“I’ve blamed myself for you going to prison,” she says quietly. “For years.”
“Don’t.”
Her eyes lift to meet mine. “I watched what happened to Sky after you left.”
Every muscle in my body tightens.
There it is. The question that has been clawing its way up the inside of my throat every waking hour since I told Skylar to goand never come back. Was she better off without me? Did she get the life she deserved?
I drag in a breath, hold it, before forcing it out slowly.
She looks back down at the can. “I’m sorry, Zane.”
“You already said that.” I scrub a hand down my face. “Cass, listen to me. I was already headed somewhere bad before that day, and you know it. I was fighting against everything that looked at me wrong. Something was going to happen eventually. You didn’t cause that.”
“Can I ask you something, Zane?”
“Depends.”
“Why did you say what you said to Skylar?” She pauses. “At the prison, when she visited.”
Everything in me goes still in a way that has nothing to do with being calm.
I never loved you. You were just a fuck.
I stare at the floor as Cassie waits for an answer.
“I didn’t want her to waste her life on me,” I say, my voice coming out flat. “I got seven years, Cass. She was eighteen. She’d already lost enough without losing the years she had left to visiting hours, phone calls, and some inmate number on a form. She would have waited.” I look up. “You know she would have. Because she’s stubborn enough to confuse loyalty with self-destruction. She would have called it love, and she would have waited every single day. And I couldn’t let her do that.”
There is a moment of silence between us before Cassie speaks again.
“She loved you, Zane.”
I pick up the past tense—loved. My chest caves in around that single syllable as if something structural just gave way.
“I know she did.”
“Do you still love her?”
The office grows quiet in a way that has nothing to do with sound.
I could say yes.
The word is right there, at the front of my mouth, where it has lived all this time. I could hand it to Cassie and watch her carry it straight back to Skylar without even meaning to. Not because she would betray me. But because love has a pulse. It gets heard even when nobody speaks. It moves through people, whether they intend it or not.
I could lie again and say no. Pretend seven years killed what seven years only starved for.
I stare at Cassie and she stares back.
“How is she?” The question tears out of me before pride can clamp a hand over its mouth.
Cassie’s entire face shifts. “She’s alive.”
That answer hits wrong. It’s too vague, too careful. The kind of answer you give when the real one would do damage.
“That’s not what I asked.”
“It’s the answer I’m giving you.”
