Chapter 5 #2
Liam took the box from her hands. Examined the hinge with the focused attention of a man who understood broken things.
“It’s not junk,” he said. “The mechanism is intact. Just needs a new hinge pin and some patience.” He looked up at her, and something in his expression made her breath catch. “Can I?”
She nodded.
He stood, disappeared toward the kitchen, and returned with a small toolkit she didn’t know he’d accumulated. He settled back onto the couch—closer now, their knees almost touching—and began to work.
His hands were steady. Careful. The firelight caught the silver in his hair as he bent over the box, completely focused on the tiny mechanical parts.
Cassie watched him work and felt something terrifying happening in her chest.
“Why are you being so nice to me?” she asked. “I kidnapped you. Magically imprisoned you. Set off a thunderstorm in your general vicinity.”
“All true.” He didn’t look up. “Also you’ve never once tried to change how I feel. You’re chaos incarnate, but you’re honest chaos. That counts for something.”
“That’s a low bar.”
“You’d be surprised how few people clear it.”
He made a final adjustment, and the music box clicked softly. The lid swung open, perfectly aligned now. The mechanism began to turn, and a delicate melody filled the room—something old and sweet and achingly familiar.
Cassie’s grandmother, playing this for her on rainy afternoons. Before Derek. Before she learned to make herself small. Before she forgot what it felt like to want things without apology.
Her eyes spilled over before she could stop them.
“Sorry,” she whispered, swiping at her cheeks. “I don’t know why I’m—”
“Don’t apologize for feeling things.” Liam set the music box aside and turned to face her fully. His hand came up to cup her jaw, thumb brushing away tears. “That’s what he taught you to do. Apologize for being alive.”
“It’s just a music box.”
“It’s a piece of who you were before someone convinced you that who you were wasn’t enough.” His eyes searched hers. Storm-gray and intent and so close. “That woman is still in there. The one who feels things fully. Who takes up space. Who creates bloody thunderstorms when she’s overwhelmed.”
“She’s a lot.”
“She’s magnificent.” His voice dropped. Rough. “I’ve been trying not to notice, but you make it very difficult.”
“Liam—”
“I know.” He leaned his forehead against hers. “I know. The binding. The magic. Every reason this is a terrible idea.”
“We barely know each other.”
“I know you cry over music boxes and apologize for your own emotions. I know you make the walls change color when you look at me. I know you’re brave and terrified and trying so hard to hold it all together.” His breath was warm against her lips. “I know enough.”
The music box played on. The fire crackled. And Cassie stopped thinking.
She closed the distance between them.
His mouth was warm and tasted like wine and something she’d been missing for years. The kiss started soft—tentative, questioning—then deepened when she made a sound she’d never made before, something between a whimper and a sigh that seemed to undo him completely.
His hands slid into her hair. Her fingers gripped his shirt—that ridiculous too-small shirt—and pulled him closer. The binding between them hummed, but this didn’t feel like magic. This felt like choice. Like want. Like two broken people finally reaching for something good.
She could feel the heat of him through the thin cotton. The solid warmth of his chest. The way his breath caught when she pressed closer. Her hormones, apparently making up for lost time, were throwing a parade and setting off fireworks.
"Cassie," he murmured against her mouth. "Are you sure?"
"Yes. God, yes."
But even as she said it, something cold slithered through her chest. A voice that sounded like Derek. Like every rejection she'd ever swallowed.
He's only here because he's trapped. This isn't real. You're convenient.
She pulled back.
Liam's eyes searched her face. "What's wrong?"
"I just—" The doubt was rising now, drowning out everything else. "This is only happening because we're stuck together. The binding. The proximity. You wouldn't—"
"Wouldn't what?"
Say it. Say what you're really afraid of.
"You wouldn't choose this." She was pulling away, putting distance between them. "Not really. Not if you had options." Something flickered across his expression. Hurt. Raw and immediate.
"You don't know that."
"Don't I?" She wrapped her arms around herself. "You're literally trapped here, Liam. You can't leave my property. How am I supposed to know if any of this is real when you don't have a choice?"
"I have choices. I could ignore you. I could stay in my room and count the days until the binding breaks.
I could make this as miserable as possible for both of us.
" He took a step toward her, and she took a step back.
His jaw tightened. "Instead I'm here. With you.
Fixing your music boxes and talking you through magical storms and—"
"Because you're a good person. Because you're stuck and you're making the best of it." The words tasted like ash. "That's not the same as choosing me."
