CHAPTER TEN
SIXTEEN YEARS OLD
· · ·
Things didn’t change all at once.
If they had, maybe I would’ve noticed sooner.
But somewhere between sixteen and seventeen, Cassian started slipping through my fingers in a way that felt different from all the other times.
Not absence. Not distance. Something harder to name.
Like he was still there but had stopped being mine.
Even though I was a fucking idiot for even thinking he ever was.
· · ·
The anxiety had been a quiet thing for years.
Background noise. Something I’d learned to manage, to work around, to mostly ignore. Panic attacks came and went. I knew the shape of them by now. I knew how to breathe through them, how to find the edges of a room with my eyes, how to wait.
But this year it got louder.
I don’t think it was a coincidence.
My nervous system had always known things about myself before my brain caught up.
· · ·
We’re hanging out in my room after school.
He’s half-draped over the bed, brooding, headphones in. I’m sitting cross-legged across from him, pretending to do homework — but really I’m just watching him. Trying to figure out when he started feeling so different.
Not different like the pool at fifteen. Not the good kind of different.
Just — further away. Even in the same room.
“What.” He rolls his eyes, tugging one headphone off.
“Nothing, just…” I hesitate. “What do you wanna do?”
“I am doing it.” He slides the headphone back on, already gone again.
Okay. Fine.
I grab my homework. English exam tomorrow. My focus keeps slipping — not to the book but to him.
The slight stubble of his jaw. The way he breathes when he’s almost asleep.
This is fine. This is homework-adjacent. Completely productive use of my time.
At some point I realize an hour’s passed and I haven’t read a single thing.
He’s asleep on my bed, still sitting up.
I let myself look.
Really look.
· · ·
He’s different than he was at twelve. At fourteen. The soft edges of a kid long gone, replaced with something more mature. Darker.
The kind of face that makes you want to find out what’s behind it.
His hair is longer now — dirty blonde, always a little past what my school dress code would allow, curling slightly at the ends where it hits his collar.
Wearing all black again. Some band tee I don’t recognize. Ripped jeans. A small outline of a tattoo on his left arm — some kid at school knew someone with a tattoo gun.
I glance down at myself.
I wonder how he sees me. If he even does anymore.
The thought hits harder than it should.
I look back down at my book, pretending I care about whatever I was reading.
I find myself looking at him again.
At how lean he's become—stronger. Broader.
I look back up.
He's awake.
Watching me.
Shit.
Heat floods my face instantly—fast, uncontrollable.
He's always loved that about me.
How easy it is to read me. How I can never hide anything.
I hate it.
He suddenly throws a pillow at me.
I catch it.
Throw it back harder.
“I was just trying to figure out how to yell at you for wearing shoes on my bed,” I mutter.
“Is that why you were staring at my arms?”
He smirks. Raises his eyebrows.
Winks.
I scoff and lunge at him before I can think too hard about it.
We’re laughing. Wrestling. Rolling across the bed like we’re ten years old again.
It’s nothing new — this is what we do. What we’ve always done.
Except we haven’t done it in a while.
So it feels sacred.
And I let myself have it. Just for a second. Just this.
Except —
Suddenly, I’m on top of him.
· · ·
The air changes.
Too close. Too warm. I become suddenly, unbearably aware of every point of contact between us — his hands bracing against the mattress, my knee against his ribs, the way his breath has gone slightly uneven.
My body understands before my brain does.
The kind of awareness that can’t be unlearned.
Want.
I freeze.
Because we both know.
We both felt it.
We’re sixteen.
We’ve had nearly a year since the almost.
I thought I knew what to do with this feeling by now.
I don’t.
Not like this.
Not with him looking up at me like that.
Looking at me the same way.
I push off him quickly, muttering something under my breath. Blaming it on anything that makes this mean less than it does.
I don’t look at him.
I can’t.
My chest feels too tight. My skin too hot.
If I look at him I might see it on his face.
Disgust.
Confusion.
Something worse.
My face is buried in my pillow. I hope it’s enough to suffocate me so I don’t have to come back up.
“Hey.”
His voice is softer now.
Careful.
“It’s okay.”
I don’t believe him.
But I want to.
He taps the bed beside him. Casual. Like nothing just happened.
“Wanna play?”
Relief hits so hard it almost makes me dizzy.
“Yeah,” I say quickly, sitting down beside him. Grabbing the controller like it’s something solid to hold onto.
Something normal.
· · ·
I love Cassian.
I know exactly what kind of love it is now.
I’ve known since fourteen.
Fine, If I’m being honest, since eight.
But I’ll never say it.
Because he’s the person I tell everything to and this is the one thing I can’t.
So we can get past this.
We will.
Because I won’t bring it up again.
I won’t risk ruining this.
Because I know — this is only me.