“Science, Sky. Purely academic.”
I press both hands over my eyes and stay like this for a moment in the dark behind my palms.
“It was.” I stop, pull my hands away from my face, and start again. “It was a lot.”
Cassie lets out a sound of pure delight. “I knew it. I knew it. The quiet ones always are.”
“He isn’t quiet.”
“He is quieter than he was.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
“No,” she agrees, and her voice shifts, the teasing softening slightly around the edges without disappearing entirely. She leans back into the cushions, tucks one leg beneath her, and looks at me in that way that means the jokes have done their job and something real is required now. “Was it awful, though? Not the sex part. The rest of it. Seeing him again. Talking to him. All of it.”
I gaze down at my hands. My fingers still remember gripping Zane’s shoulders. The sheets.
“It was.” I stop, because there is no word big enough and no word safe enough to put around it all without either minimizing it or making it more than I am ready to call it out loud. “A lot.”
Cassie nods slowly. “That tracks. Zane has always been a lot. Even at seventeen, he had the emotional atmosphere of a house fire. You never knew whether you were going to get warmth or ash.”
A laugh catches in my chest and hurts on the way out.
“He apologized,” I say.
Cassie goes still. That alone tells me how significant it is, because Cassie never goes still.
“For what he said to me,” I continue, my voice softer now, “the last time we saw each other. How he told me I was just a fuck. A mouth for him to use and nothing else.”
Cassie’s expression turns murderous.
I glance away and keep talking before I lose my nerve. “He said he knew sex mattered to me. That I didn’t give myself to people easily. And he used it because he thought that if he made me hate him, that was the only way to make me leave.”
I swallow hard against the tightness in my throat. “He said he thought he would ruin me eventually. That being with him had already dragged me into things I never should have been near. So he made himself into something ugly enough for me to walk away from.”
Cassie leans forward slowly, elbows on her knees, and looks at the floor for a moment before looking back at me. “It is also completely fucked up.”
“I know.”
“It is also exactly the kind of stupid martyr bullshit he would pull because apparently asking the woman he loves what she wants was too much emotional cardio.” Cassie reaches for my hand, her expression softening. “Did you believe him?”
“Yes.”
“Then why do you look like your heart is trying to crawl out of your chest and flee the state?”
I let out a deep breath. “Because I still love him.”
The words leave me and the room doesn’t collapse. I do not collapse either, which is either personal growth or shock, and I cannot tell which right now.
Cassie’s face softens. “I know.”
“No, I mean.” My voice cracks and I hate the sound of it, even now. After everything, I cannot say this without it costing me something physical. “I never stopped. Not when he hurt me. Not even when I was with Damien. Not when I told myself everysingle morning that I was fine and meant it less each time. Not once. He was always there, like some fucked-up permanent damage with a heartbeat that I could not medicate or outrun.”
Cassie squeezes my hand, saying nothing.
“I wanted to hate him.”
“I’m aware,” she says.
