Chapter 27 #2
“He was going through a hard time when he took that trip,” Cassian continued. “The whole thing—the change of scenery, the distance—it really helped him. And that mug was the only thing he bought. The only physical reminder of that trip.”
His gaze dropped to his hands.
“So when it broke… it wasn’t just a mug.”
I stopped chewing.
“I tried to find the place. Tracked down the shop from old photos, internet searches, whatever I could. Eventually, I found out the family had moved. Closed the business.”
His voice softened further.
“The woman who ran it, the one who made the mugs… she’d passed away. Her daughter didn’t want to continue. Didn’t want to think about it.”
He shrugged.
“I asked anyway. A lot. Emails, calls. Eventually, the daughter agreed. She said she’d make one. Just one. But she couldn’t do the design—her mother’s technique, her mother’s eye. She didn’t know how.”
He glanced at me.
“So I just asked for the mug. Plain. No design.”
I stared at him.
My lips parted, but it took a moment for words to form.
“That…”
I swallowed.
“That’s actually an amazing gift, Cassian.”
He shrugged again and took another bite.
“It wasn’t the same mug, though. It didn’t have the design.”
“No,” I said softly.
I waited until his eyes met mine.
“It wasn’t the same. It was better. I’m sure Liam thought so too.”
He looked away, a faint flush coloring his cheeks.
“Like I said. He likes whatever I get him.”
Probably because you always get him something great.
I looked ahead, letting the city blur around me while I tried to gather my thoughts.
Who was this man?
He couldn’t be the same one who’d stood in my hospital room, making everything worse with every word. The one who’d irritated me so thoroughly I could barely stand to be in the same room with him. The one who’d forgotten his wife, dismissed her pain, chosen everything else over her.
But why couldn’t he be? I was the same woman who’d once chosen him. The same woman who’d taken a chance on marriage, on forever, on us. The same woman who, a few months ago, couldn’t bear the sight of him.
He was the same man who’d put work first—and also the one who’d learned to make a soup I needed after I got sick, just so I wouldn’t have to go out.
He was the same man who’d accused me of faking my amnesia—and also the one who’d shown up at my door in the middle of the night with a bag packed, ready to sit with me through every hour of the sickness.
He was the same man who’d hurt the woman I used to be—and also the man who looked at me with awe when I laughed, as though my joy were something sacred.
Just like I was the same woman who’d loved him once, even if I couldn’t remember why anymore.
I reached for another hot dog, needing something to do with my hands.
“I confronted my mother.”
I froze.
The hot dog hovered halfway to my mouth.
Slowly, I turned to look at him.
He stared at his half-eaten hot dog as though it held the answer to something. He took a deep breath, then looked at me.
“She’s not really my mother.”
The words came out flat. Clinical. As though he’d practiced them.
“Not biologically. And not in any other sense, either.”
His gaze dropped again.
“No matter how much I wanted her to be.”
The last part slipped out softer, almost as though he hadn’t meant for me to hear it.
He gave me a sad smile, the kind that hurt to witness.
“My father cheated on her. I was the result. And then he left.”
He shrugged, as though the abandonment of a parent could be reduced to a simple movement of his shoulders.
“But she stayed. She decided to keep me. I was always so grateful for that—that she didn’t leave me too—that I brushed off everything else.”
His voice wavered, then steadied.
“I think she hated me. Or hated what I reminded her of. So she used to… take it out on me. Sometimes. Tell me how disgusting I was. How I shouldn’t have been born. Stuff like that.”
His voice remained carefully controlled, but I could see the cracks forming underneath.
“But then the next day, she’d change. Shower me with love. Her words would flip completely. ‘You shouldn’t have been born’ would become ‘I’m so glad to have you.’ ‘You disgust me’ would become ‘You’re so adorable.’ ‘I hate you’ would become ‘I l—’”
His throat constricted.
His jaw tightened, a muscle jumping beneath the skin.
“Would become ‘I l—’”
His free hand clenched into a fist on his knee, his knuckles whitening as he fought to force the words out.
“It would become ‘I l—’”
My hand moved before I thought about it.
I reached out and covered his fist with my own, my fingers curling gently around his.
“I love you?” I said softly.
His eyes snapped to mine, searching, shining with something fragile.
His hand relaxed beneath mine, the tension slowly leaving his fingers.
“Yes,” he whispered.
Then, softer, “Thank you.”
A hollow, humorless chuckle escaped him.
