She swallows hard.
“I didn’t answer. I turned it off. I didn’t even let the message finish playing. I didn’t even think about it.”
My hands curl into fists without me meaning them to. The silence between us is thick enough to choke on.
She takes a step toward me, her voice softening. “Cassian, I would never?—”
“Don’t,” I say, too sharp. The word hangs in the air like a blade.
Her mouth shuts tight.
I feel it then. That old familiar burn rising in my chest. Like ice and fire tangled together. The kind of pain that doesn’t scream. It whispers. Reminds. Shows you every scar and name and face that ever turned their back when it mattered most.
I turn away from her and pace slow to the far wall, where the frost’s creeping back up the planks. I brace both hands against the wood and lower my head, breathing slow, trying to steady the noise in my skull. But it doesn’t stop. It’s her voice playing over and over. Gordon’s name. The offer. The numbers. The betrayal that’s not hers and still feels like it is.
She’s behind me again. I don’t hear her steps, but I feel her.
“I said no,” she says again, quieter this time. “You don’t believe me.”
I grit my teeth. I want to. I want to believe her so bad it feels like my ribs are splintering under the pressure.
But trust isn’t something I can just pull out of the ice and hand over like it costs nothing. It’s something I buried a long time ago, in graves marked by people who said the right things and still walked away.
“I’ve heard those promises before,” I say, voice low and cold.
“I’m not them.”
“No,” I agree. “But they weren’t monsters either.”
She flinches like I slapped her, and I hate that. I hate the look in her eyes now, like I’m turning into the very thing I promised I wasn’t. But I can’t take it back. I won’t. The second I start pretending this doesn’t matter, I stop surviving.
“You think I came out here for an award?” she says, voice rising. “You think I stayed through gunfire and ice storms andwatching you bleed just so I could cash out when the signal came through?”
I don’t answer.
She steps closer. Her hands shake now, clenched at her sides like she’s holding something back that’s about to explode.
“Say something,” she says. “Tell me I’m a liar. Tell me I planned it. Say whatever you need to say to push me away, but don’t stand there and act like this is the first time someone’s seen you for who you are and didn’t run.”
My head snaps around.
She’s not crying, but her eyes are bright, jaw trembling.
“I’ve seen you,” she says. “The real you. Not the thing you think you are. Not the rage. Not the legend. You. The man who makes sure the fire’s burning before I wake up. The one who takes the sled farther out so the dogs don’t eat too fast and get sick. The one who didn’t leave me, even when I gave you every reason to.”
I don’t move. Don’t breathe.
She reaches out and presses her palm to my chest, right over the place where the bullet hit days ago.
“Your scars don’t scare me,” she says. “Your silence doesn’t scare me. But you shutting down like I don’t matter? That does.”
The pain in her voice slices deeper than any blade.
I don’t know what to do with it.
She starts to pull back, her hand slipping away, but I catch it. Not hard. Just enough to stop her. To keep her there for another second.
Her fingers are still in mine.
