Tess checked his pulse twice before speaking.
Once to make sure he was alive.
Once to make sure she still cared.
Milo had slept for ten hours straight. No murmurs. No fever. No signs of infection.
Just silence and breath.
But Tess didn't sleep at all.
She counted each rise of his chest, tracked every twitch of his fingers, watched the way his jaw clenched in dreams.
She knew the signs of turning.
And worse—
She knew the signs of lying.
When he stirred, the morning light barely cut through the hotel window.
"Hey," he rasped.
Tess sat on the edge of the bedroll, two fingers on his neck.
"Pulse is steady," she said.
Milo blinked. "You… checking on ?"
"No," she said flatly. "I'm checking on . To see if I can still sit next to soone who broke my trust."
The warmth in the room vanished.
Milo sat up slowly, the bandage still wrapped under his shirt.
"I thought I was protecting you."
"No," Tess replied. "You were protecting yourself from how I might react."
He sighed.
She wasn't wrong.
"Do you want to leave?" he asked.
Tess didn't answer right away.
Instead, she reached into her coat pocket and pulled out an old d-scanner—battery half-dead, screen cracked, but functional.
"Arm."
He hesitated.
"Tess—"
"Now."
He rolled up his sleeve.
She held the scanner to the skin above the wound.
It beeped twice.
Negative.
No infection. No viral activity. No trace of decay.
She handed the scanner back to him.
"There," she said. "That's your clean bill. But not your forgiveness."
He nodded, quiet.
Then asked, "Do you still trust ?"
She looked at him long and hard.
"I don't know. But I still check your pulse."
They spent the morning in quiet routine. Boiling water. Cleaning gear. Watching the streets below.
It wasn't love.
It wasn't hatred.
It was sothing heavier than both: uncertainty.
Before packing, Milo did sothing unexpected.
He pulled a marker from his bag and wrote three numbers on his wrist:
82 / 64 / 72
Tess raised a brow.
"My pulse. My pressure. My heartbeat," he said. "If it ever changes, I want you to know the baseline."
She didn't respond.
But she didn't erase it either.
Later, they walked through the ruins of the old train depot.
He stumbled over a rail, and she instinctively reached for him.
Their hands brushed.
Just enough to an sothing.
Not enough to say it out loud.
Because sotis, healing doesn't start with apologies.
It starts with data.
With proof.
With a pulse you can count, even when you can't count on anything else.
Love after betrayal isn't about nding the heart—
It's about listening to it beat,
and deciding whether it's still in rhythm with your own.
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