Chapter 14 Calla
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CALLA
PRESENT DAY
The district hospital administrator found us in the hallway outside the ICU, wringing her hands like she was delivering a terminal diagnosis.
"I'm so sorry," she said for the third time. "With the mass casualty overwhelming our system, we scrambled to find accommodations for visiting staff. The best we could do was a single room at the Riverside Inn, two blocks from here."
"One room?" I asked.
"With one bed." She winced. "I know it's not ideal. Everything else is booked solid. Families of patients, displaced residents from the accident, medical staff from the other hospitals that sent teams. We did our best on short notice."
I opened my mouth to protest, but Cassian appeared beside me before I could speak.
"It's fine," he said. "We're both adults. We can manage one night."
I wanted to argue. Wanted to demand they find literally any other option, even if it meant sleeping in the on-call room again.
But I'd been awake for nearly forty hours.
My feet throbbed. My back screamed. My eyes burned from too many hours under harsh lights.
I didn't have the energy to fight about sleeping arrangements.
"Fine," I said. "Thank you for arranging it."
The administrator handed over a key card with visible relief and disappeared before we could change our minds.
Cassian and I walked to the hotel in silence. The night air was cold, biting through my thin jacket, but after eighteen hours in the stale hospital atmosphere, it felt almost pleasant. The streets were quiet at this hour, the city sleeping through what remained of the night.
The Riverside Inn was exactly as promised. Modest. Clean. Forgettable. The kind of place that existed for weary travelers who needed a bed and nothing else. The lobby was empty except for a half-asleep clerk who barely glanced at us as we passed.
Our room was on the third floor. I swiped the key card and pushed open the door, and my stomach dropped.
One queen bed. A small bathroom. A chair by the window that looked like it had been designed for decoration rather than comfort. The room was tiny, the walls too close, the air too warm.
"I'll take the chair," Cassian said immediately.
"Don't be ridiculous. That thing would destroy your back."
"I've slept in worse places."
"So have I. But we don't have to." I dropped my bag on the floor and turned to face him. "The bed's big enough for both of us. We were married for two years, Cassian. I think we can share a mattress for a few hours without it being weird."
Except it was already weird. The room felt too small with both of us in it, the air too thick with everything we weren't saying. I could feel his presence behind me like a physical force, magnetic and unsettling.
"I'm going to shower," I said, retreating to the bathroom before he could respond.
I stood under the hot water for longer than necessary, letting it pound against my shoulders, trying to wash away the tension coiled in every muscle. This was fine. This was manageable. We were two exhausted professionals sharing a room out of necessity. Nothing more.
Except my hands were shaking, and my pulse wouldn't slow down, and all I could think about was the last time we'd shared a bed. The morning I'd woken up tangled in his arms, his breath warm against my hair, believing we had forever.
I turned off the water and dried myself mechanically. I'd packed spare clothes in my trauma bag, a habit from residency. Clean underwear, a t-shirt, basic toiletries. Nothing designed for sharing a hotel room with my ex-husband.
When I emerged twenty minutes later, Cassian was sitting on the edge of the bed, staring at his phone. He'd changed out of his scrubs into a t-shirt and sweatpants, his hair damp from what must have been a quick sink wash.
"Your girlfriend?" The question escaped before I could stop it.
He looked up. "Yeah. She wanted to know when I'd be back."
"What did you tell her?"
"Tomorrow afternoon, probably. Depending on how the patients are doing." He set his phone on the nightstand. "She's worried about me."
"She should be. Today was brutal."
"That's not what she's worried about."
I sat on the opposite side of the bed, leaving as much space between us as the mattress allowed. "What do you mean?"
Cassian was quiet for a long moment. I watched the play of shadows across his face, the way exhaustion had carved deep lines around his mouth and eyes. He looked older than he had this morning. Older than he'd looked on the rooftop, watching the sunrise with me.
"She knows something's different," he said finally. "With me. Since you came back to Obsidian."
"Cassian."
"I'm not telling you this to hurt you or to make you feel responsible.
I'm telling you because I don't know what to do.
