Chapter 4 #3
“There’s that word again.” She shakes her head slowly. “I swear to God, if “fine” were a person, I would hit it with my car. Reverse. Hit it again.”
A laugh spills out of me.
The bedroom door opens. Damien walks out wearing dark jeans and a black button-down with the sleeves rolled to the elbows, the ink on his forearms on full display.
Hair fixed. Watch on. He has never once worn that to work.
Not to meetings or client dinners. Not to any of the late-night emergencies that have become a pattern I stopped questioning months ago.
My stomach drops.
Cassie’s eyes move over him, then slide to me. She says nothing. She doesn’t need to.
Damien picks up his keys and phone from the counter, pockets them, and looks around the apartment. “I’m going.”
I say nothing.
He doesn’t kiss me goodbye or tell me when he’ll be home. He just shuts the door behind him.
As soon as he is gone, the apartment exhales.
Cassie waits three whole seconds—a new personal record—before she turns toward me. She pulls one knee up onto the couch and looks at me with those dark eyes that have never let me get away with anything.
“Tell me again,” she says. “Why the fuck are you with that asshole?”
I stare into my wine. “Cassie.”
“No, seriously, Sky.” She faces me fully. “Is it because you have nowhere else to go? If that’s it, pack a bag right now. You can come live with me. I have a couch, questionable neighbors, and absolutely zero men who smell like someone else’s perfume.”
She takes a long drink, winces, then holds the bottle at arm’s length and stares at it with genuine betrayal. “Jesus. This tastes like the grapes filed a police report.”
“You bought it.”
“I was in a hurry.”
A laugh builds in my chest but turns into something else before it escapes.
“Sky,” she says quietly.
My eyes sting as I stare into the wine in my glass once more, letting the silence hold for a moment before I say it. “I don’t know how to leave him, Cass.”
Cassie goes very still before she reaches over and takes my hand. “Then don’t leave tonight. Just stop lying to yourself tonight. That’s enough.”
I close my eyes and let her words settle.
Her hand rests over mine for a moment, warm and still, not asking for anything. Then she lets go, and I open my eyes.
She’s already pulling her phone out of her pocket.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“Ordering food.”
“I have food.”
She gives me a look. “You have Damien food. Tiny crackers. Sad cheese. Hummus that tastes like it gave up on its dreams somewhere around the second processing step.”
“There are leftovers.”
“From what? His last ego-feeding?” She’s already scrolling. “I’m getting noodles and spring rolls for us, and something fried enough to clog an artery.”
I pull my knees to my chest and listen to her cheerfully argue with the delivery app about substitutions, and something in my chest loosens without my permission. The apartment feels different with her in it.
She puts the phone away and looks at me. “Eighteen minutes. Now talk.”
“About what?”
“Anything. Everything. Nothing. I don’t care. I just need to hear your real voice for five minutes, not the one you use when he’s in the room.”
I sigh.
We talk.
Cassie tells me about the guy at the deli where she works who reorganizes the display cabinet every morning by height, from tallest to shortest, and has an emotional breakdown if anyone moves a container of potato salad out of sequence.
She tells me about her manager, Rhonda, who stress-eats the day-old pastries and then blames the suppliers.
I tell her about the woman in the apartment downstairs who walks her tiny dog in a pram and glares at anyone who dares look at it as if it were an animal.
Cassie laughs so hard at that one that she spills wine on Damien’s cushion.
We both stare at it for a second before laughing it off.
By the time the food arrives the wine is half gone. Lucky she ordered two more bottles. We eat straight from the containers balanced on our knees the way we always did. The spring rolls are demolished before either of us thinks to offer the other one first.
“God,” Cassie says around a mouthful of noodles, eyes closing briefly in genuine satisfaction. “I missed this.”
“You missed eating cheap takeout on someone else’s couch?”
She points her fork at me. “I missed you not pretending you know which fork pairs with emotional repression.”
I glance sideways at her. “I don’t do that.”
“Sky. You have rich girlfriend posture now. Your spine has opinions. It’s genuinely alarming.”
“I do not have rich girlfriend posture.”
“You’re sitting like someone might grade your form.” She reaches over and tops off my glass without asking. “Drink. It’s excellent, budget-friendly therapy.”
We drink, eat, and laugh until the containers are empty and the tightness in my chest has loosened into something that almost feels like breathing normally.
Then Cassie goes quiet. “I saw him,” she says.
She meets my eyes. “Zane.”
“Why would I care?” My chest twists so violently it feels like something has torn itself loose.
“He asked about you.”
The air leaves my lungs. I look down at the wine in my glass, watching the surface tremble and realize it is my hand that is trembling.
“What did you say?” My eyes snap up.
“That you’re alive.” She holds my gaze. “That’s all he gets from me until you tell me otherwise.” She pauses. “He looks different.”
I grip the glass. “How different?”
She studies me the way she does when she’s deciding how much truth I can carry.
“He’s still Zane. Still got that whole broody storm-cloud-with-a-criminal-record situation going on. But something’s shifted. He doesn’t seem as angry at the world. Or maybe he still is and he’s just learned to keep it on a leash.”
I picture him. Older. Standing in Rainer’s garage, grease on his hands and that sexy smirk. Thinking about the changes seven years carved into him, in ways I’ll never fully know. I take a drink, taking too much at once.
“And?” I ask, hating myself for doing so.
“And what?”
“You know what.”
Her smile turns wicked.
“Oh, you want to know if he’s still hot?
” She leans back, glass in hand, eyes bright with mischief.
“Annoyingly hot. He was hot before, in that feral alley-cat-who-might-fuck-you-or-steal-your-wallet way. Now he’s even hotter.
Prison gave him more muscles and trauma, which is rude because men should not be rewarded for terrible life choices.
” Cassie points her glass at me. “Girl, you should climb that man before someone else brings a ladder.”
“Shut up.”
“I’m serious.”
“Shut up, Cass.”
She laughs. Then she sobers slightly.
“You still love him, don’t you, Sky?” she says. “I can see it. And I’m not saying you should forgive him.”
“Good.”
“I’m not saying he didn’t hurt you.”
“He did.”
“I know.” Cassie sets her glass down and leans forward, elbows on her knees, all the jokes folding back to reveal what’s underneath. “But, Sky, I think you should go see him.”
My heart stops. “No.”
“I’m not saying go back to him. I’m not saying let him explain himself or hand him your heart and ask if he wants another swing at it.
” She holds my gaze and doesn’t let go. “I’m saying there is a part of you frozen in that visiting room.
And you have been dragging it around for seven whole years, pretending it isn’t there. ”
I close my eyes, because for seven years I told myself the past was locked away. Now I’m starting to wonder if I was the one in the cage this whole time.