Chapter 17 Cassian
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CASSIAN
Maya was at the stove, humming along to something playing from her phone, her hips swaying slightly as she stirred whatever was bubbling in the pot when I came home.
She'd changed out of her scrubs into the oversized sweater I'd bought her for her birthday, the sage green one she said made her feel cozy.
Her hair was down, falling in soft waves around her shoulders, and when she turned at the sound of my keys, her whole face lit up.
"Hey, you." She crossed the kitchen and rose on her toes to kiss me, her hands coming up to cup my face. "Perfect timing! Dinner's almost ready."
"Smells amazing." I kissed her back, my hands settling on her waist out of habit. "What's the occasion?"
"No occasion. Just felt like making something nice." She smiled, and there was so much warmth and affection in it. "You've been working so hard lately. I wanted to do something for you."
She returned to the stove, tasting from the wooden spoon, adjusting seasonings with the focus she brought to everything.
Maya threw herself into things. Her surgeries.
Her relationships. Her Wednesday night dinners that she'd started making because she knew I came home exhausted and hungry and never remembered to feed myself properly.
Eight months. We'd been together eight months, and she'd never once made me feel like loving me was a burden.
"Go wash up," she said, throwing me a smile over her shoulder. "This needs another few minutes. Oh, and I picked up that IPA you like. It's in the fridge."
I grabbed a beer and twisted off the cap, taking a long pull while I moved to the sink. The water was warm against my hands, and I let myself exhale, trying to be present and focus on her in this moment.
I pulled out my phone to check for messages from the hospital, then set it on the counter before washing my hands by the sink.
"Babe, your phone!" Maya called.
"Can you check it? Might be the hospital."
"It's from Calla!”
I shut off the water and turned around slowly, reaching for the dish towel like it could anchor me to something solid.
Maya was looking at my phone, her brow furrowed, her lips moving slightly as she read. When she spoke, her voice was careful and measured.
"'I do believe we can be friends despite everything. I will always love you.'"
She looked up at me, and I watched the confusion settle into her features. Not anger. But the look on her face told me everything.
"What is this?"
"Maya—"
"It seems like you two are having conversations that go way beyond professional." She set the phone down on the counter, and I noticed her hand shake. "What did you talk about that she's sending you something like this?"
I set the dish towel down, picked it back up, then set it down again.
"She confessed to me," I said.
Maya blinked. "Confess what?"
"That she still has feelings for me."
I watched Maya's face as she processed the words. The confusion faded, replaced by recognition, like she was beginning to understand something she didn't want to reach.
"So you want to be friends with someone who just told you she's in love with you?" She was trying to keep her voice even, but I could hear the strain underneath. "When did this happen? When did she confess?"
I didn't answer.
"Cassian. When?"
"A few days ago. In the stairwell at the hospital."
"A few days ago." She repeated the words slowly. "She told you she loves you a few days ago, and you didn't think I should know about that?"
"I was trying to figure out how to handle it. I didn't want to worry you—"
"Worry me?" Maya let out a breath that was almost a laugh. "Your ex-wife tells you she's still in love with you, and you thought keeping it from me was protecting me?"
"That's not—I didn't mean it like that."
"Then how did you mean it?" She crossed her arms over her chest, and I recognized the posture.
It was how she held herself when she was trying to keep composed.
I'd seen it once before, when she'd lost a patient she'd been fighting for weeks.
She'd stood in the hallway outside the OR with her arms wrapped around herself exactly like this, holding everything in until she could find somewhere private to break.
I couldn't stand that I was the reason she looked like that now.
"You said a few days ago," Maya continued, her voice calmer. "But her text says 'despite everything.'" She tilted her head, studying me. "What's everything, Cassian?"
I couldn't do this. Couldn't keep peeling back layers of truth while I watched her heart break in stages.
But I couldn't lie to her either. Not anymore.
"We shared a hotel room," I said. "During the district hospital response. There was a mass casualty event, and the facility was overwhelmed. They only had one room available."
Maya went very still, her jaws clenched, and her face drained of color.
She scoffed. "You shared a room with your ex-wife."
"Nothing happened. We slept on opposite sides of the bed. We were exhausted. We needed rest. It was the only option."
"But?"
I closed my eyes. "But we woke up differently than when we fell asleep."
"Differently how?"
"Closer. Our bodies..." I searched for words that wouldn't make this worse and found none. "We ended up tangled together during the night. It wasn't intentional. We were both asleep."
When I opened my eyes, Maya had taken a step back from me.
It felt like a canyon.
"You woke up in her arms," Maya said. Her voice had flattened into something I didn't recognize.
"Yes."
"And then what?"
