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She shifts beside me, one boot dragging softly through the dirt, and I know that sound. It’s the sound of someone wanting to leave their own skin but having nowhere safer to put themselves.

Her breath leaves her slowly, uneven at the end, like some part of her has been holding it since Scarlett went still.

“I didn’t leave her.” Cass’s voice comes quietly, scraped down to the part of her that still knows the difference.

“No,” I agree. “You just left me.”

That does it.

She turns then, just enough that I can see her face tighten, grief pulling sharp lines where time hasn’t had the decency to soften anything yet.

“I couldn’t stay,” she rasp. “Everywhere I looked⁠—”

“You saw her,” I cut in, but there’s no heat in it. Not enough to make this easier. “I know you did. I heard you crying through the walls.”

Cass goes still.

“But I saw her too.”

Her jaw tightens like she’s holding something back with her teeth.

“You weren’t alone,” she says. “Malek⁠—”

I turn then, slowly, carefully, because his name in her mouth feels like pressure against a wound that has not finished deciding whether it wants to close.

“Don’t.”

The word comes out quiet, but it lands hard enough to stop both of us.

“He doesn’t get to be the reason you disappeared,” I continue. “He doesn’t get to be the excuse that makes leaving sound cleaner than it was.”

Cass flinches.

“I was drowning,” she says. “I couldn’t breathe here anymore.”

My chest tightens so sharply I press my palm harder into the dirt, grounding myself against Scarlett’s grave because there is nowhere else for the hurt to go.

“And I could?”

The question hangs there between us, heavy and ugly and impossible to answer without making one of us bleed worse.

“I woke up every morning and you were gone,” I say, quieter now. “The house was quiet in a way it had never been quiet before. No footsteps in the hall. No voice from the kitchen. No warning before the bad thoughts found me. Just absence.”

My throat burns. I swallow past it.

“Losing her wasn’t enough,” I continue. “I lost you too.”

Cass’s voice drops. “I didn’t know how to stay without breaking.”

Something in my chest shifts—not softening, not forgiveness, but the terrible shape of understanding trying to make room beside the anger.

“You didn’t even give me the chance to break with you.”

Cass looks at the grave then. Really looks. Her eyes trace the uneven earth like she is seeing the damage for the first time instead of surviving around it.

“I thought if I stayed,” she whispers, “one of us wouldn’t make it.”

The words land heavy.