for a while.

Until Arizona’s voice called from across the courtyard: “Carina?”

Carina turned her head toward the sound, and for the briefest moment, Maya saw it — a flicker of guilt. Or hesitation. Something that didn’t belong in a woman planning her wedding.

Then Carina stood.

“We’ll talk later,” she said softly, and walked away.

Maya wasn’t sure whether that was a promise or a warning.

—

Night Twelve

The generator had failed again.

Which meant half the camp was running off flashlights and string lights strung from the logistics tent. Patients moaned in the dark. Volunteers moved in shadows. And Maya wandered like a ghost with a camera, capturing the dim silhouettes of doctors working by candlelight.

She found Carina behind the admin tent, sitting on a crate, legs stretched out in front of her, eyes closed.

“I thought you’d be asleep,” Maya said.

Carina opened her eyes slowly. “I can’t. Too quiet.”

Maya leaned against the tent post beside her. “Funny. I usually can’t sleep when it’s loud.”

They both smiled faintly. Then quiet again.

“You never called.” Carina asked after a long pause, not looking at her.

“I know.”

Carina let that hang in the air for a moment, then said, “I thought maybe you would. One day.”

Maya gave a dry laugh. “And say what? Admit to you that I fell in love with a woman I spent one night with? That I couldn’t forget someone who ghosted me in my own bed?”

Carina looked up at her sharply. “You were in love with me?”

Maya flinched. “Don’t act surprised.”

“I’m not,” Carina said, her voice tight. “I just… didn’t let myself think you were.”

Maya didn’t answer.

Carina looked down. “I told Arizona I didn’t love you anymore.”

Maya’s breath caught. “And was that the truth?”

Carina’s hands twisted in her lap. “I don’t know how to answer that.”

“Yes, you do.”

A silence fell between them, heavy and intimate.

Carina stood, slowly, closing the distance between them until they were only inches apart. The night buzzed with insects and distant coughing, but neither of them heard it.

“You were the most terrifying thing I ever felt,” Carina whispered. “And I’ve held the dying. I’ve stitched wounds with no anesthesia. But you… you made me feel like if I let myself go, I’d never come back.”

Maya didn’t breathe.

“I’ve built a life with Arizona. A safe one. Steady. Good.”

“I’m not asking you to stop.”

Carina’s eyes searched hers. “Then what are you asking?”

Maya stepped back.

“I’m not asking anything,” she said, voice raw. “I stopped asking a long time ago.”

Carina’s face crumpled just slightly. Then she nodded.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.

“Yeah,” Maya said, stepping back into the dark. “Me too.”

Chapter 7: The Tipping Point

Refugee Camp, Day Thirteen

It happened just before dusk.

The heat hadn’t yet broken, and the camp was louder than usual - UN convoys pulling out for the night, generators sputtering, and children chasing one another barefoot through the hard-packed dirt.

Maya had her camera in hand, leaning against a post by the supply tent, watching the chaos like she always did - half inside, half outside. Documenting. Assessing. Calculating risk.

She heard the shout before she saw the guns.

Three men, masked and frantic, slipped through a hole in the outer fencing and made a beeline for the clinic. One fired a warning shot into the air.

Panic detonated instantly. Patients scattered. Children screamed. Aid workers hit the ground.

And then - Carina.

She had just stepped out of the triage tent with a clipboard in hand, her mouth open in confusion at the noise.

One of the men turned toward her with his gun raised.

Maya didn’t think. She ran.

“CARINA - DOWN!”

Carina froze.

Maya barreled into her, knocking them both to the ground. Dirt in their mouths. The sharp edge of Maya’s camera digging into her ribs. Carina's breath ripped from her lungs.

But the man was already on them - yelling and waving the weapon.

He grabbed for Carina.

Maya shoved her behind her. “Take me,” she said, voice hard and certain. “I’m the American journalist.”

The man paused.

Maya stepped forward slowly with her hands up. “Take me.”

