Cassian’s jaw tightened almost imperceptibly.
“That’s not what I meant,” he said more carefully, leaning back slightly in his chair as he turned his body just enough away from the table. His voice dropped lower, controlled again, but less sharp than before.
Juliet didn’t let the moment pass.
“I’m your girlfriend,” she said, softer now, but stubborn. “Of course I miss you when you’re not here. Don’t you miss me too?”
Cassian didn’t answer immediately.
Then he exhaled slowly, eyes still averted. “I can’t talk right now. We’ll talk when I get home.”
“No. Say it. Say that you miss me.”
The reply came instantly.
Cassian’s fingers tightened around the phone again.
Juliet’s voice didn’t rise, but it sharpened. “I’m just asking you for one thing, and you’re already trying to end the call. Why are you ignoring my question?”
Cassian’s fingers tightened slightly around the phone, knuckles pressing faintly as though he was holding onto control rather than just the device. For a brief moment, his gaze drifted back toward the meeting room almost on instinct.
Everyone was watching him.
Executives who had been sitting with disciplined composure only minutes ago now carried a subtle restlessness in their posture. Some leaned forward too slightly, some sat too still, all of them pretending not to notice while doing nothing else but noticing. Their attention no longer fully belonged to the presentation. It kept slipping—inevitably—back to the man at the head of the table.
Whispers had already started, passing between colleagues without lips moving too much, without anything that could be traced back to them. Curiosity sharpened every glance. Everyone was circling the same unanswered question—who on the other end of that call could make Cassian Han nervous like this?
When Cassian lifted his eyes again, the entire room reacted as one.
Heads lowered instantly. Papers were adjusted with unnecessary precision. A pen was picked up, set down, picked up again. Screens suddenly became the most interesting thing in the world. Even the presenter near the screen had gone completely silent, frozen mid-transition.
But the silence didn’t help.
If anything, it made everything more obvious.
Because Juliet’s voice still carried faintly through the phone, threading into the room like something too intimate to belong there.
“No, I don’t think you miss me,” she said, her tone lightly accusing, but softened by something almost playful underneath it. “Look at you. You can’t even say something so simple. Don’t you like me? You’re my boyfriend, Cassian. You should be able to say it.”
Cassian’s jaw tightened.
Just slightly.
Almost invisible.
There was tension in his shoulders, restrained and contained, yet beneath it something quieter lingered—an unwilling softness he refused to acknowledge openly.
Juliet didn’t give him space to recover.
“I like hearing it from you,” she insisted, her voice growing more persistent, like she was closing in on something she absolutely intended to get. “Just say it.”
Cassian exhaled through his nose, slow and measured, tilting his head slightly away from the table as though that small shift could separate him from the dozens of eyes he could feel without looking. His voice dropped lower when he finally spoke, controlled and private.
“Juliet, I’ll say it when I come home.”
“No.”
The single word cut through instantly.
