Chapter 35 #3
“Take a bite before you start with the speeches. What if it tastes like shit?”
He shook his head slowly, eyes still on the cake. “It won’t. I know it won’t. It’ll taste like it always tastes.”
I swallowed. “And how did it always taste?”
His eyes lifted to mine. “Like mine.”
He didn’t look away as he lifted the spoon and took a bite. His eyes drifted closed, and a smile spread across his face. “Exactly the same.”
Then he scooped another bite and held it to my lips. I opened my mouth, and he fed me. He kept doing it—for every bite he took, he gave me two, like he couldn’t help himself, like sharing this was as essential as breathing.
I leaned against the railing beside him and watched him eat.
For the last few weeks, this was how it had been. Easy in a way I hadn’t expected. Soft in a way I hadn’t prepared for.
We’d been dating. Properly. Dinners that stretched into hours, walks that looped the same block three times because neither of us wanted to say goodnight. He held my hand like he was still surprised I let him. I caught myself looking for him in every room.
He’d call just to hear my voice, then get flustered and pretend he’d meant to ask something important. He’d show up at my office with lunch, stay for exactly twenty minutes, leave with a kiss on my forehead that lingered.
When I had a late meeting, he showed up with dinner, ate it with me on my office floor because I didn’t want to move from where I’d collapsed.
When I offhandedly said I missed the lavender soap from that boutique that closed down, he showed up three days later with a box of it, looking smug, and refused to tell me how he’d found it.
But I saw the search history on his phone when he left it open on the counter.
He texted me photos of things.
A stray cat that had let him pet it outside his building. She has your energy, he wrote. I asked if that meant standoffish. He said it meant discerning.
A sky so pink at sunset he’d pulled over to take the picture. When I zoomed in, I could see his reflection in the car window. He was smiling.
A dog wearing a sweater. Mr. Fitzherbert would never, he added.
He sent them at odd hours. Morning commutes. Evenings when I knew he was still at the office. Sometimes with a caption, sometimes just the image, like he was showing me a piece of his day and trusting me to understand.
I kept the photos in a folder I didn’t name. I looked at them when I couldn’t sleep.
He showed up at my apartment with groceries he claimed he was “passing by” with, even though his house was across the city.
He made dinner. I pretended to complain about the mess.
He pretended to believe me. We ate on the couch, our knees touching, the television playing something neither of us watched.
He didn’t ask to stay over. He kissed me goodbye at my door, even when I knew he wanted more. He was patient. He was learning. He was showing me, in every small way, that he wasn’t the man who had let me go.
And I was learning too. To let him in. To reach for his hand without thinking. To trust that when he said he’d be there, he meant it.
He still couldn’t say the words. But he showed me, every day, in a dozen small ways, that he loved me.
He looked at me, his eyes soft in the way they’d been soft for weeks now, in the way I was starting to think they’d always be soft when he looked at me.
“Are you happy, Alessia?”
The answer came easily. Easier than it had any right to. “Yeah.” I nudged him with my elbow. “You?”
“A lot.”
I raised my brows, letting my voice go light, teasing. “You sure? You don’t want to be at some bar, celebrating with your team?”
His eyes narrowed. Then he said, dead serious: “I’d rather eat a cockroach than be anywhere but here.”
“Ew. Why would you say that? Now that’s all I’m going to think about when I—”
This is your moment if you want to run.
The words hit me from nowhere. A voice. My voice. But not now. Not here.
You have you. That’s all I want.
Cassian’s voice. Or my memory of it. Or something else entirely. My head swam.
He was saying something now, his mouth moving, but the sound was distant. Another voice, softer, older, layered over his.
Is this how our marriage is going to be? You just roasting me at every possible turn?
Another one. The same voice, different day. Laughing, exasperated, hopelessly fond.
Let’s not think of how to murder him just yet.
The balcony tilted. Or maybe I tilted. I grabbed the railing, but it felt like grabbing air.
A real date ends with a kiss.
The words came faster now, tumbling over each other. My head spun. The world tilted. Black spots bloomed at the edges of my vision, spreading like ink in water.
“Alessia?” His voice came from somewhere far away, stretched thin, like he was calling to me from the other end of a tunnel. “Alessia!”
My head was too heavy. The black spots were everywhere now, swallowing the light, swallowing his face, swallowing the last thread of the voice that had been calling to me from somewhere I’d forgotten I’d been.
Let’s get married.
The words echoed in the dark. And then there was nothing.