I didn’t push him.
I’d learned early that with Cassian you don’t push. You leave the door open and let him decide what to do with it.
So I left it open. Always open.
We watched movies. Quietly. Side by side on the couch or stretched out on my floor, the sound low enough that neither of us had to talk over it.
Sometimes he reached for my hand.
Casual. Like it was nothing.
It wasn’t nothing.
It was everything.
I’d lie there completely still, hyperaware of every single point of contact, willing myself to breathe at a normal pace like a normal person.
I was twelve. I didn’t have language for it yet.
But my body did.
• • •
He started staying over more often.
Not officially. Just — falling asleep and not leaving. I’d wake up and he’d be there on top of the covers, still in his clothes, breathing slow.
He always left before my parents got up.
I don’t know if they knew, really.
I think they knew.
Theyalwaysknoweverything,whichisdeeply inconvenient.
• • •
My mom would ask how he was doing in that careful way she had — not pushing, not prying. Just leaving space for an answer if I had one.
Or if I just wanted to talk about it.
I never really did.
“He’s okay,” I’d say. Which was what Cassian would have said too.
Neither of us meant it.
There was one night my parents had gone to bed early.
Just the two of us on the couch.
Some movie neither of us were watching.
The light was low and the house was quiet and Cassian had gone still beside me in a way that was different from his usual still.
Not asleep. Something else.
I glanced at him.
