Page 180 of Suite 7

“Then we figure out what that looks like,” he says. “And it won’t be what you’re afraid it is. You don’t lose her the way you’re imagining.”

“You can’t know that.”

“No. But I know her.” His voice is steady. “And she texted you.”

“She texted me coffee. Once. That’s not⁠—“

“Vera.” He frames my face in both hands, the gesture that means look at me, all the way, and I do. “It cost her something to send it. You know it did. And she sent it anyway.” His thumbs still against my cheekbones. “That’s Sloane choosing. That’s what it looks like when she chooses.”

I look at him. The clarity in him when he’s certain about something. The way his certainty never tries to overwrite my reality — it sits alongside it, steady, like a fixed point I can orient by.

And then the other thing arrives, the one that’s been sitting just underneath everything for weeks, and before I can file it or manage it or decide whether it’s worth saying, it’s already out.

“Are we okay?”

He goes still. “What do you mean?”

“I mean—” I stop. Try again. “I’ve been so inside the Sloane thing. The fallout, the waiting, what I did, what it cost. And I keep thinking—“ I pause. The fear that’s been sitting underneath all of it, the one I’ve been not-looking-at for weeks, surfaces before I can stop it. “I keep thinking about whether I’ve been too much. Whether all of this — the guilt, the panic attacks, the crying on your kitchen floor — whether at some point you looked at everything I brought into your life and thought⁠—“

“Vera—”

“Let me finish.” I hold his gaze even though it costs me. “Damon used to say I was a lot to handle. That I never made anything easy. That someone who needed as much as I needed was always going to be exhausting.” I can hear how flat my voice has gone, the way it does when I’m saying something I’ve carried so long it’s lost its edges. “And I’ve spent six months trying not to think about whether he was right. About whether you’d eventually get there. To that conclusion.”

He doesn’t say anything for a moment. Then, “He was wrong,” he says in the same way he said it in the dungeon the first night, like there’s no version of reality in which this requires deliberation. “Every part of you that believed him is also wrong.”

“Kane—”

“I’m talking.” He holds my gaze. “You want to know what I see when I look at what the last six weeks have been? I see someone who was terrified of losing her best friend and couldn’t sleep and needed to be held and told me so. I see someone who sat on my kitchen floor and fell apart and let me be there for it.” A muscle shifts in his jaw. “That’s not too much, Vera. That’s trust. You trusted me with the worst of it and that’s not a burden. That’s exactly what I want.”

My throat is tight.

“Damon wanted you smaller,” he says. “Quieter. Less. He called it too much because he didn’t have the range for it.” His hands slide from my face to my shoulders and stay there, warm and certain. “I have been waiting fourteen months for someone who could make me bring everything. You’re the only one who’s ever asked me to.” He holds my gaze. “That’s not exhausting. That’s the point.”

The tears come before I can stop them.

“I keep waiting,” I whisper, “for you to get there. To the version of this where I’ve finally been too much.”

“I know.” He says it without flinching. “I’ve watched you waiting for it.” His thumbs press gently against my shoulders. “I’m not getting there. I want you to hear that not as reassurance but as fact. The parts of you Damon couldn’t hold are the parts I came looking for.”

I press my lips together. Look down. Look back up.

“I stopped checking,” I say. “Whether you were okay. Whether we were okay. Whether this has been something other than damage control for the last few weeks.”

“It hasn’t been damage control.” He says it without hesitation. “Not for me.”

“Even with all of it?”

“Especially with all of it.” He reaches for my hand. Takes it. “When I sat outside Sloane’s building and didn’t go up — I wasn’t thinking about whether she and I would survive this. I was also thinking about you. Whether you’d eaten. Whether you were doing the thing where you tell yourself you’re fine when you’re not.” His jaw tightens slightly. “The accounting doesn’t go away. But it’s been background. You’ve been foreground. You’ve been foreground since the beginning.”

Warmth moves through my chest.

“I keep thinking,” I say quietly, “about the version of this where we don’t. Where we look at what it costs and decide it’s too much. I keep trying to think my way to that version.”

“And?”

“I can’t get there.” I meet his eyes. “There’s no version of any future I can actually want that doesn’t have you in it.” I let that sit between us. “Which is terrifying. Knowing something that clearly.”

“Yeah,” he says. “It is.”