Everything inside me goes still.
The apartment falls quiet around me.
Even the movie is more distant now, voices bleeding through from somewhere far away, muffled by the rush of blood in my ears and the weight of seven years pressing down on my chest all at once.
Cassie’s voice drops. Softer now. The version of her she lets out only when it matters.
“I was there too, Sky. Do you remember? I remember every single part of it.” She pauses, and I can hear her breathing change as she chooses her words carefully. “You had a voice then. You had this light that came off you when he was around, even if you were oblivious to it, but I could see it from across the room. You argued back. You laughed. You were so fucking alive it was almost annoying.” Another pause. Heavier this time. “With that asshole, you’ve got nothing. You’ve gone quiet in a way that scares me.”
My hand presses flat against my stomach. “I said stop.”
“No. You built yourself a nice little cage there, and let some asshole with good sheets and a credit card convince you it was a home.”
“You are ignorant, Cass.”
“I know Zane Rivera would burn the whole world down before letting anyone make you feel small. I could see how much he loved you before everything turned to shit. I was there for that, too.”
Something splits open inside my chest. “He also destroyed me.”
“I am aware of that.”
“Then don’t make him sound like some tragic hero.”
“I’m not.” Her voice is flat. “He was a fucking idiot with a hero complex and the emotional communication skills of a brick hurled through a window.”
A laugh breaks out of me, then it’s just as quickly gone.
Cassie hears it anyway. “Exactly. A romantic nightmare. Ten out of ten for cheekbones and that jaw, minus forty points for decision-making. But he was your idiot. And you have never once in your life looked at Damien the way you looked at him. Not even close. And you know it.”
“Cass.” My throat burns. “You don’t get it.”
“Then explain it.”
I turn my gaze toward the bedroom.
The door sits half open, the dark just beyond it. There is nothing to explain. That’s the problem.
Damien is simple in the way things are when they don’t ask too much of you.
Yeah, he doesn’t rip me apart with a single glance. He doesn’t make my pulse trip over itself just by walking into a room. He doesn’t know every scar beneath my skin, nor the exact shape of the girl I was before the world turned cruel and left its marks.
“Damien is… stable,” I say.
Cassie makes a gagging sound. “That word should never be used as a romantic endorsement.”
“He has a life.”
“So does a houseplant.”
“He cares about me.”
Her voice drops, stripping back. “Does he? Or does he care that you make him look less empty when people come over?”
“Fuck you.”
“I love you too.”
“I mean it, Cass.”
