CHAPTER NINE
FIFTEEN YEARS OLD
· · ·
There were things I was good at hiding.
My feelings for Cassian — mostly. At least I thought at that time. Or I hoped.
The way certain rooms felt too small sometimes, too loud, the walls doing something wrong, closing in on me — that, less so.
The panic attacks had been happening since I was eleven. Since the night of the sirens and the flashing lights and my parents coming back inside with their faces rearranged into something I didn’t recognize.
They came and went. Sometimes months would pass and I’d think maybe I’d outgrown them.
Then one would find me again.
· · ·
This one found me at school.
I don’t even remember what started it. That was the thing about them — they didn’t always need a reason. Sometimes the body just decided.
My chest tightened in the middle of a hallway between classes and then the walls were too close and the sound was wrong and I couldn’t get enough air no matter how much I took in.
I made it outside.
Sat down on the steps at the side of the building where nobody went and put my head between my knees and waited for it to pass.
It did, eventually.
They always did.
But I missed two classes and by the time I texted my mom she was already on her way and by the time she got there I was fine — or fine-adjacent, the wrung-out version of fine that comes after — and she held my face in both hands and looked at me for a long time without saying anything.
On the drive home she called Cassian.
I didn’t ask her to.
She just did.
· · ·
He was sitting on my front steps when we pulled in.
Just there. Like it was obvious. Like there was nowhere else he’d be.
He probably snuck out of school. For me.
My mom squeezed my hand before I got out of the car.
I didn’t look at him right away. I was still in that raw, embarrassed place that comes after — the one where existing feels slightly too loud, where your own skin feels like it belongs to someone else.
Where I’m embarrassed I felt too much.
And couldn’t handle being a person like everyone else.
He fell into step beside me without a word.
We walked past my front door.
Past the side gate.
Into the backyard.
· · ·
We ended up by the pool.
The garden was in full bloom — my mom’s daisies everywhere, messy and bright and completely indifferent to everything that had happened today.
Maybe I should have been raised a daisy. Maybe that would have been easier.
We sat at the edge with our feet in the water. The afternoon was golden. The kind of late September day that feels like summer making one last argument for itself.
Neither of us said anything for a while.
That was the thing about Cassian. He never rushed it. Never tried to fix it or reframe it or tell you it wasn’t a big deal. He just sat in it with you.
I’d learned that from him.
He’d learned it from somewhere I didn’t know about yet.
Eventually I told him what happened.
Not dramatically. Just — the facts of it. The hallway, the steps, missing class, my mom coming.
He listened with his eyes on the water.
When I finished he was quiet for a moment.
Then —
“Does it happen a lot?”
“Sometimes.”
He nodded like that was enough. Like he wasn’t going to push.
“First time was the night your mom died,” I whispered.
I don’t know why I said it.
“The sirens. I didn’t know what was happening next door and I just —”
I stopped.
He looked at me then.
I was so worried about you , I said with my eyes.
Something moved across his face that he didn’t quite manage to put away in time.
Like he could read my mind.
“I didn’t know that,” he said.
“I know.”
He squeezed my hand.
· · ·
We stayed out there until the light changed.
The sun dropping low, the sky doing that thing it does — all magenta and amber and slightly unreal, like someone turned the saturation up on the whole world.
At some point he leaned back on his hands and looked up at it.
I watched him instead.
The light caught the angles of his face. His jaw. The lowering sun catching gold. His hair longer now, the ends of it almost touching his shoulders.
He turned and caught me looking.
I didn’t look away fast enough.
Neither did he.
· · ·
We went inside when it got dark.
My room. The familiar geography of it. My desk, my books, the window he’d climbed through a hundred times.
He sat on my bed. I sat beside him. Closer than necessary.
We put something on — neither of us could tell you what — and at some point the space between us just disappeared.
His shoulder against mine. My arm against his. The warmth of him seeping into me.
Normal.
Except nothing about how I felt was normal and I was close to running out of room to pretend otherwise.
It happened slowly.
The way things do when both people are pretending they don’t feel what they feel.
The movie — whatever it was — cast everything in low blue light. His face close. His breathing even.
And then he turned toward me slightly and I turned toward him slightly and the distance between us went from inches to almost nothing and I felt the whole world narrow down to exactly this.
His eyes dropped.
Just for a second.
Just long enough.
Then back up.
He didn’t move.
I didn’t move.
The air between us felt like something charged.
Electric.
Like if either of us breathed wrong it would shatter.
· · ·
And then his hand found mine.
Not quick. Not accidental.
Slow and deliberate, the way you do something you’ve thought about.
His fingers slid between mine and stayed there and I stopped pretending to watch whatever was on the screen and just — felt it. The heat of his hand. The way it fit.
Closed my eyes.
I turned my head.
He turned his.
We were close enough that I could feel the warmth coming off his skin, infecting me to the bone. Burning me.
His eyes were dark in the low light.
But still that blue I loved.
Always that blue.
He exhaled.
Soft and unsteady in a way I’d never heard from him before.
His nose brushed mine.
And for one suspended, weightless moment —
I thought.
This is it.
This is finally it.
· · ·
Then he stopped.
Pulled back a fraction.
Not far.
Just enough.
He looked at me for a long moment without saying anything.
Something in his expression I couldn’t read — something complicated and wanting and afraid all at once.
Then he looked back at the screen.
His hand stayed in mine.
He didn’t let go.
And I didn’t either.
· · ·
He stayed until I fell asleep.
For once.
When I woke in the night he was still there, on top of the covers, one hand behind his head, staring at the ceiling.
I didn’t say anything.
I just watched him exist in the dark for a little while.
Like something I was memorizing.
Like I already knew it was temporary.
Like I could hear his thoughts.
· · ·
He was gone by morning.
But this time — this time he left the window open for us. And I tried not to think about what that meant.