Her arms dropped slowly from where they’d been crossed.
“Okay,” she said again, quieter this time. “Okay.”
Luca stepped forward, resting a hand lightly at her back.
“You’re doing the thing, babe,” he murmured.
“What thing?”
“The one where you decide whether to fight or support.”
She glanced at him.
Then back at me.
Then at Cassian.
And something clicked.
She exhaled slowly.
“I’m not going to fight this,” she said.
Relief hit me harder than I expected.
“But,” she added, pointing at me, “you’re not getting off easy. We are talking about what comes next.”
“I know.”
“And you,” she said, turning back to Cassian, “are not disappearing when things get complicated.”
“I don’t,” he said simply.
She narrowed her eyes. “Good.”
There was a beat.
Then, unexpectedly, she smiled.
“God, this is going to be interesting.”
It was later—after Harper had claimed a glass of wine, after Luca had settled into one of the easy chairs, after the tension had shifted into something almost … normal—that Cassian disappeared.
I didn’t notice at first.
Not until Harper was mid-sentence about potential PR angles and I realized the space behind me felt different.
Empty.
“Where’d he go?” she asked, glancing around.
“I don’t know,” I said.
That wasn’t entirely unusual. Cassian moved in and out of rooms without announcing himself. It was part of who he was.
Still, something about it felt … intentional.
Twenty minutes later, he returned.
