I hadn’t burned my life down.
I’d stepped out of a cage.
And when Cassian’s hands slid to my waist and pulled me close, when his mouth found mine in a slow, deliberate kiss that held no urgency and no apology?—
I didn’t feel owned.
I felt chosen.
That was enough.
29
The quiet didn’t last.
It never does, in these types of situations.
By late afternoon, the world had caught up.
My phone buzzed in waves again—messages stacking, notifications multiplying, my name moving through rooms I wasn’t in. I ignored most of them. Not out of denial this time, but out of choice. There was a difference now. Before, silence had been avoidance. Now, it felt like control.
When this started, I hadn’t known the difference.
In the beginning, I’d been so tightly wound I could barely feel my own pulse beneath the performance of composure.
The start of this entire unraveling had been exhaustion—the kind that seeps into your bones when you’ve built a life around being impressive instead of being honest. I’d walked through my condo near the water—quiet, prestigious, chosen because it looked like adulthood—feeling like I was living inside a showroom version of myself. Polished countertops. Structured furniture. Carefully curated art. Everything in its place.
Except me.
I remembered sitting at my kitchen table the night I wrote the letter to Alpha Mail. The harbor lights blinking through the window. My laptop open. My wine untouched because even my vices were measured. I’d typed the words slowly at first, as if admitting them might crack something open that couldn’t be contained.
I am tired of being good.
Not morally good. Predictable good. The kind of good that wins awards and donor confidence and polite applause. The kind that never scares anyone.
I hadn’t asked for a man then.
I’d asked for a feeling.
Danger in human form.
I’d been so careful even in that request—clinical about it, as if I were drafting a grant proposal instead of confessing hunger. I’d told myself it was controlled. Strategic. A private experiment. Something I could contain.
I think about that woman now—the one who flinched the first time Cassian looked at her like she was prey and prize at once. The one who insisted she wasn’t reckless, who needed everything labeled and justified. The one who told herself she could dip her toe into fire and step back out unburned.
She was terrified of losing control.
Not because she didn’t trust men.
Because she didn’t trust herself.
Back then, my silence had been armor. I didn’t answer Harper’s first texts about him because I didn’t want her to see the crack forming. I didn’t tell my mother because I didn’t want to explain a choice that didn’t align with the version of me she understood. I compartmentalized. I rationalized. I told myself I was studying him, analyzing him, holding the upper hand.
I wasn’t.
I was circling something I already knew I wanted.
And I was afraid of what it would reveal about me.
