Cassian and I were going to work together. We were going to pass each other in hallways, stand across operating tables, and sit in the same meetings. There was no version of this job that didn't include him.
I'd known that when I accepted the position.
I'd made peace with it, or thought I had.
I just hadn't accounted for how much it would hurt to see him again. Easy and warm and unaware of my presence, like the past five years had healed him while it killed me.
CHAPTER TWO
CALLA
SEVEN YEARS AGO
In twenty minutes,I would walk down an aisle and become someone's wife.
I could see the botanical garden transformed into a vision Cassian spent six months creating. White and blue everywhere. Olive branches woven through the archways. Lanterns hanging from trees like captured stars. Long tables draped in linen, the color of the Aegean Sea, the same shade my mother used to describe in stories about her childhood summers in Thessaloniki.
My mother… She was gone for four years. She would never see me in this dress, cry at my wedding, or hold the children I might have one day.
I pushed the thought away. Today wasn't for grief.
"If we can't get married in Greece," Cassian had said when he first showed me the plans, "we'll bring Greece here."
I stared at him for a long moment. This man who barely knew how to boil pasta, never left the country, had no obligation to care about traditions that weren't his, made every effort to recreate the place I wanted to go back to.
"You don't have to do this," I had told him.
"I know." He’d smiled. "I want to."
That was Cassian. He wanted things fully, openly, without any armor. He loved like breathing, natural and unconscious. I loved like holding my breath, always waiting for the moment I'd have to let go.
"You're thinking too loud."
I turned. Felice stood in the doorway, a vision in flowing blue silk. She was holding two glasses of champagne. We’ve been best friends since sophomore year of high school, when she transferred mid-semester and sat next to me in calculus. Everyone else ignored the new girl. But I shared my notes without being asked, and she decided on the spot that we were going to be friends whether I liked it or not.
Fifteen years later, I still wasn't sure I agreed to the arrangement.
"I'm getting married in twenty minutes," I said. "I'm allowed to think."
"Not when you're thinking about work." She crossed the room and pressed a glass into my hand. "I know that look. That's your did-I-forget-something-important face."
I took a sip. The champagne was expensive, a gift from Cassian’s friend Riven, and I barely tasted it.
Felice settled onto the settee beside me, her dress pooling around her. She studied me with the same focus she brought to her design projects, like I was a problem she intended to solve.
"Talk to me,” she urged.
"There's nothing to talk about."
"Calla."
I looked down at my dress. Simple white cotton, delicate embroidery at the shoulders, designed to be barefoot-friendly because I had insisted on feeling grass beneath my feet. My father had raised an eyebrow when I showed him.
"Your mother would have opinions about this," he had said. Not disapproval, exactly. Just a comment.
I almost smiled. "She would have hated it."
"She would have hated the dress," he had agreed. "But she would have loved seeing you happy."
