"Want to watch something mindless and fall asleep on the couch?"
I faked a smile. "That sounds perfect."
We did exactly that. We played an action movie neither of us paid attention to. I curled against Cassian's side with my head on his shoulder, his arm around me, and his fingers tracing absent patterns on my arm. The rhythm was soothing and hypnotic. I let myself sink into it and pretend that everything was normal and I wasn't carrying a secret that could destroy us.
His heartbeat was steady under my ear—strong and reliable, like everything else about him. Cassian had always been my anchor and the calm center I orbited when everything else felt chaotic and overwhelming. He grounded me the way I'd never learned to ground myself.
And I was considering leaving him for two years to chase a dream he didn't even know existed.
What kind of person did that make me?
I knew the answer. I became the same person my mother had been afraid I would become—ambitious to the point ofselfishness, so focused on achievement that I forgot how to value the people who loved me.
My mother had given up her career for my father, followed him to a new country, and built a life around his dreams. She'd never complained. Not once.
I wasn't capable of that. I'd known it since I was young and felt it in the way I pushed and strived and refused to settle for anything less than excellence. My mother had called it drive. My father called it determination.
I called it what it was: selfishness dressed up in acceptable clothes.
"I love you," Cassian murmured against my hair.
The words made my stomach turn.
I swallowed, feeling the thorns stuck in my throat. "I love you too."
I did. That was the worst part. I loved him completely, desperately, in ways I didn't know how to express. And I was still going to hurt him.
The email sat in my inbox, unanswered, for three more days.
I reread it at least a dozen times. In the locker room before surgery. In my car during lunch breaks. At three in the morning, the glow of my phone illuminated Cassian's peaceful face beside me. Each time, I told myself I would make a decision. Each time, I closed the email and did nothing.
Felice called on Saturday. "You sound weird. What's going on?"
"Nothing."
"Calla."
"It's nothing. Work stuff."
She fell silent. I could picture her on the other end of the line, probably sitting at her drafting table with a pencil tucked behind her ear, seeing through my deflection.
"When you're ready to talk about whatever 'nothing' actually is," she said finally, "I'm here. You know that, right?"
"I know."
I didn't call her back. I didn't tell her about the fellowship, the same way I hadn't told Cassian. Sometimes some secrets were easier to carry alone, even when the weight of them threatened to break you.
The deadline for response was approaching. And I knew I had to decide.
On Sunday morning, while Cassian was out for his run, I sat at the kitchen table with my laptop open and typed my reply.
Dear Dr. Larsson,
Thank you for the incredible opportunity. I am honored to accept the position with the International Trauma Consortium.
I stared at the words for a long time, my finger hovered over the send button. I pressed it before I could change my mind and the confirmation email arrived within minutes.
I closed my laptop and sat in the silence of our kitchen, surrounded by evidence of the life Cassian and I had built together—our matching coffee mugs in the dish rack, the photos on the refrigerator, the worn spot on the couch where we always sat, the cushions shaped by years of our bodies pressed together.