"We talked. The next morning, on the rooftop. We were both confused and exhausted and trying to make sense of what it meant."
"What it meant." Maya's voice had gone hollow. "Waking up holding your ex-wife. You needed to figure out what that meant."
"I know how it sounds—"
Her eyes were bright with tears gathering along her lower lashes.
But she blinked them back, refusing to let them fall.
"It sounds like you've been having some kind of emotional affair with your ex-wife while I've been here making you dinner and buying your favorite beer and telling myself that the distance I was feeling wasn't real. "
"Maya, that's not—"
"How did it make you feel?"
The question stopped me cold.
"When she told you she loves you in that stairwell,” Maya continued. "When your ex-wife looked you in the eye and confessed that she never stopped having feelings for you." Her voice cracked, but she pushed through it. "How did that make you feel?"
I opened my mouth.
But nothing came out.
Because the truth was a knot I couldn't untangle. Relief and terror and longing and guilt, all twisted together into something I didn't have words for. My heart had lurched when she'd said it. I'd asked for time because I was too much of a coward to admit that I already knew the answer.
Maya watched me struggle with the silence, failing to give her the reassurance she was asking for.
A single tear slipped down her cheek.
"Do you still love her?" The words came out broken, barely above a whisper. "Just like that, Cassian. Yes or no. Do you still love Calla?"
I wanted to say no.
I wanted to give her the answer that would fix this and let us go back to five minutes ago when she was humming at the stove and everything was simple.
But the word wouldn't come.
"I don't know," I said instead. "I thought I was over her. I thought five years was enough time—"
"But it wasn't." Maya finished the sentence, and her voice shattered on the last word. "Oh god! It wasn't."
"Maya, please. It's not that simple—"
"Yes, it is!" Her tears fell freely, streaming down her cheeks. "It is that simple! I asked you a yes or no question, and you couldn't say no. You couldn't even give me that!”
"I care about you. What we have—"
"What we have?" She laughed, and the sound was so raw it made my chest ache. "What we have is me loving you sincerely while you've been keeping a piece of yourself somewhere else. What we have is eight months of me thinking we have something real while you were still hung up on your ex-wife."
"That's not fair."
"No, it's not!" She grabbed her purse from the counter, her movements jerky.
"None of this is fair! I didn't do anything wrong, Cassian!
I loved you. I showed up for you every single day.
I held you when you had bad days and told myself that the way you sometimes looked right through me didn't mean anything. "
"Maya—"
"But it did mean something, didn't it?" She turned to face me, and the devastation in her eyes was almost unbearable.
"All those times I felt like you were somewhere else.
All those moments when I'd catch you staring at nothing with this look on your face like you were recalling something I wasn't part of. It was her! It was always her…"
I couldn't deny it.
I couldn't give her the lie that would make this easier.
"I never meant to hurt you," I said, and the words sounded pathetic even to my own ears.
"I know." She wiped her face with her sleeve, smearing tears across the her sweater. “That's what makes it worse. You weren't trying to be cruel. You were just... you were never really mine, were you? Not completely. Not the way I was yours."
"Maya, that's not true—"
"Yes, it is." She grabbed her keys from the hook by the door, and the familiar jangle of them made my heart break.
How many times had I heard that sound? How many mornings had she kissed me goodbye with those keys in her hand, heading off to save lives while I went to do the same?
"You kept her in your heart this whole time. And I was too stupid to see it."
"You're not stupid. This isn't your fault."
"I know it's not my fault." Her voice rose, anger finally breaking through the grief.
"I know I didn't do anything wrong. I’ve been a good girlfriend, Cassian.
I was patient and understanding and I never pushed you to talk about things you weren't ready for.
I thought I was giving you space. It turns out I was just giving you room to keep loving someone else. "
She stalked towards the door now, her hand on the knob, and I felt the panic rising in my throat.
"Where are you going?"
“I… I can't do this..." She cried openly, her voice thick with tears she'd stopped trying to control. "I-I… can't stand here and look at you… and pretend my heart isn't breaking."
"Maya, please—"
"I'll come back for my things when you're at work." She fumbled with the doorknob, her hands shaking too hard to grip it properly. "I can't… I can't breathe in this apartment knowing everything I thought we had was a lie."
"Can we please talk about this? Can we just—"
"There's nothing left to say, Cassian." She finally got the door open, and the hallway light spilled into the kitchen. "I asked you if you love her and you couldn't say no. That tells me everything I need to know."
Then she left.
I listened to her footsteps fade down the hallway.
I didn't know what to feel.
I sank onto the kitchen floor with my back against the cabinets, my head falling into my hands.
What have I done?