He looks up from his desk straight away. “Caiden,” he says, voice neutral.
I close the door behind me and lean back against it, arms folded, because I still don’t quite trust my hands. “I owe you an apology.”
One of his brows lifts very slightly. “You don’t.”
“I do.” He watches me for a second. That’s always been the thing with Ari. He doesn’t fill the silence. He lets it sit there until you either say what you mean or give up on trying. So, I say what I came to say. “I’m sorry for shuttingyou out,” I tell him. “For acting like you were the enemy because I didn’t know where else to put what I was feeling, and for making you carry more because I was angry and didn’t fancy looking too closely at what I was actually angry about.” I’m rambling, I know I am, but he doesn’t say anything yet, which is fair. “I knew you were right,” I go on. “That was half the problem. Well... maybe more than half. If you’d just been being a dick for the sake of it, I could’ve had an argument with you and been done. But you were right, and I knew you were right, and I still wanted to fight you over it because understanding doesn’t make it hurt less.”
Ari sets his pen down carefully. “You had a good reason to be angry,” he says at last.
“But that doesn’t make how I acted fair.” I push off the door and take a couple of steps into the room. “You weren’t trying to control me. You were trying to keep things from getting worse. You were protecting Niko. The baby. Me. All of it. And I made you stand there and take my temper anyway.”
“I can take your temper, detka,” he grins.
“I know you can,” I say. “That isn’t the point.”
For a second, he looks at me, probably waiting for me to finish. Then he says, very evenly, “I don’t need you to agree with every decision I make.”
I nod once. “I know,I—”
“What I do need,” he says, cutting me off gently, “is for you not to disappear on me when you don’t like one of them.”
There it is, the disappointment in his tone. I look down for a second; it stings, but I make myself look back at him. “I know. When I disappear like that, I’m not protecting anything. I’m just making you deal with it alone while I sulk somewhere else.” Ari’s mouth twitches at ‘sulk.’ Good. If I can make him nearly smile, then he can’t be too mad at me. “I won’t do that to you again,” I say. “I’m not promising I’ll like every call you make, because I won’t, and you’d know I’d be lying if I said otherwise. But I won’t vanish on you because I’m angry.”
Ari leans back in his chair slightly, eyes never leaving mine. “Do you mean that?”
“I do.”
He nods, then stands, moving around the desk and sitting on the edge opposite me. “Come here.” I take the last few steps between us, stepping between his spread legs. Then I lean down and kiss him. He kisses me back, his hand automatically coming up to tangle in my hair.
I let my forehead rest against his when we part, because, for all my good intentions, I’m still more tired than I’d care to admit. “We’re all right,” he says.
“I know, but you shouldn’t have had to drag that out of me.”
“No,” Ari says. “But I would rather drag it out of you than see you like that.”
“Christ, you’re romantic.” I laugh quietly.
His mouth lifts very slightly. “Shut up.”
“Make me,” I say automatically, making his hand tighten once at the back of my neck in warning, which is an excellent way of ensuring I grin instead of behaving. When he kisses me again, it’s brief and soft enough to melt my insides.
“Go to sleep,” he says, pulling back. “Tomorrow will be worse if you don’t.”
I huff a quiet laugh. “You always say that.”
“And I’m always right.”
I give him a final peck, then move toward the door, stopping with my hand on it and glancing back. “Thank you,” I say. Not for forgiving me exactly, but more for not letting me be a prick unchecked and putting up with me until I’ve got my head screwed back on properly.
Ari reads all of that in about half a second. “Anytime, detka.” he says.
I leave with my head clearer than it’s been in days, the pressure finally shifting into something I can work with instead of something that’s been working me over from the inside.
For the first time since Mason, since Cassie, since any of it, I feel properly aligned with the one person who matters most.
It doesn’t fix the world.
But it does mean I don’t have to fight it alone.
