Betrayed On My Wedding Eve Chapter 25

Betrayed On My Wedding Eve Chapter 25

We were together.

But the work kept us moving. In the DR Congo, our time in the same place was rare. Mostly we crossed paths at the sites of outbreaks, running in opposite directions: him toward the wounded, me toward whatever needed to be recorded.

A brush of hands when we passed.

That was sometimes all we had.

The signal in North Kivu came and went. Days could pass with nothing. Then messages would pile in all at once, out of order, time-stamps scrambled.

As if they’d fought through the gunfire to reach us.

Heavy with missing each other. Stubborn. Arriving anyway.

But North Kivu kept getting worse.

Our first real fight was the day a village nearby was attacked.

We raced to the scene while armed fighters were still there. Security forces engaged them. We scrambled back to the vehicles. But Julian jumped back out of the ambulance.

A villager had gone down at the edge of the firefight.

He carried the man back. Came back bleeding from shrapnel.

I was furious and terrified and I let him have it.

He didn’t back down.

“I’m a doctor. I can’t leave someone to die. He was shot in the leg. Survivable. Without me, not a chance.”

I knew he was right. I knew.

But when he came back, I couldn’t tell whose blood was whose.

I shook through checking every inch of him. Only surface wounds.

And then I stopped fighting and just held him, sobbing.

“Julian. I can’t lose anyone else. If something happens to you. What do I do?”

He went quiet.

After a moment, he wrapped his arms around me. His voice rough.

“I’m sorry. I’ll be more careful. I won’t put myself in situations like that again.”

“Promise me!”

“Let’s pinky swear.”

He held out his hand.

“Pinky promise, sworn for life, can’t take it back, no exceptions.”

“I can’t break it. Can you imagine meeting your mom and having to explain I turned into a dog?”

I laughed through the tears and hit him with a pillow.

He went completely still under it.

I ripped it off, panicked I’d smothered him.

He was looking at me, perfectly fine. Eyes saying: See? Not that easy to kill me.

I glared until my eyes ached, and went watery all over again.

Everything settled, heavy and quiet.

We both knew.

A pinky promise was just a comfort. This was a war zone.

For the first time I understood in my bones: every day with Julian was precious. Because no one could say whether death or tomorrow would come first.