Gun in her ribs. A shout in a dialect she didn’t understand.

Then — rough hands, plastic cuffs, black cloth over her head.

Carina screamed.

“MAYA!”

Then - nothing.

—

Three Hours Later

Carina sat on a cot in the med tent, hands bloodied, knees bouncing uncontrollably.

Arizona stood in front of her, arms crossed tightly, speaking low into a satellite phone with the local UN command. Her face was tight, jaw clenched, and eyes steely.

“They’re negotiating,” she said after a moment. “The UN team says this wasn’t a coordinated attack. Probably rogue militia that wanted media leverage.”

Carina didn’t respond. Her hands wouldn’t stop shaking.

“They’ll bring her back, Carina.”

“You don’t know that.”

Carina looked down at her hands - dirt under her nails, blood at her collar. “She said take me. Just like that. No hesitation.”

“She’s a war journalist, Carina. She’s been through this before.”

Carina’s voice cracked. “That doesn’t mean she’ll survive it again.”

Arizona reached for her hands, but Carina pulled away.

“She could be hurt. Or dead. Or alone and terrified and...”

“Carina,” Arizona said gently. “You’re spiraling.”

“I watched them take her.”

Arizona nodded. “And I’m here. I’m not going anywhere.”

Carina turned toward her, eyes shining with tears she hadn’t allowed to fall. “You don’t understand.”

Arizona’s expression faltered. “Then help me. Make me understand.”

But Carina said nothing.

She just stood up and walked out into the night.

—

Elsewhere – Unknown Location

Maya’s wrists throbbed. Her mouth was dry and her head spun from the heat with lack of water.

The room was concrete and sparse, with one barred window high above her head. There was no sound outside except crickets and distant engines.

She’d been blindfolded for most of the ride - tossed into the back of a pickup, driven over miles of rutted road. She hadn’t fought. That part came later.

Now she lay still on the floor, counting heartbeats, waiting.

When the door creaked open, she flinched instinctively.

One of the men stepped inside - no mask this time. Mid-twenties, scarred with eyes too old. He set down a canteen, stared at her for a moment, then left.

Water. Probably not poisoned. Possibly drugged.

She drank it anyway.

She could survive this.

She had survived worse.

But the look on Carina’s face - that would haunt her.

—

Refugee Camp – Next Morning

Carina hadn’t slept. Arizona barely had either.

The UN had located the possible holding zone based on GPS data from a stolen aid truck. But without confirmation, they wouldn’t act. Not yet.

So they waited.

And Carina unraveled.

She scrubbed equipment until her hands bled. She yelled at a nurse for mislabeling meds. She snapped at Arizona. Then apologized. Then snapped again.

Arizona finally pulled her aside.

“You’re not okay,” she said.

“I know I’m not okay.”

“You’re not in this alone, Carina.”

“But I feel alone.”

Arizona stepped back like she’d been slapped. “What does that mean?”

Carina looked at her helplessly. “I don’t know. I just - I keep thinking, what if that was our last moment together? What if I never see her again?”

Arizona swallowed hard. “You love me. Don’t you?”

“I do,” Carina whispered. “I do. But I also...”

“Still love her. ”

Silence.

Then Carina collapsed into a chair and wept.

Arizona didn’t touch her. Not this time.

—

The Next Day – UN Recovery Operation

At 0700 hours, they found her.

The UN task force stormed the compound. A short exchange of fire. One wounded soldier. Two captors dead. And Maya - limping, bruised, dehydrated, but alive.

She didn’t say anything at first, just blinked into the daylight like she didn’t trust it.

Then: “Is Carina okay?”

The medic beside her nodded.

Maya passed out in relief.

—

Refugee Camp, Twelve Hours Later

Carina didn’t wait for permission. She rushed into the recovery tent the moment the guards brought her in.

Maya lay in a cot, IV hooked to her wrist, head turned toward the door. Eyes wide the second they met Carina’s.

Neither of them moved for a beat.

