Just present.
Grief welled up unexpectedly, sharp and sudden.
“I missed so much,” I said quietly. “Five years of her life. And I didn’t even know.”
His gaze didn’t waver.
“You didn’t choose that.”
“She did.”
The words tasted bitter.
Kane considered that.
“Maybe she thought she was protecting you.”
“From what? Happiness?”
His jaw flexed slightly.
“From judgment. From conflict. From losing both worlds.”
That landed uncomfortably close to truth.
I sank onto the chair by the window, suddenly tired in a way sleep couldn’t fix.
“She must have been lonely,” I murmured.
Kane didn’t answer right away.
“When you live in two worlds,” he said finally, “you’re always alone in one of them.”
The quiet understanding in his tone made me look up.
There it was again.
That sense he knew exactly what that felt like.
I studied him.
“You do that,” I said slowly. “Don’t you?”
His expression shuttered slightly.
“Do what?”
“Live in two worlds.”
Silence stretched.
Then he shrugged, but it wasn’t casual.
“Occupational hazard.”
I didn’t push.
Not yet.
