I didn’t understand what I was hearing.
I just knew something felt different next door.
Something that had always been quietly wrong was getting louder.
My bedroom was on the first floor — my parents upstairs, me down the hall from the kitchen, my window level with the grass. It had never felt significant before. Just the way the house was laid out.
But Cassian figured it out fast.
After the first week we met he stopped using the front door entirely.
Window up, leg over the edge, books already in hand like he’d been doing it for years. My mom must have noticed — she noticed everything — but she never said a word. Just started leaving an extra snack on my desk around the time he usually arrived.
• • •
Every day after school — books out, homework across the floor. I’d go through everything, teach him what I knew. Which was a lot for my age, given the tuition my parents paid.
I didn’t say that. I just taught him.
He hated it.
He’d huff. Pace. Throw his pencil down and stare at the ceiling like it had personally offended him.
Then pick it back up.
I didn’t mind.
Anything I could give to him, I did.
Every part of myself that was good was Cassian’s.
At the end of every session he’d pack up slowly.
Like he wasn’t quite ready to go either.
And right before he climbed back out the window he’d turn back.
Quick hug.
Over before you could decide what to do with your arms.
And then, quiet enough that I almost missed it every time —
Thank you.
Like he meant more than just the studying and didn’t know how to say that part.
I never said you’re welcome.
I didn’t want to make it smaller than it was.
CHAPTER FIVE
ELEVEN YEARS OLD
• • •
If I could go back in time, it would be here.