Then Carina crossed the room in three strides and fell to her knees beside the bed, grabbing Maya’s hand.

“I thought...” her voice cracked. “I thought I’d never see you again.”

Maya stared at her, her voice hoarse. “I couldn’t let them take you.”

Carina leaned in, forehead to Maya’s knuckles. “You stupid, stupid woman.”

“Still not sorry.”

They both laughed - broken, cracked, and exhausted.

Carina looked up at her, tears in her lashes. “I don’t know what to do with this. With you. ”

Maya’s voice was barely audible. “Just don’t disappear again.”

Carina kissed her knuckles once. “I’m still engaged.”

“I know.”

Carina looked at her for a long time. “But I don’t know if I should be.”

Chapter 8: Aftermath

Refugee Camp, Day Eighteen

The silence after gunfire always rang the loudest.

No one said it out loud, but everything had changed since the incursion. Conversations were shorter. Footsteps quicker. A shadow had fallen over the camp like dust over old wreckage.

For Carina, it was more than tension. It was grief, guilt, and something terrifyingly close to revelation.

She hadn’t left Maya’s side for nearly two days. She sat beside her cot, cleaned her wounds, whispered reassurances that Maya didn’t believe, and stared far too long at the face that haunted her dreams for over three years.

Maya had been back for 36 hours.

And Carina was coming undone.

—

Flashback: The Night Before

Carina had walked out of the recovery tent the moment Maya fell asleep. Her heart thudded in her ears. The adrenaline hadn’t left her system. It hadn’t since the moment Maya had pushed her behind and told the gunman, “Take me.”

She’d obeyed. She ran. And that obedience felt like betrayal ever since.

She needed air. Anything to give her clarity.

Instead, she found Arizona outside the supply station, backlit by the moon.

“I figured I’d find you here,” Arizona said gently.

Carina stopped walking. “I—needed a minute.”

“You’ve been gone for hours.”

“I was staying with her.”

Arizona said nothing at first.

Then: “Do you still love her?”

The question wasn’t harsh. It wasn’t even wounded. It was surgical—sharp, clean, cutting through the noise.

Carina exhaled slowly, then sat down on a crate. Her voice cracked. “I don’t know.”

Arizona raised an eyebrow. “Carina.”

“I don’t know how to name it. It’s not just love. It’s like…” she trailed off. “Like she’s a scar I keep touching to see if it still hurts.”

Arizona leaned against the post, watching her. “Does it?”

Carina closed her eyes. “Yes.”

Arizona was quiet for a while. “You told me once that Maya was just a night you couldn’t forget.”

Carina didn’t speak.

Arizona crossed her arms. “I guess she’s more than that.”

“She is.”

“Then why did you say yes to me?”

“Because you were safety and stability, and I wanted to build something calm.”

“And now?”

Carina’s hands curled into fists. “Now I’m scared that I said yes because I was too afraid to want something chaotic. Something uncertain.”

Arizona nodded once. “Thanks for being honest.”

“I didn’t plan to fall back in love with her.”

“But you did.”

Carina met her eyes. “Yes.”

Arizona stepped closer. “Then I don’t want you to marry me.”

That broke something open. “Arizona, I’m…”

“Don’t say you’re sorry. We gave it our best. But I won’t hold you hostage to a future when your heart’s not in it.”

“I still love you, but…”

“I know,” Arizona said softly. “But not the way you love her. Not the way she haunts your silences.”

They both stood there for a long time, their love unraveling not in screams, but in gentleness.

Arizona brushed Carina’s arm. “Go be with her. Figure it out. But don’t come back halfway.”

—

Present – Recovery Tent

Maya woke to pain.

The dull, aching kind. Her ribs throbbed, and her mouth tasted like iron. Her head pounded like it had been cracked open and barely glued back together.

But it was the absence of Carina that hurt most.

She sat up, wincing, and looked toward the tent flap just as it rustled.

Carina stepped inside.

“You always walk back in right when I think you’re gone,” Maya rasped.

