He held her gaze. “The kinds that make me want to stay even when the binding doesn’t require it.”
The walls went deep crimson. Luna, from somewhere in the kitchen, said, “Called it.”
Cassie didn’t knowwhat to say to that. Her brain had gone offline, replaced by a screaming chorus of hormones and hope and terror in equal measure.
“Derek,” she heard herself say, because apparently her mouth had decided to handle this bydeflecting. “He didn’t use magic, but he did the same thing. Made me smaller. Told me I was too much, too loud, too emotional. Tooeverything.”
Liam’s expression shifted. Darkened. “Too much how?”
“Every way.” She laughed, but it came out broken. “Too excited about things. Too passionate about work. Too affectionate. Too needy. After twenty years, I learned to make myself… less. Quieter. Smaller. I became the woman he could tolerate instead of the woman I actually was.”
“And then he left anyway.”
“For a twenty-eight-year-old yoga instructor named Brittany who posts inspirational quotes about abundance and calls kale a ‘lifestyle.’” Cassie took a long drink of wine. “Apparently I wasn’t too much after all. I was just too muchfor him.”
Liam set down his glass. Shifted closer on the ugly couch. Close enough that she could smell him—sawdust and tea and that warm cedar scent that made her think extremely unhelpful thoughts.
“You spent twenty years,” he said quietly, “dimming yourself for a man who didn’t deserve your light.”
Cassie’s eyes burned. “You can’t know that.”
“I know what I see.” He reached out, tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. His fingers lingered at her jaw. “A woman who’s so worried about being too much that she’s made herself invisible. Whoapologizes for taking up space. Who set off a bloody thunderstorm because she’s been holding everything in for so long it had nowhere else to go.”
“That makes me sound like a disaster.”
“That makes you sound human.” His thumb traced her cheekbone. “You’re not too much, Cassie. You’re exactly enough. The right person wouldn’t ask you to shrink.”
Something cracked open in her chest. Something she’d been holding together with willpower and wine and the desperate determination not to want things she couldn’t have.
“I found something,” she said, because the moment felt too big and she needed to make it smaller. “Earlier. I was going through boxes looking for candles and I found…”
She reached behind the couch cushion and pulled out a small wooden box. Mahogany, with delicate inlaid flowers. The hinge was broken, the lid hanging at an awkward angle.
“It was my grandmother’s. A music box. She used to play it for me when I was little.” Cassie traced the damaged hinge. “It broke years ago. Derek said it wasn’t worth fixing. Just a piece of junk.”
Liam took the box from her hands. Examined the hinge with the focused attention of a man who understood broken things.
“It’s not junk,” he said. “The mechanism isintact. Just needs a new hinge pin and some patience.” He looked up at her, and something in his expression made her breath catch. “Can I?”
She nodded.
He stood, disappeared toward the kitchen, and returned with a small toolkit she didn’t know he’d accumulated. He settled back onto the couch—closer now, their knees almost touching—and began to work.
His hands were steady. Careful. The firelight caught the silver in his hair as he bent over the box, completely focused on the tiny mechanical parts.
Cassie watched him work and felt something terrifying happening in her chest.
“Why are you being so nice to me?” she asked. “I kidnapped you. Magically imprisoned you. Set off a thunderstorm in your general vicinity.”
“All true.” He didn’t look up. “Also you’ve never once tried to change how I feel. You’re chaos incarnate, but you’re honest chaos. That counts for something.”
“That’s a low bar.”
“You’d be surprised how few people clear it.”
He made a final adjustment, and the music box clicked softly. The lid swung open, perfectly aligned now. The mechanism began to turn, and a delicate melody filled the room—something old and sweet and achingly familiar.
Cassie’s grandmother, playing this for her onrainy afternoons. Before Derek. Before she learned to make herself small. Before she forgot what it felt like to want things without apology.
