Chapter 127: The edge of patience
The villa was never as quiet.
Not quiet, quiet—the kind that enfolds me and makes me feel warm. This was not like that. The air was tight, strained, like it had been breathing in deeply for weeks and now was simply holding its breath, ready to exhale. Each floorboard creaked too loudly. Each handle click was like a slammed door.
I curled up at the edge of the living room couch, knees tucked in toward chest, phone held in a loose fist. The new message on the screen, simple and harsh in its ugliness.
"I will kill myself if you don't come back. I swear it."
There was no number with Nathaniel's name on it. He was too clever for that. Every message was from a different number, a different burner line, a different cover story—but the voice in the words was absolutely his. I could almost hear it in my head, the same honey-foul desperation that kept me dangling, far past the time I should have left.
The worst of it was not the message—it was that bit of me still reacted when I read it. Not with guilt. Not with love. With fear. Because I knew him. Knew how he spiraled. And part of me didn't quite not believe that he would do precisely what he said.
But I didn't tell Caspian.
I couldn't. Not since the last time. Not since the cold in his tone when he'd asked if I was still stringing Nathaniel along. Not since the shine in his eye that hadn't been anger, not really, but something bitterer—pain, with jealousy and something left unsaid knotted together.
I put my phone off and placed it face down on the coffee table. I gazed out of the window instead. The sky was darkening, its bruise-colored lines spread across it. The villa's olive trees curved smoothly in the wind beyond the glass, whispering softly against each other in silver-green leaves.
I'd thought that this house would be my haven. My sanctuary. But now it just seemed a velvet-covered cage.
The hall clock marked its seconds with slow, measured deliberation, each one that passed slower than the last. Caspian was still barricaded in his study, had been all day. I hadn't seen him since morning—only heard on occasion the scritching of paper, the tapping of his whiskey glass, the muffled voice on work calls.
We hadn't talked in a week.
I didn't think about that too much.
—
Evening supper became an austere ritual. Cold. I arranged the table out of habit: linen napkins, plain white plates he liked, glasses for water glowed so intensely they were almost painful to look at. I reheated the mushroom risotto I had made earlier and placed it between us. Candlelight flickered off the walls and made double shadows on the table that refused to solidify.
Caspian arrived just as I was pouring the wine. His tie was open, sleeves rolled forward, crease between his eyebrows that had yet to smooth in days.
"Smells good," he said to me, but there was no welcome in his voice. There was only exhaustion.
I smiled for a moment, a smile that had only just reached my eyes.
"Thanks."
We sat. The quiet grew.
I took two bites before I couldn't handle it. The phone upstairs, the messages, the space between us—all of it began screaming at me in my mind.
"You haven't looked at me for three days," I whispered.
Caspian set his fork down. Slowly. Aware. "That's not true."
"It is." I forced myself to meet his gaze. "You've been elsewhere entirely. You come back, but you don't come back."
He reclined, folding his arms over his chest. "What do you want me to say, Lily?"
"Anything," I said. "Anything that's true. Because this—this is killing me."
Caspian's eyes darted away, to the window where the moonlight began to seep in. His jaw tightened up. Then finally, he spoke.
"I got a text this morning."
The planet stopped revolving on its axis for a moment.
"You didn't say," I panted.
"Because I don't want to go totally fucking insane," he snarled, his tone rough and raspy.
My stomach knotted. "Caspian—"
He swung back toward me, actually looked at me, and the blaze in his eyes burned hot enough to burn. "Why can't you just change your number?"
I flinched as though he'd hit me. "Because—" my voice cracked, then held, "because I'm not hiding."
Something broke in the stillness. The words lingered in the quiet.
His expression hardened. "You think I'm in hiding?"
"You're the one who clams up. You step back. That silence, that work, that office—like it's better to keep playing like I'm still tormented by a ghost than sit in it with me."
"And you," he suddenly stood up, "don't report back to me when he does something like that. You keep it inside, and I'm just supposed to be curious about how deep under you you're getting."
I too stood up, thumping heart, gasping breath. "Because every time I tell you, you're like I'm asking for it. That I'm the one responsible."
"That's not fair," he said, voice softer now, but every bit as resolute.
I stepped forward, table between us obliterated. "You said I was giving him hope. Do you have any idea what that sounded like? Everything he's done to me?"
His eyes faltered, guilt passing over his face like a storm. "I didn't mean to say it so." He shrugged. "I was angry."
"Well, you hurt me anyhow," I gasped.
The risotto was cold now. The wine still intact. Outside, the wind whined, rattling the trees.
Neither of us moved.
At last, Caspian spoke. "I'm afraid too, Lily."
I opened my eyes at him. "Of Nathaniel?"
No, he said to me. "Of losing you. Of watching him break you on the inside and just walk away and leave me standing here holding the fort for you, powerless. Afraid that someday you'll look at this and it'll be too much—that I'm never enough—and walk away."
I nodded to catch my breath.
"I hate that he still occupies space in your mind," he said to me. "I hate that he still gets to reach into touch your reality from a distance and I'm just stuck. watching."
My anger softened. Barely. I walked around the table, slow and deliberate, until we were almost nose to nose.
"You're not behind," I said to him. "You're with me. That puts you by my side, not behind."
His hand came up, brushing my cheek, tentative as if he didn't know if I'd permit him.
When I didn't step back, his fingers curled into my face.
"I miss us," he whispered.
My throat ached. "So am I."
The silence this time was different. It was warmer. Tentative. Like we were both feeling our way back to each other again through the devastation.
"I'm going to change my number," I told him, shocking myself.
He blinked. "Seriously?"
I nodded. "Not because you said so. Because I'm sick of him making his way in. I want to be free of being afraid."
Caspian wrapped me up, his arms wrapping around me as if the only space he could ever occupy was this one, here, in the world of this instant.
"I'm sorry I told you that," he breathed against my hair.
"I'm sorry I lied to you," I whispered back.
We were there, the two of us, in our still dining room with plates piled high with untouched food and pride splinters, clinging to each other like mariners from the same wreckage.
Maybe we were. Maybe we would be.
Tonight, though, both of us were alone no more.