"How would you know the difference?" His accent thickened with frustration. "You've already decided what I feel. You've already decided you're not worth choosing. Nothing I say is going to change that, is it?"
She didn't answer. Couldn't.
"I'm not your ex-husband, Cassie. I'm not going to spend twenty years making you feel small.
" He ran a hand through his hair, and she could see the tension in his shoulders, the restraint it was taking not to reach for her again.
"But I can't prove something you've already decided is impossible.
You have to be willing to believe it might be real. "
"And if it's not? If the binding breaks and you realize this was all just... proximity and magic and convenience?"
"Then at least I'll know I tried." His voice dropped. "Can you say the same? Or are you going to push away everyone who gets close because your ex-husband was a coward?"
The words landed like a slap.
“I’m too much,” she whispered. “I’ve always been too much.”
“Christ, woman.” His voice cracked. “Don’t you understand? I like that you’re too much. I like the chaos and the weather patterns and the walls that can’t keep a secret. I like that you’re messy and real and you feel everything at full volume.”
“You shouldn’t.”
“Too bloody late.”
The silence stretched between them. The rain had stopped outside. The candles flickered lower.
“Liam…”
“No.” He held up a hand. “I’m not going to stand here and convince you I’m telling the truth.
Either you believe me or you don’t. Either you think you’re worth choosing or you don’t.
” His eyes were bright. Hurt. “But I’m not your ex.
I’m not going to make you smaller to make myself comfortable. And I won’t be blamed for his crimes.”
He turned toward the hallway.
“Where are you going?”
“To bed. Alone. Before I say something I regret.”
“Liam—”
The emotion rose in her chest like a wave—guilt and fear and desperate want all tangled together into something that felt like drowning.
The magic surged before she could stop it.
Derek’s ugly brown couch—the one he’d insisted on buying even though she hated it, the one she’d kept out of spite or laziness or some twisted form of self-punishment—burst into flames.
Not subtle flames. Not a gentle smolder. Full-blown fire, orange and hungry, consuming the cushions like they were made of dried kindling.
“HOLY SHIT—” Cassie grabbed for the throw blanket, beating at the flames while Luna yowled something about smoke damage and poor life choices.
Liam was there instantly, fire extinguisher appearing from somewhere, because of course he knew where it was, because he was annoyingly prepared for everything.
White foam covered the couch. The flames died. The sprinklers—which Cassie didn’t even know she had—chose that moment to kick in, drenching everything and everyone in a sad, unnecessary deluge.
They stood there, soaking wet, surrounded by foam and ash and the ruins of the worst couch in existence.
The walls had gone gray. A defeated sort of gray. A we’re all too emotionally exhausted for this gray.
“Well,” Luna said from the kitchen doorway, somehow completely dry, “that was dramatic.”
Cassie looked at Liam. He looked back. Water dripped from his hair, ran down his face, collected in the ridiculous neckline of his too-small shirt.
He looked tired. Hurt. Done.
“I think,” he said quietly, “we should just go to bed now. Separately.”
“Liam—”
“I’m not angry.” He was, though. She could see it in the set of his shoulders. “I’m just… I need space to think. And apparently you need space to burn furniture.”
He turned and walked down the hallway toward the guest room.
The door clicked shut behind him.
Cassie stood in her ruined living room, drenched and smoke-stained and more alone than she’d felt since the day Derek left.
She’d done this. Pushed him away. Let fear make her decisions because that was easier than believing she deserved something good.
She tried to follow him. To apologize. To say all the things she should have said.
The hallway wouldn’t let her.
The house, somehow, had closed off the corridor. Not with a wall—just with air that wouldn’t move. An invisible barrier that pressed back against her when she tried to push through.
“House,” she said, “let me through.”
The walls flickered. Apologetic but firm.
“HOUSE.”
Nothing.
She was stuck. Trapped in her own living room by her own magically-awakened house, which had apparently decided they both needed a time-out.
“This is a metaphor,” Luna observed from her perch. “For your emotional avoidance. The house is making it literal.”
“I don’t need commentary.”
“You need a lot of things. Starting with therapy and ending with a backbone.” The cat yawned. “Wake me when you’re ready to stop being an idiot.”
Luna padded away, leaving Cassie alone with the charred couch, the gray walls, and the echoing silence of everything she’d just ruined.
She sank down onto the one unburned patch of carpet and pressed her palms against her eyes.
The music box sat on the coffee table. Silent now. Its lid hung open, perfectly repaired, a gift from a man who fixed broken things without being asked.
She didn’t sleep.
Neither, she suspected, did he.