Chapter 15 Cassian
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CASSIAN
FIVE YEARS AGO
Six months ago, we'd been planning a trip to Greece.
Calla wanted to show me where her mother grew up, the village near Thessaloniki that appeared in all her childhood stories.
We'd looked at flights, researched hotels, talked about eating fresh fish by the water and watching the sunset from ancient ruins.
Now I was sitting in a divorce attorney's office, and Greece felt like a dream. My stomach was already churning with nerves and grief and the terrible certainty that I was about to make a mistake I couldn't take back.
I wondered how we'd gotten here.
But I didn't know how to stop it. I didn't know what words would change anything or if there’s a gesture that would bridge the distance that had grown between us over the past year.
We tried talking, therapy, giving each other space or spending more time together.
Nothing worked. Every conversation ended the same way: both of us were exhausted, hurt, wondering if love was supposed to feel this hard.
The door opened and Calla walked in.
She was wearing the gray coat I'd bought her two Christmases ago, the one with the silver buttons she'd admired in a shop window.
Her deep red hair was braided, pulled back from her face in the intricate pattern she only used when she was nervous.
I knew her better than I knew my own—the braid, the way she held her shoulders slightly too rigid, the blankness of her expression, like she was performing composure rather than feeling it.
She looked beautiful. She always looked beautiful to me, even now, even here.
"Hi," she said.
"Hi."
She sat in the chair beside mine, close enough that I could smell her shampoo. Citrus and rosemary, the same scent she'd worn since medical school. I'd bought her a bottle of it for her birthday once early in our relationship and she'd never switched to anything else.
Strange… the details that stay with you. The things you memorize without meaning to.
We sat in silence without touching. The receptionist glanced at us with sympathy, the look of someone who'd seen this scene play out a hundred times before.
"Ms. Patterson will see you now," she said.
The lawyer's office was smaller than the waiting room. Patricia Patterson was an older woman with silver hair and kind eyes, radiating with competence and compassion. She specialized in uncontested divorces, which was a polite way of saying she helped people end their marriages with minimal drama.
"Please, sit down," she said, gesturing to the two chairs across from her desk. "Can I get either of you anything? Water? Coffee?"
"No, thank you," Calla said.
"I'm fine," I added.
Patricia nodded and opened a folder on her desk. The papers inside were crisp, covered in legal language that reduced our marriage to assets and debts and the clean division of a life we'd built together.
"I've reviewed everything you both submitted," she said.
"This is relatively straightforward. No children, no contested property, and both parties in agreement on the terms of dissolution.
" She looked up at us, her gaze moving from Calla's face to mine.
"We can finalize everything today if you're both certain this is what you want. "
Certain. What an ironic word to use.
I wasn't certain of anything. Whether we were doing the right thing, if I would ever stop loving her, or if I knew how to exist in a world where Calla wasn't my wife.
But I nodded anyway. We'd come this far and I didn't know how to turn back.
Beside me, Calla nodded too. Her face betrayed nothing, but I saw her hands clench in her lap, knuckles going pale.
Patricia walked us through each page, explaining terms we already understood.
Asset division: we'd agreed to split everything evenly—though there wasn't much to split.
Debt allocation: student loans stayed with whoever had incurred them.
Neither of us was asking for support from the other.
We were leaving this marriage the same way we'd entered it: independent, self-sufficient, alone.
"Sign here," Patricia said, pointing to a line at the bottom of the page. "And here. And initial here."
I picked up the pen. My hand was steady, which surprised me. I'd expected trembling, some physical manifestation of the turmoil happening inside my chest. But my fingers moved smoothly, signing my name in the spaces indicated.
Cassian Reed. Cassian Reed. C.R.
Calla signed beside me. Her handwriting was the same as always: precise, controlled, the penmanship of someone who'd spent years writing on medical charts.
Our signatures looked strange together on these documents, side by side but not meeting, a proof that something that had begun with promises was ending with paperwork.
"I'll file these tomorrow morning," Patricia said gently. "The divorce will be final in sixty days. If either of you changes your mind before then, you can withdraw the petition. No judgment or penalties. It happens more often than you'd think."
She was giving us an out and a last chance to reconsider.
I looked at Calla. She was staring at the papers on the desk, her expression unreadable. I tried to catch her eye and communicate without words, but she wouldn't look at me.
"Thank you," I said to Patricia. "We appreciate your help."
"Of course. I'm sorry it came to this." She stood and shook both our hands. "Take care of yourselves. Both of you."
The sun was bright when we walked out of the law office. I'd expected rain or at least clouds, something to match the occasion. But the sky was aggressively blue, perfect for an autumn day that felt like a personal insult.
My car was parked two blocks east. Calla's was in the opposite direction. We stood on the sidewalk between them as two people stranded in the space between goodbyes.
"Well," she said.
"Yeah."
Silence filled the air. It used to be comfortable between us. Now, it became filled with all the things we couldn't say.
