"It's late. I should get going."
He walked to his truck without waiting for a response. As I watched him climb in and start the engine, I felt something crack in my chest.
He wasn't thinking about next year.
He wasn't thinking about us having a future at all.
The realization landed like a physical blow. All week I'd been telling myself I was imagining things. That he was stressed or tired or dealing with work problems.
But I hadn't imagined this. The way his expression closed off when I mentioned the future. The careful distance he'd been maintaining. The walls going up between us.
Daemon was pulling away.
And I didn't know how to stop it.
I drove back to my parents' place, to the apartment above their garage that had never felt more like a temporary space. Like somewhere I was staying until I figured out what I actually wanted.
Except I knew what I wanted.
I wanted the man who'd shown up when I needed help. Who'd called in favors and arranged for security cameras and stood beside me when Elevate tried to intimidate me. Who'd looked at me like I was the most important thing in his world.
I wanted Daemon.
But somewhere in the past week, he'd stopped wanting me back.
I lay in bed staring at the ceiling, trying to figure out when I'd lost him. What I'd done wrong. What I could have said or done differently.
My phone buzzed. Daemon. I looked at it for a moment before answering.
"Hey." His voice was low, careful.
"Hey." I pulled my knees up and wrapped my free arm around them. "Everything okay?"
"Yeah. I wanted to make sure you got home safe." I heard him moving around on his end, as if unable to settle.
"I did." A beat of silence. The kind that had things in it. "Daemon."
"Yeah."
"Are you—" I stopped. Pressed my fingers to my lips. "Never mind."
"What?"
"I was going to ask something stupid."
"Ask it anyway." The movement on his end stilled.
I looked at the ceiling. "Do you think about us? When we're not in the same room."
The silence stretched long enough that I pulled the phone from my ear to check that the call was still connected.
"Yes," he said finally. "More than I should, probably."
My pulse did something unhelpful. I got up off the bed without meaning to and went to stand at the window, looking at nothing.
"Me too," I said. "That's all. I don't know why I said that. Goodnight, Daemon."
"Nadia." His voice had dropped a register. I heard him exhale, slow and deliberate. "It's not only that. I want you to know that. Whatever else is going on with me right now, it's not—" He stopped.
