Aunt Mabel’s eyes flicked to me.
“And you’re comfortable with that?” she asked.
“I didn’t ask him to,” I said, too quickly.
Cassian’s gaze shifted to mine, steady and unnervingly calm.
“You didn’t have to.”
The room went quiet again, but it wasn’t the quiet of awkwardness.
It was the quiet of consequence.
“Why?” I asked him quietly.
His eyes didn’t soften. They didn’t need to.
“Because I’m not finished,” he said.
“With what?” I pressed.
“With you.
The words didn’t feel like a threat.
They felt like a claim he didn’t need permission to make.
Aunt Mabel made a small sound in her throat, almost satisfied, and returned to her roast as if that settled something for her.
“And you?” she asked me. “Are you finished?”
I met Cassian’s gaze across the table.
“No,” I said.
The honesty didn’t shock me. It steadied me.
Aunt Mabel nodded once. “Then eat,” she said briskly. “Both of you. Before you start circling each other again.”
My mouth twitched despite myself.
Cassian’s did, too.
We ate, and the conversation shifted into smaller things—my aunt asking me about Charleston weather, about my keynote, about Harper. Cassian answering questions in short, controlled sentences that somehow revealed more because he refused to elaborate.
Aunt Mabel asked him where he grew up.
“Texas,” he said.
“Of course,” she replied dryly. “Every man with that kind of quiet arrogance comes from Texas or thinks he does.”
Cassian’s mouth curved faintly. “I don’t think I do.”
“What did your parents do?” she asked.
Cassian paused, just briefly.
“My father was military,” he said. “My mother taught school.”