"Are you going to take the fellowship?" I asked.
"I think so." She pulled her coat tighter around herself. "You?"
"The program starts in three months. So yeah."
She nodded. Her light brown eyes were dry, but I could see the effort it was costing her to keep them that way. Calla didn't cry in front of people. She saved her grief for moments when no one could witness it, locking them away like everything else she felt too deeply to share.
I wanted to hug her and tell her we were making a mistake. That we should go back inside and tear up the papers and figure out a different way forward. I wanted to promise her that we could try harder, be better, and learn how to want each other and our careers without one ruining the other.
But I was so tired.
I was exhausted from compromising and still falling short, drained by the feeling that I was failing at both my career and my marriage.
I was weary of watching her shrink herself to fit into my life while I did the same for hers, both of us becoming smaller versions of ourselves in the name of making our relationship work.
Maybe that was the real tragedy. We didn’t stop loving each other, but that we loved each other so much we started disappearing into it.
"I hope it's everything you want it to be," Calla said. "The program, I mean. You're going to do incredible things, Cassian. You always have."
"So are you."
"We will." Her voice cracked, the first break in her composure since she'd arrived. She paused, swallowed, and tried again. "Maybe we'll see each other at conferences or something. Run into each other at medical events."
"Yeah. Maybe."
Neither of us moved. The pedestrians passed us by, people with places to be, lives to live, futures that were not ending on a sunny sidewalk in the middle of the afternoon.
Finally, Calla stepped forward and wrapped her arms around me.
I pulled her close, memorizing the way she fit against my chest, her head tucked beneath my chin. The smell of her shampoo, citrus and rosemary—the same scent I'd associate with her for the rest of my life. The way her hands fisted in the back of my jacket, holding on like she was afraid to let go.
"I love you," she whispered against my shoulder. "I'm going to love you for the rest of my life. I need you to know that."
My eyes burned. I blinked against the sting, refusing to let the tears fall where she could see them.
"I love you too," I said. "That was never the problem."
"I know."
We stayed like that for a long time. Seconds, minutes, I couldn't tell. The world continued around us, indifferent to our grief, and we held each other in the wreckage of everything we'd tried to build.
When we finally pulled apart, Calla's cheeks were wet. She wiped them quickly, her hand shaking, and forced a smile that looked like it cost her everything she had.
"Goodbye, Cassian."
"Bye, Calla."
She turned and walked away. I watched her until she reached the corner and disappeared from view, her gray coat swallowed by the crowd.
Alone, I stood on the sidewalk, breathing heavily as I allowed myself to absorb reality. When I calmed down, I drove to the hospital and pulled into my usual spot, turned off the engine, and sat there in silence.
Twenty minutes. Maybe thirty. I lost track.
Tears rushed down my face and I didn’t bother to swallow them. I cried the same way, if not worse, than I did when my father died. Not loud. Not dramatic. Just pure grief, pouring out of me in waves I couldn't control.
My chest hurt, my eyes burned, and there was nothing left inside me but exhaustion. When they stopped coming, I wiped my face, checked my reflection in the rearview mirror, and went inside.
Riven found me in the locker room. He didn't say anything for a long while. He just leaned against the wall and watched me pull on my scrubs. He wasn't the type for unnecessary words. He just observed, assessed, and waited for the right moment.
"You okay?" he asked finally.
"We signed the papers."
He paused. "I'm sorry."
"Don't be." I tied my scrub pants, focusing on the simple action. "It's done. We both agreed it was the right thing."
"You really think so?"
I didn't answer. I didn't know if I'd ever be able to answer that question.
Riven pushed off the wall and crossed to where I was standing. He squeezed my shoulder, the closest he ever came to physical affection.
"If you need anything," he said. "I'm here."
"I know."
He nodded and left me alone with my grief.
I threw myself into work. Surgeries, consults, patient rounds. I stayed until midnight and too exhausted to think, with only caffeine keeping me upright.
When I went home, darkness welcomed me. I left in a hurry that morning, too anxious about the meeting to think about turning on lights or opening curtains. Now the shadows crowded the room and the silence was too loud.
Calla's things were mostly gone. She moved them out over the past two weeks, a gradual evacuation that left the apartment bare. But traces of her remained, scattered evidence of a life we shared.
Her coffee mug still sat in the cabinet. A hair tie was coiled on the bathroom counter, her deep red strands of hair still caught in the elastic. One of her medical journals was still on the bookshelf, a page dog-eared in the middle of an article she never finished reading.
I gathered them carefully, handling each item like a fragile and precious relic, and placed them in a box and set them in the closet. Out of sight but not gone, the same way Calla would exist in my life from now on.
I sat on the couch we picked out together.
We argued about it for three hours. She wanted gray and I wanted blue.
So we compromised on something in between—navy blue.
I stared at the walls we painted one weekend when we both had rare time off, a warm cream color that she insisted would make the space feel bigger.
Indeed, the place felt enormous.
And empty.
And nothing like home.