" He turned to face me fully, his green eyes weary and conflicted.
"I care about Maya. She's good and kind and she deserves honesty.
But I can't give her that when I don't even know what's true anymore. "
I should have stayed quiet. Should have let the conversation die, let him figure out his own feelings without my interference. But something about this room, this night, the exhaustion stripping away every defense I'd built, made me reckless.
"What do you want to be true?" I asked.
He looked at me, startled by the question. "What?"
"If you could choose. If there were no complications, no Maya, no history, no five years of distance." I moved closer without meaning to, drawn by a gravity I couldn't resist. "What would you want?"
"Calla, don't."
"I'm asking because I need to know if I'm alone in this." My voice came out steadier than I felt. "This morning, on the rooftop, you asked me what this was between us. I said I didn't know. But that wasn't true."
Cassian went very still. "What are you saying?"
"I'm saying that I've been carrying you inside me for five years.
You live in all my silences, in every space I've tried to fill with work and distance and pretending I've moved on.
" I held his gaze, letting him see everything I'd been hiding.
"I'm saying that you're a wound that never healed, and I don't know if I want it to heal anymore. "
"Calla."
"I read somewhere once that we write to taste life twice.
In the moment and in retrospect." I swallowed hard.
"But with you, I don't want retrospect. I don't want to spend the rest of my life looking back at what we had and mourning it.
I want to taste it now. I want to know if what we feel is real or if it's just ghosts we've been too afraid to bury. "
Cassian's breath caught. I could see him wavering, could see the war playing out behind his eyes. Want and guilt and fear and longing, all tangled together into something neither of us knew how to name.
"You can't say things like that." His voice was hoarse.
"Why not?"
"Because I'm trying to do the right thing. I'm trying to be the kind of man who doesn't destroy someone who trusts him."
"I know." I moved closer still, close enough to feel the heat of his skin, close enough to count the flecks of gold in his green eyes. "I know you're trying to be good. You've always been good, Cassian. That's what I loved about you. That's what I still do..."
I reached for him. My hand found his jaw, stubbled and warm, and I leaned in.
He pulled away.
Not far. Just enough to break the spell, to put inches of air between my lips and his. His hand came up to catch my wrist, gentle but firm.
"I can't," he said. "Not like this."
The rejection stung, even though I understood it. Even though part of me was grateful for it.
"Why not?"
"Because if I kiss you right now, it won't be because I chose you. It'll be because I'm exhausted and you're here and it's easier than thinking." He released my wrist and pulled back further, putting distance between us. "You deserve better than that. We both do."
"Cassian."
"I meant what I said on the rooftop. About figuring out what you want instead of what you think you should want.
" He looked at me, and the tenderness in his expression made my chest ache.
"But I need to figure out the same thing.
And I can't do that by cheating on Maya in a hotel room at three in the morning. "
I wanted to argue. Wanted to tell him that Maya didn't matter, that nothing mattered except the two of us and this moment and the years we'd already wasted. But he was right. He was right, and I hated him for it.
"So what do we do?" I asked.
"We sleep. On opposite sides of the bed, like the adults we apparently are." The corner of his mouth lifted, a ghost of his usual humor. "And tomorrow, when we're back at Obsidian and everything is real again, we figure out what comes next."
"And if what comes next is nothing? If you go back to Maya and we pretend this conversation never happened?"
"Then at least we'll know we tried to do it right." He lay back on his side of the bed, staring at the ceiling. "I don't want to be someone who hurts people, Calla. Even if those people include myself."
I lay down on my side, facing away from him, my heart hammering against my ribs. The rejection burned, but beneath it was something else. Something that felt almost like respect.
He was trying to be honorable. Trying to be fair to everyone, including me.
I just didn't know if honor was going to be enough to bridge the distance between what we wanted and what we were allowed to have.
"Cassian?" I said into the darkness.
"Yeah?"
"For what it's worth, I think you're already someone good. You don't have to prove it by denying yourself everything."
He was quiet for a long moment. Then: "Maybe. But I'd rather deny myself something real than take something stolen."