24 Cassius #2
She goes very still again.
“Cass,” she whispers, and my name sounds different in her mouth now. It’s softer, hurt already. “You are not unsafe.”
I look at her and all I can think is how badly I want that to be true just because she said it.
“I am for you.”
Her face crumples in this small, awful way, like I just said something so unfair her body doesn’t even know where to put it. “No, you’re not.”
“Zae, you almost got hurt.”
“That matters to you more than it matters to me.”
“That’s the problem. It should matter to you.” My voice sharpens enough that she blinks. “You had to duck, Zae!”
I can still see it when I close my eyes. That flash of movement. Her body dropping out of the path of my elbow. The space where her face would have been if she hadn’t moved fast enough. I feel like we’re going around in circles.
She swallows. “You weren’t trying to hurt me.”
“No,” I agree immediately. “I wasn’t. But intent doesn’t mean shit if one day you actually get hurt because of me.”
She takes another step toward me, close enough now that if I let myself move an inch, I could fold into her and forget why I came.
“I know what happened. I was there,” she reminds me, voice trembling but steady enough to fight with. “I know you. I know the difference between you losing control and you caring too much in a bad moment.”
My jaw tightens before I respond. “That’s not supposed to be your job.”
“What?”
“You shouldn’t have to know the difference.”
Her eyes close for one second, then open again. “It’s not a job.” Her voice is starting to break. “That’s what loving someone is. You know them. You know their bad parts and their good parts and you stay.”
“No.”
The word comes out harder than I mean it to, and she jolts, surprised by my tone. I shut my eyes and drag in a slow breath.
“Not with this,” I correct, quieter now, but the force is still there.
“You shouldn’t have to stand in front of me and hope I come back fast enough.
You shouldn’t have to read my face that closely.
You shouldn’t have to measure how tight my jaw is or whether my hands are shaking and what that means in terms of how close you can stand. ”
Her chin trembles.
“I can handle you.”
I look away because if I don’t, I’ll cave.
This is the hardest thing I’ve had to do in my entire life.
Letting her go. Letting go of the comfort she brings me.
The laughs. The way she makes my heart feel warm and hopeful.
She’s everything to me, but I can’t do this to her.
I can’t make her take care of me like this.
I need to get myself under control. I need to be safe for her.
“That’s exactly what you shouldn’t have to do.”
“No.” She shakes her head faster now. “No, that’s not what I mean. I’m there for you. I know you. I’m not scared of you, Cass.”
I laugh once, but there’s nothing in it. “You should be.”
“You’re not some villain. You’re not evil.” She reaches for me on instinct. Her hand lifts toward my face the way it always does when one of us is close to falling apart.
I step back far enough that her hand stops in the air and she sees me do it. That’s the moment everything shifts. Her eyes fill immediately. The tears don’t fall all at once. They gather first, making her look even more confused by them than I feel by what I’m doing.
“Don’t,” she whispers.
I don’t know if she means don’t step away or don’t do this at all. Probably both.
My throat burns.
“Zae.”
She shakes her head before I can say anything else.
“No. Don’t say my name like that. Don’t—” Her voice breaks. She presses her lips together, trying to catch it, trying to hold onto whatever dignity she can salvage from this. “Don’t act like this is some noble thing you’re doing.”
I stare at the wall over her shoulder for half a second because she’s not wrong, and that somehow makes it worse.
“I’m not acting like that.”
“You are.” Now the tears are coming properly, silent and bright, tracking down her cheeks while she keeps standing there. “You’re deciding what I can handle. You’re deciding what I deserve. You’re deciding what this is without me.”
“Because if I leave it up to you, you’ll stay.”
“Yeah,” she cries, and that hits me harder than anything else so far because there’s no shame in it. Just the truth. “Yeah, I’ll stay. Just like you stay for me. I love you.”
The room goes dead quiet. My chest tightens so hard it almost folds me in. I know she does, but that’s not the same thing as hearing it right now, like this, with tears on her face. I close my eyes for half a second, then open them.
“I love you too.”
