Goodbye Butterfly – Calia Quinn

“Twenty Six days and I have to go back to hell. And now I get to count down every single one knowing you’re running toward the fucking fire.” She opens her mouth. I stop her with one word: “Don’t.” I’m shaking. Unraveling. I’ve never felt this much and wanted it gone so bad because if I love her —I lose her. That’s what war is. It takes everything soft and makes it bleed. “I’m not scared of war,” she says softly. I flinch. Not because of the words because of the conviction in them.

She doesn’t understand. She doesn’t fucking get it. “Then you’ve never seen it.” I turn back around, but it’s not anger now. It’s not even grief. It’s terror. “I’m not scared of dying, Dax,” she says. I walk toward her. Slowly. Like I’m walking through a graveyard of my own choices.

“I’m not scared of dying either,” I whisper. “But I’m fucking terrified of losing you.” Her eyes water, and she looks away, but I grip her chin gently and force her to look at me. “You think I can watch you walk into that and just breathe through it?” She’s trembling. So am I. “I can’t even sleep without hearing the sound of bones snapping.

I can’t take a hot shower without smelling burning flesh. You want that?” I whisper. “You think your fucking heart can survive that?” “Then why do you get to go?” Her voice cracks. “Because I’m already dead,” I rasp. Her mouth parts. I step closer. “Every part of me that mattered died the first time I held a dying boy’s hand and told him I’d get him home.” I reach up, press my hand to her chest.

“This?” I whisper. “This still beats. This still feels. You think it’s fair to offer that up to a war that’ll chew you up and spit you back in pieces?” Her eyes close, and I feel her breathing stagger under my palm. “I didn’t ask for this,” I murmur. “I didn’t ask for you to come into my life and start fixing things I didn’t know were broken. I didn’t ask to feel again.” “But you did,” she whispers. “You felt me.” I nod.

Once. Twice. Then I drop to my knees in front of her like she’s my altar and I’m the fucking sinner begging for grace. “I feel you in my fucking bones, butterfly.” Her hands cradle my face. I let her. For a second. Just a second because the next words cut me wide open. “I’m going anyway,” she whispers. “Because if I can stop even one man from dying alone, I’ll never regret it.” Tears hit my cheeks. Not mine.

Hers but she doesn’t let go of me.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. Cover design: [Dawn Art] Trigger Warnings: This novel contains themes of trauma, PTSD, grief, emotional intensity, and dark romance elements intended for mature readers.

Reader discretion is advised. For more information, visit: www.caliaquinnauthor.com or follow on TikTok: @caliawritesromance First Edition: 2025 United Kingdom OceanofPDF.com To everyone who stayed a little too long because you believed in someone who couldn’t meet you there. OceanofPDF.com “He wasn’t mine anymore. But I didn’t learn that until it already broke me.”

— CALIA QUINN OceanofPDF.com Author Note I almost didn’t write this book. Not because I didn’t love the story, but because there were pieces of it I didn’t know how to touch without bleeding. There are parts of me scattered through these pages — the parts I spent years trying to bury, ignore, minimise, excuse. The parts that learned to cling to apologies that weren’t real and promises that were never meant for me.

Everyone has a version of Dax in their life. Mine wasn’t noble. He wasn’t gentle. He didn’t come home different because life broke him — he came home the same man who taught me how small I could feel. My ‘Dax’ wasn’t a good man in a bad situation. He was a controlling one. A narcissist. A master at rearranging my reality until I couldn’t recognise myself.

He didn’t apologise for the hurt he caused… and on the rare days he did, he found new ways to do it again. His blue eyes weren’t soft. They weren’t sad. They weren’t the eyes of a broken boy trying to be better. They were cold, calculating, cruel — the kind of eyes that could make you feel loved at 10am and worthless by lunchtime, and convince you both things were your fault.

Some days I still don’t know how I survived him. Some days I still find versions of myself he carved out and left empty. This book isn’t about him. But it came from the damage he left behind. From the girl who wasn’t allowed to speak without being punished.

From the girl who learned to apologise for things she didn’t do. From the girl who stayed because she thought love meant enduring. From the girl who believed “it will get better” long after it should’ve been obvious that it wouldn’t. I didn’t write Goodbye Butterfly to romanticise pain.

I wrote it because pain is what taught me to leave. Because grief is what taught me to heal. Because I needed to give myself a story where someone breaks… and still finds a way to breathe after.

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

Book Information

• Unique ID: f03ab7f607ca96ea
• File Extension: .pdf
• File Size: 2,015,872 bytes (1.922 MB)
• Title: –
• Author: Unknown
• Pages: 416
• Language: English (en)

Reading & Word Statistics

• Estimated Reading Time: 569.63 minutes
• Total Words: 113,927
• Total Characters: 622,670
• Average Words per Page: 273.86
• Average Characters per Page: 1496.8

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