“Old habits,” Carina said, sitting beside her.

“You okay?”

Carina blinked at her. “ You almost died, and you're asking me that?”

“But I didn’t.” Maya shrugged—carefully. “I saw you were about to be taken. What was I supposed to do?”

Carina looked down. “Let someone else be the hero.”

“I couldn’t.”

They sat in silence, the weight of everything they hadn’t said hanging thick in the humid air.

Carina spoke first. “Arizona’s leaving in the morning.”

Maya stiffened.

“I told her the truth,” Carina added.

“All of it?”

Carina nodded. “Even the parts that made me look weak.”

Maya stared at her. “You’re not weak. You never were. You were just scared.”

“I’m still scared.”

Maya reached for her hand. “Me too.”

Their fingers brushed, hesitant, like strangers reacquainting.

Carina broke the quiet. “I don’t know what this means.”

“It doesn’t have to mean anything right now.”

“But it does. You—you still make me feel like I can’t breathe.”

“Good or bad?”

“Both.”

They leaned in closer, neither fully closing the space. Then Maya whispered, “Tell me you didn’t forget me.”

Carina’s eyes brimmed. “I tried. So many times.”

“I tried to forget you too.”

They sat in stillness. No promises. Just breath, shared again at last.

—

Later That Night – Arizona’s Tent

Arizona packed her bag slowly. Carefully.

Not because she was unsure, but because leaving was still a form of grief. She tucked her clothes around her stethoscope. Folded a sweater she’d once borrowed from Carina. Then paused, phone in hand, and stared at the photo on the home screen: the two of them laughing in Washington, sun in their hair.

She tapped out a message and hit send.

You didn’t fail me. You just found someone you never stopped looking for.
Take care of her. And take care of yourself.

Then she zipped the bag, straightened her spine, and stepped into the dark.

—

Maya’s Tent

Carina returned, this time holding a folded piece of paper.

“What’s that?” Maya asked, groggy from the pain meds.

“My number. Email. My mother’s address in Florence. Everything.”

Maya took it. Then, after a beat, tore it in half.

Carina froze.

“I memorized it already,” Maya said with a smirk. “Didn’t want to risk forgetting again.”

Carina exhaled. “You’re impossible.”

“You’re here.”

They didn’t say goodnight.

But when Carina curled into the chair beside her cot, watching Maya drift off to sleep, it felt more like a beginning than anything they’d dared call love before.

Chapter 9: All the Places We Tried to Leave Ourselves

Three Months Later
Maya – South Sudan border region

The sun was a brutal god here.

It glared down without mercy, bleaching the sky until even the birds went silent in the heat. Dust clung to Maya’s boots and her camera lens alike. Every breath she took was filled with grit, and every story she chased left new scars behind her eyes.

She had thought she was immune by now. That after being kidnapped—after the camp, after Carina —her nerves would have learned to flinch less. But the truth was: she flinched all the time now.

Every sudden bang of a closing door. Every child who cried too loudly in the distance. Every night when she checked her messages and found silence instead of Carina’s name.

But then a notification would buzz, and her breath would stutter, and there it was:

1 new audio message from Carina DeLuca.
Length: 00:45

Maya closed her eyes and hit play.

Ciao, amore.
It’s raining here. Not the dangerous kind—just slow, sleepy rain that taps the roof like a lullaby. Mamma made lemon risotto, and Andrea made that face he always makes when someone says “vegan” like it’s a disgrace.
I miss you. I miss the way you mumble when you’re tired and how you always pretend you’re not cold even when your teeth are chattering. I’m trying not to say “come home” every time I leave you a message. I promised you I wouldn’t do that.
(Pause)
But I want to. I really, really want to.

Maya leaned back against the tent wall, heart aching.

She hadn’t told Carina about the shelling two nights ago. About how the convoy she was embedded with was stopped and searched by armed rebels, and how she had shoved her memory cards down the back of her pants and prayed they wouldn’t pat her down too thoroughly.