That ruins her, because if I say it back and I mean it, then this should stop. But it doesn’t. She shakes her head again, smaller now, like she can’t make sense of it all.
“Then don’t,” she whispers. “Cass… please.”
There it is. The word I knew was coming and still wasn’t ready for.
Please.
I feel it everywhere. In my throat, my chest, my hands. I clench them so hard my nails bite into my palms.
“Zae,” I call her name, my voice practically gone now. “I love you. I love you so much. That’s why I can’t keep standing this close to you pretending wanting you is enough. I can’t be the reason you get hurt one day. I won’t be.”
“You’re not listening to me.” She’s crying silently now, tears just falling while she shakes her head at me like she can undo the whole thing if she keeps moving.
“I am.”
“No, you’re not. You’re deciding for me.”
I look away because she’s right, and I hate her a little for finding the truth that fast. “Maybe I am.”
Her voice cracks, and it almost takes me down with it. “Then stop.”
I can’t. Not tonight.
I drag a hand over my face because if I don’t, I’m going to do something stupid, something selfish, something that feels better for ten seconds and ruins the point of this completely.
“Why can’t loving you be enough?”
Because you’re not supposed to have to drag me back from the edge.
Because I can still feel how close it got to me accidentally hurting you.
Because I don’t trust what happens the next time—and there will be a next time, because that’s how this works. It doesn’t vanish because I want it to.
Because you love me enough to stay, and I love you enough not to let you.
I don’t say any of that. I look at her and tell the truth in the smallest version I can manage.
“Because loving you doesn’t make me safe.”
She lets out this tiny broken sound I’ll probably hear in my sleep for the rest of my life. Then she wipes at her face angrily with both hands, like she’s furious with herself for crying in front of me.
“I hate you right now,” she says through tears, and the second it’s out, more tears follow because she doesn’t mean it and we both know it.
“Good,” I answer, because it’s the only thing that will help her survive this. “That’ll make it easier.”
She laughs once, short and wrecked, and shakes her head at me. “It won’t.”
I know.
I don’t step closer. I don’t touch her, even though every part of me wants to.
That’s the whole fucking problem.
If I touch her now, I won’t leave. If I don’t leave, I’m asking her to trust a version of me I can’t even trust. She looks small standing there in my hoodie and her tears and all the fight she’s still trying to keep in her spine.
I hate myself.
I hate that she’s going to remember this room this way now. I hate that Riley’s going to come back later and find her here with red eyes and no explanation that doesn’t make me sound exactly as bad as I feel.
I hate all of it.
But I still turn, because if I keep looking at her, I’m done. The doorknob is cold under my hand. Behind me, she says my name again, quiet this time. No longer pleading, just raw, and I stop, because my body betrays me one last time. I don’t turn around. If I do, I’ll want to stay and undo it all.
My voice comes out shredded anyway. “You have to be okay without me.”
The silence behind me lasts one second too long. Then, very quietly, she says, “I don’t know how.”
That almost knocks me flat. I close my eyes, because I can’t fix that. I open the door and leave before I do something unforgivable, like go back to her.
The hallway feels too bright. Too normal. I walk past without looking at anyone. Down the stairs. Out the side door. Cold air hits my face hard enough to sting.
My hands are shaking now, and I shove them into my hoodie pocket because there’s no one here to see but me and I still don’t want to. I make it to my car and sit there with the door open for a second, staring at nothing. My chest feels hollowed out.
This is necessary, but that doesn’t make it feel right.
I think about her standing in front of me crying and still trying to argue her way back to us, still trying to hand me reasons to stay. I think about the way she reached for me and the way I stepped back. I think about saying I love you and meaning it and leaving anyway.
That one’s going to live in my ribs for a while. Maybe forever.
I close the car door finally and rest my forehead against the steering wheel. I straighten up after a minute, start the engine, and pull away from the curb with my jaw locked so tight it hurts.
I don’t look back at the dorm. I don’t let myself picture her room. I just drive with no destination in mind. And the entire time, the only thought that stays clear all the way through the noise in my head is the one I walked in there with.
She loves me. That’s exactly why I have to leave.
I repeat it until it almost sounds like the truth.