“Wait!” The word tore from her throat.
He stopped. Didn’t turn. Just stood there in the rain, utterly still.
Cecilia ran, her slippers sliding in the mud, her skirts heavy and clinging. When she got close enough to see him properly, everything in her chest compressed.
“Cassian?”she gasped in the freezing rain. “Is it… is it really you?”
He was… leaner than she remembered. His dark hair plastered to his nape, rain streaming down his coat. He looked hollowed out, exhausted. Like a man who’d been searching for something he was terrified he’d never find. He still hadn’t turned around.
Rain poured between them. She tried to speak again, but her throat was too tight, her heart beating too hard.
Finally, she managed, “Are you leaving again?”
Silence. Just rain and wind and the thundering of her pulse.
Her voice came out broken, “Answer me one thing before you go. The letter you left... Did you mean it?”
At last, he turned.
His eyes found hers, and the naked desperation in them stole whatever was left of her anguished soul. “Every word.”
“Then—then why are you walking away?”
For a long moment, he said nothing. When his lips finally parted, his voice came out rough and low, “Because I don’t know if I have the right to be here. To ask what I came to ask.”
“Which is?”
He made to take a step toward her, then physically stopped himself. “Clemency. I… left you. I told myself I was setting you free, that you’d be better off, but the truth is, I was a coward. I was terrified of failing you. Terrified of being abandoned.”
“So you abandoned me instead,” she said quietly.
He flinched. “Yes.”
“Where did you go?”
“Everywhere and nowhere.” His hands curled at his sides. “I don’t know. I kept thinking if I walked far enough, saw enough, it would fill the emptiness I had left behind. But everywhere I went, all I could think was that it meant nothing. That I was having experiences that were empty. How they meant nothing without you.”
Rain dripped from his raven hair, down his high cheeks and his sharp jaw. He looked utterly destroyed. “I carried your book with me through it all. Read your annotations until I had them memorized as if you were speaking them to me. Wrote responses even though I thought you’d never see them. Pretended I could still hear you with me, still...” His voice cracked. “God, Cecilia. I missed you so much I couldn’t breathe.”
Something in her chest burst open. “When—when did you find out I didn’t sign it? The annulment?”
“Five weeks ago. Somerton’s letter found me.”
“Five weeks,” she whispered back, her throat trembling. “You knew for five weeks?”
“And I’ve been traveling back ever since, and every mile of it, I was terrified you’d change your mind. That you’d find someone else. That I’d ruined the only real thing I’ve ever had.” He took another step closer, his eyes pleading. “Look, I’m not asking you to forget what I did. I’m not even asking you to forgive it. I just... I needed to see your face once more. To let you know, leaving you was the worst mistake of my life. That not a day has gone by that it hasn’t eaten me alive.”
Cecilia stared at him, this man who’d taught her to fight for herself, to want more, to love without restraint.
This man who’d left her anyway.
“I waited,” she cried out, and tears mixed with feral rivulets on her face. “I waited for you!”
“I know.”
“I tore up the annulment with my bare hands—”
“I—”
