“Liam—”
“I’m not angry.” He was, though. She could see it in the set of his shoulders. “I’m just… I need space to think. And apparently you need space to burn furniture.”
He turned and walked down the hallway toward the guest room.
The door clicked shut behind him.
Cassie stood in her ruined living room, drenched and smoke-stained and more alone than she’d felt since the day Derek left.
She’d done this. Pushed him away. Let fear make her decisions because that was easier than believing she deserved something good.
She tried to follow him. To apologize. To say all the things she should have said.
The hallway wouldn’t let her.
The house, somehow, had closed off the corridor. Not with a wall—just with air that wouldn’t move. An invisible barrier that pressed back against her when she tried to push through.
“House,” she said, “let me through.”
The walls flickered. Apologetic but firm.
“HOUSE.”
Nothing.
She was stuck. Trapped in her own living room by her own magically-awakened house, which had apparently decided they both needed a time-out.
“This is a metaphor,” Luna observed from herperch. “For your emotional avoidance. The house is making it literal.”
“I don’t need commentary.”
“You need a lot of things. Starting with therapy and ending with a backbone.” The cat yawned. “Wake me when you’re ready to stop being an idiot.”
Luna padded away, leaving Cassie alone with the charred couch, the gray walls, and the echoing silence of everything she’d just ruined.
She sank down onto the one unburned patch of carpet and pressed her palms against her eyes.
The music box sat on the coffee table. Silent now. Its lid hung open, perfectly repaired, a gift from a man who fixed broken things without being asked.
She didn’t sleep.
Neither, she suspected, did he.
6
MAGIC SURGE. CONFIDENCE CRASH
Three days after she set the couch on fire, Cassie and Liam had perfected the art of aggressive politeness.
“Good morning.”
“Morning.”
“Coffee’s fresh.”
“Thanks.”
“I’ll be in the garden.”
