He says it without emphasis, which is exactly why it hits so hard.
There is no easy response to that. Denying it would be a lie too obvious to survive his face. Admitting it would only make him sound smarter than he is, and I’m not interested in giving him that satisfaction.
He reads the silence anyway.
“Yeah,” he says quietly. “That’s what I thought.”
I feel my jaw tighten. “You should really stop acting like you understand me.”
His brows lift just slightly, but he doesn’t laugh. “I don’t think I understand you,” he says. “I think I understand enough to know she doesn’t need someone like you messing with her head.”
Someone like you.
The words could have come from anywhere. A court file. A staff meeting at St. Augustine. The mouth of any adult who ever looked at me.
But hearing it from him is different. Because he isn’t saying it as law or punishment. He’s saying it as concern for her.
That gets under my skin faster.
My hand curls once at my side and then opens again.
Kadin notices the movement but keeps going anyway. “She looked off before the party even got bad,” he says. “Then you showed up near the pool, and everything about her changed. She was tense. Distracted. Like she was trying too hard to act fine.”
His gaze stays level on mine.
“I don’t know every detail. I’m not pretending I do. But I know enough to recognize when someone is getting under a person’s skin in a way that isn’t good for them.”
I lean back against the sink because if I don’t anchor myself to something, the urge to shut him up with force is going to start looking too reasonable.
“You’re making assumptions.”
“I know what you are,” he says.
There is no hesitation in it now. He wants me to know.
“I saw enough,” he continues, “to know you’ve got a past that follows you around for a reason.”
The fluorescent lights hum overhead. My reflection waits in the mirror behind him, face hardening by degrees. Looking at Kadin, I see the shape of his confidence, the ease with which he thinks he can stand in front of me and say these things because what protects him is not strength.
It’s her.
He knows it too.
“If you care about her at all,” he says, “then stop making your damage her problem.”
The sentence lands and sits there.
I could tell him he doesn’t know what damage looks like. I could tell him he kissed her once in a pool and decided he understands the architecture of her hurt. I could tell him that if he had ever had to live inside a body that reacts before your mind can save you, he’d stop speaking in clean moral lines and start understanding that want and fear are not opposites for some people.
Instead, I ask the only thing that still sounds honest.
“What do you want from her?”
Kadin exhales through his nose, almost impatient now. “I told you. I like her.”
“That’s still not an answer.”
His mouth tightens. “Fine. I want whatever she wants to give. Time. A chance. Something normal, if she wants that. I don’twant to own her. I don’t want to confuse her. And I sure as hell don’t want to drag her into whatever this is with you.”