She hadn’t told her that she saw someone die at the camp gate that morning.

Instead, she wrote back:

There’s a boy here who keeps sneaking cookies from the medical tent. I caught him yesterday and he gave me this huge, shit-eating grin like he knew I’d let him get away with it. I did.
You’d like him. His laugh sounds like wind chimes.
(Pause)
I think about you when I try to fall asleep. Not just in a sexy way, but like… the sound of your voice helps me breathe. That’s messed up, right? That I can’t inhale without you anymore?

She didn’t send that one right away. But she did eventually.

---

Carina – Florence, Italy

Italy was quieter than she remembered. Or maybe she had forgotten how to listen.

Her mother had aged. Andrea had softened. The air here didn’t buzz with tension like the places she’d been, and Carina found herself startled by how uncomfortable stillness could be.

She wandered the vineyard trails in the morning, phone in hand, sometimes recording messages for Maya, sometimes just listening to the ones she'd already replayed a dozen times.

She hadn’t told Maya she wasn’t going back to the field.

Not yet.

She’d canceled her assignment to Syria two weeks ago. Told MSF she needed a sabbatical, needed to “re-center.” What she meant was, I need to know who I am when I’m not saving someone in a tent.

And more than that—she needed to know who she was when she wasn’t trying to outrun the ghost of Maya Bishop.

Except now Maya wasn’t a ghost anymore. She was flesh and voice and that look she’d given Carina across the firelight in Congo like she still held the stars behind her eyes.

Carina typed an email.

---

Subject: Maybe this is love

I think I understand now why I left you that first morning.
It was too much. You were too much. You walked into my life like a war zone and I didn’t know how to be anything except a medic in the wreckage. But now I want to be more than that.
I don’t want to love you in the breaks between battles. I want to love you while we’re brushing our teeth, and arguing over what to eat, and laughing because we both suck at folding laundry. I want to love you when we’re boring. I want us to be boring, Maya.
Tell me if you want that too.

She hit send.

And waited.

---

Maya – South Sudan

When the email came in, Maya was crouched beside a collapsed hut, shooting photos of a young girl helping her younger brother build a crude toy out of plastic scraps.

Her phone buzzed. She checked her inbox.

And something inside her cracked open.

She read the email five times. Then six. Then a seventh time aloud, whispering the words like a prayer.

That night, she sent a voice note.

You once told me you were scared of needing someone. But I’m terrified of not needing you. Of waking up one day and not remembering what your voice sounds like.
Yes, I want that life. Yes to boring. Yes to laundry and pasta and being selfish with you. Come back to New York.
Come home to me.

---

Carina – Florence

The next morning, Carina packed her bags.

She told her mother she was going back to New York. That she wasn’t chasing the next trauma anymore. That she was building something with someone she couldn’t forget, and didn’t want to.

Her mother kissed her forehead and said, “Finally.”

Andrea drove her to the airport in silence. Halfway there, he said, “She must be something special.”

Carina smiled. “She is.”

---

Present – New York City

Maya’s apartment hadn’t changed much.

The flak jacket still hung on the chair. The war maps still cluttered the wall. The scent of stale bourbon lingered in the corners.

But the bed was made. The plants had survived. And Carina was here.

Maya walked in from the kitchen, hair damp from the shower, and stopped in the doorway like she still couldn’t believe it was real.

“You're here,” she said.

Carina dropped her bag and crossed the room in three strides. Their kiss wasn’t frantic—it was familiar. Solid. A promise sealed with breath.

When they pulled apart, Maya touched her cheek. “Are you sure?”

“No more borders,” Carina whispered. “No more disappearing. I’m here.”

“I don’t need you to give it all up.”

“I’m not giving anything up,” Carina said. “I’m choosing this. Choosing you. ”

Maya blinked hard, voice hoarse. “I’m done too. I sent my last dispatch. I’m not going back out.”

Carina smiled. “So what now?”

“We live,” Maya said. “Finally.”