I stood under the hot water for longer than necessary, letting it pound against my shoulders, trying to wash away the tension coiled in every muscle. This was fine. This was manageable. We were two exhausted professionals sharing a room out of necessity. Nothing more.
Except my hands were shaking, and my pulse wouldn't slow down, and all I could think about was the last time we'd shared a bed. The morning I'd woken up tangled in his arms, his breath warm against my hair, believing we had forever.
I turned off the water and dried myself mechanically. I'd packed spare clothes in my trauma bag, a habit from residency. Clean underwear, a t-shirt, basic toiletries. Nothing designed for sharing a hotel room with my ex-husband.
When I emerged twenty minutes later, Cassian was sitting on the edge of the bed, staring at his phone. He'd changed out of his scrubs into a t-shirt and sweatpants, his hair damp from what must have been a quick sink wash.
"Your girlfriend?" The question escaped before I could stop it.
He looked up. "Yeah. She wanted to know when I'd be back."
"What did you tell her?"
"Tomorrow afternoon, probably. Depending on how the patients are doing." He set his phone on the nightstand. "She's worried about me."
"She should be. Today was brutal."
"That's not what she's worried about."
I sat on the opposite side of the bed, leaving as much space between us as the mattress allowed. "What do you mean?"
Cassian was quiet for a long moment. I watched the play of shadows across his face, the way exhaustion had carved deep lines around his mouth and eyes. He looked older than he had this morning. Older than he'd looked on the rooftop, watching the sunrise with me.
"She knows something's different," he said finally. "With me. Since you came back to Obsidian."
"Cassian."
"I'm not telling you this to hurt you or to make you feel responsible. I'm telling you because I don't know what to do." He turned to face me fully, his green eyes weary and conflicted. "I care about Maya. She's good and kind and she deserves honesty. But I can't give her that when I don't even know what's true anymore."
I should have stayed quiet. Should have let the conversation die, let him figure out his own feelings without my interference. But something about this room, this night, the exhaustion stripping away every defense I'd built, made me reckless.
"What do you want to be true?" I asked.
He looked at me, startled by the question. "What?"
"If you could choose. If there were no complications, no Maya, no history, no five years of distance." I moved closer without meaning to, drawn by a gravity I couldn't resist. "What would you want?"
"Calla, don't."
"I'm asking because I need to know if I'm alone in this." My voice came out steadier than I felt. "This morning, on the rooftop, you asked me what this was between us. I said I didn't know. But that wasn't true."
Cassian went very still. "What are you saying?"
"I'm saying that I've been carrying you inside me for five years. You live in all my silences, in every space I've tried to fill with work and distance and pretending I've moved on." I held his gaze, letting him see everything I'd been hiding. "I'm saying that you're a wound that never healed, and I don't know if I want it to heal anymore."
"Calla."
"I read somewhere once that we write to taste life twice. In the moment and in retrospect." I swallowed hard. "But with you, I don't want retrospect. I don't want to spend the rest of my life looking back at what we had and mourning it. I want to taste it now. I want to know if what we feel is real or if it's just ghosts we've been too afraid to bury."
Cassian's breath caught. I could see him wavering, could see the war playing out behind his eyes. Want and guilt and fear and longing, all tangled together into something neither of us knew how to name.
"You can't say things like that." His voice was hoarse.
"Why not?"
"Because I'm trying to do the right thing. I'm trying to be the kind of man who doesn't destroy someone who trusts him."
"I know." I moved closer still, close enough to feel the heat of his skin, close enough to count the flecks of gold in his green eyes. "I know you're trying to be good. You've always been good, Cassian. That's what I loved about you. That's what Istilldo..."
