Chapter 1 #4
The house changed once the guests were gone.
All evening, music had spilled through the rooms, glasses had clinked, and voices had overlapped in a constant hum. Now, only the faint scrape of my heels against the floor followed me through the empty rooms.
I brought out the cake I’d baked from scratch.
Cassian was particular about food, especially dessert. He hated anything too sweet, so I’d measured everything carefully, tasted the frosting between each adjustment, and kept tweaking it until the sweetness was just right for him.
I carried it to the long dining table and sat down alone. The single candle I’d kept ready lay beside the cake, still unlit.
The hands on the clock had crawled past two in the morning when the front door finally clicked open.
I shot to my feet so quickly that the chair scraped hard against the floor. Relief rushed through me before I could stop it, loosening the tight band beneath my ribs that had been there for hours. He was home.
Finally.
The relief lasted barely a heartbeat before anger surged in behind it. My jaw tightened as I pushed away from the table, the questions I had been rehearsing all night already lining up in my head.
Where had he been? Why had he ignored every call? What could possibly have kept him away for so long?
I had spent hours making excuses for him, defending him to everyone who asked, telling myself there had to be a reason. Now that he was finally home, I wanted to hear that reason from him.
Halfway toward the foyer, laughter drifted through the house and stopped me. A woman’s laughter came first, light and breathless. Then his followed.
That low, familiar chuckle reached me, and my chest tightened.
Cassian.
I stood there, listening as his laughter came again, warm and unguarded.
Months had passed since I’d heard him laugh that freely.
I had almost forgotten what it sounded like when something genuinely amused him, when the tension he carried everywhere finally slipped from his shoulders and left him sounding like the man I remembered.
The sound should have made me smile.
Instead, it hurt.
Because that warmth, that ease, that version of my husband I had spent months waiting to see again was being given to another woman.
My fingers curled into my palm as I rounded the corner, the nails pressing into my skin hard enough to ground me against the sudden unease twisting through my stomach.
Then I saw them.
Cassandra stood beside Cassian, her arm linked through his, fingers curled comfortably around his forearm. She tipped her head back with another burst of laughter, her face bright with delight.
Cassian laughed with her.
The tension I had grown so accustomed to seeing had vanished from his shoulders. The faint crease between his brows was gone, leaving his face open and unguarded. Even his eyes looked different, relaxed as he lowered his gaze, the corners crinkling with amusement.
I had spent months watching exhaustion settle into him, watching it follow him through the front door and linger long after he had taken off his jacket.
Now, standing there with her, he looked completely at ease.
The entire night rearranged itself in my head, turning dizzying and nauseating in the space of a breath.
For hours, I had moved through that room believing I was helping him.
Every conversation had been another attempt to put his name in front of the right people, another opportunity to make sure the evening gave him something useful.
I had defended his absence so easily that I had almost convinced myself there was nothing to defend.
The memory of my own performance suddenly turned grotesque.
I could see the effort behind everything I had done. The careful planning. The hours spent making this night worthwhile for him. The cake waiting in the kitchen, the candle beside it, still convinced he would eventually come home and blow it out.
All of it had rested on one belief.
Cassian was working.
He was struggling to keep Velaré afloat, sacrificing his own birthday because the company needed him.
While I spent hours polishing his image for a room full of strangers, he had been somewhere else.
With her.
My stomach lurched, and every excuse I had made for him turned sour.
I had spent so much time convincing myself that Cassian was drowning beneath the weight of everything he carried. Every late night had a reason. Every missed dinner had an explanation. Every unanswered call fit neatly into the story I needed to believe.
Until a question slipped through the cracks.
What if he could have come home all along?
What if those late nights, those dinners I’d eaten alone, those calls left unanswered had never been because he was too busy, too tired, or too far away?
What if he’d simply been somewhere he wanted to be more than he wanted to be with me?
The breath caught in my throat. I drew in another, but it barely reached my lungs before my chest seized again.
Because if that was the truth, then somewhere along the way, Cassian had stopped choosing me.