“It got so bad after a while that I couldn’t tell where one version stopped and the other began. I think I hated the loving one more.”
He looked down at our hands.
“Because the hating one always followed. Like clockwork. A day of kindness, and then—”
He snapped his fingers.
The sharp sound seemed to hang between us.
“The next day, I’d pay for it. For existing. For being there. For reminding her.”
His voice dropped to barely a whisper.
“I hated those three words. She always ended the good days with them. And the next day, everything changed.”
He paused, his throat working.
“As I got older, I realized I didn’t hate the words. I was scared of them. Because whenever they were spoken, something bad followed. Something bad always happened.”
His gaze remained fixed on the ground.
“Those three words haunted me my entire life.”
My thumb traced slow circles over his fingers.
He still wore his wedding ring.
But there was another one too, on his pinky.
I didn’t ask about it.
“You can’t say them, can you?” I asked softly. “Those words.”
He’d spoken of them like they were alive. A presence. A stalker that had followed him from childhood, always lurking, always promising pain.
And he couldn’t even take its name.
He gave me a defeated look and lowered his gaze.
I already knew the answer before I asked.
But the confirmation still settled heavily in my chest.
For the little boy who never knew which mother would wake up each morning.
And for the man who had grown up terrified of the very words that were supposed to be everyone else’s salvation.
Three words.
Three simple, powerful words.
And they had been weaponized against him before he was old enough to understand why.
I squeezed his hand once, then let go.
He looked down at his own hand, at the space where mine had been, and rubbed his fingers together as though searching for the warmth that had just left.
Something weary crossed his face, carrying decades of weight.
“It’s not just that I can’t say them. I can’t even write them.”
His voice was quiet, confessional.
“I tried. So many times. But my hands would start shaking, and the words would turn into gibberish. I tried typing, and my fingers just… wouldn’t move.”
He swallowed.
“I can’t do anything when those words are involved.”
He took a breath that seemed to cost him.
“I never told you that part before.”
His voice softened.
“When we were married. I never told you.”
“Why?”
His wounded eyes met mine for a heartbeat before dropping to his lap.
“I was scared you’d look at me like I was broken. Like something was wrong with me.”
My heart tightened, a physical ache right in the center of my chest.
I reached out and took his hand again.
He turned his almost immediately, lacing his fingers through mine as though it were the most natural thing in the world.
“Cassian.”
I waited until those wounded eyes found mine.
“You’re not broken.”
I held his gaze, willing him to see the truth in my eyes.
“There are so many words I can’t say. Anytime I have to say ‘sorry,’ I feel like throwing up.”
A small smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.
Just a flicker.
But it was there.
I squeezed his hand.
“You’re not broken,” I repeated, needing him to hear it twice. Needing it to land.
Then I added, lighter, “Annoying at times? Sure. But not broken.”
A watery laugh escaped him, catching in his throat.
He looked down at our joined hands, then back up at me.
His eyes were intense now, burning with something that made my breath catch.
“Alessia.”
His voice was rough, stripped bare.
“I want you to know that just because I can’t say them doesn’t mean I don’t feel them.”
A breath left me, stolen from my lungs before I could stop it.
He was answering the question.
The one I’d asked in that hospital room, before I knew anything. Before any of this.
Do you love me?
He’d said, “I care about you,” then. I’d filed it away as confirmation. He didn’t love me. He just cared. Like you’d care about an acquaintance, a colleague, a responsibility. I straightened, my spine going rigid, and turned to look ahead at the street. At anything but him.
I didn’t know what to do with this.
With any of this.
Even in the last few months, when I’d started to suspect he might have feelings for me, I’d kept them at arm’s length. Maybe he felt something.
But love?
That was a step I hadn’t let myself consider. I wasn’t prepared for this. For the quiet certainty in his voice. For the way those three unsaid words suddenly seemed to fill the space between us, even though he hadn’t spoken them.
I didn’t know how to react.
I didn’t know what to do with a man who couldn’t say “I love you” but had just told me, with every fiber of his being, that he felt it anyway.
I pulled my hand from his and changed the subject, needing distance from the weight of his confession.
“How did you feel after the confrontation?”
He didn’t comment on the abrupt shift; he didn’t push. He simply followed where I led.
“It felt… nice. Good. Like a weight I’d been carrying my whole life finally lifted.”
He paused.
Then, so quietly I almost missed it, he added, “Is it pathetic that even at the end, all I wanted was for her to actually love me? To really choose me, just once?”