She pours without measuring, fills both glasses to the brim, and hands me mine.
Damien stands in the middle of the room, pissed off, watching us as if he has walked into his own home and found two squatters staging a coup.
“I have to get dressed,” he says.
No one answers.
His gaze cuts to me across the room, waiting for something I don’t give him.
“I’ll be out for a while.”
I nod.
He waits as if waiting for me to ask where. Instead, I take a sip of wine and stare at the coffee table. He goes.
The second the bedroom door clicks shut behind him, Cassie turns to me.
“What the fuck was that?” she whispers.
“Nothing.”
Her eyes narrow. “Sky.”
Just my name, the way she says it when she’s telling me she already knows and I should stop wasting both our time.
“Don’t.”
“No. I came here with wine, and somehow I still feel underprepared.” She looks toward the bedroom door, then back at me. “And I brought two bottles.”
“It’s fine.” I take another sip. The wine is awful, but somehow Cassie is beside me, and it tastes better for it.
“There’s that word again.” She shakes her head slowly. “I swear to God, if “fine” were a person, I would hit it with my car. Reverse. Hit it again.”
A laugh spills out of me.
The bedroom door opens. Damien walks out wearing dark jeans and a black button-down with the sleeves rolled to the elbows, the ink on his forearms on full display. Hair fixed. Watch on. He has never once worn that to work. Not to meetings or client dinners. Not to any of the late-night emergencies that have become a pattern I stopped questioning months ago.
My stomach drops.
Cassie’s eyes move over him, then slide to me. She says nothing. She doesn’t need to.
Damien picks up his keys and phone from the counter, pockets them, and looks around the apartment. “I’m going.”
I say nothing.
He doesn’t kiss me goodbye or tell me when he’ll be home. He just shuts the door behind him.
As soon as he is gone, the apartment exhales.
Cassie waits three whole seconds—a new personal record—before she turns toward me. She pulls one knee up onto the couch and looks at me with those dark eyes that have never let me get away with anything.
“Tell me again,” she says. “Why the fuck are you with that asshole?”
I stare into my wine. “Cassie.”
“No, seriously, Sky.” She faces me fully. “Is it because you have nowhere else to go? If that’s it, pack a bag right now. You can come live with me. I have a couch, questionable neighbors, and absolutely zero men who smell like someone else’s perfume.”
She takes a long drink, winces, then holds the bottle at arm’s length and stares at it with genuine betrayal. “Jesus. This tastes like the grapes filed a police report.”
