Chapter 102 The Hero Complex

Chapter 102 The Hero Complex


“Cassian.”

He lifted a hand and cut me off before I could say anything else. “No, do not do that.”

I stopped.

His eyes flashed. “Do not say my name like that and act like this is going to be a normal conversation.”

I could feel the heat of his anger from where I stood. 

I looked at him and said, carefully, “I can explain.”

His mouth tightened. “You can explain? How great!”

“I was going to tell you.”

“When?”

“When I had something concrete.”

He let out a short breath through his nose and shook his head once. “That is exactly the problem.”

I frowned. “How is that the problem?”

He stepped forward. “You keep doing this,” he said. “You keep deciding what I need to know and when I need to know it.”

“I was trying to protect you.”

That made him go still.

Then his expression sharpened immediately. “There it is.”

I did not answer.

He stared at me, then took one more step, and now the hallway felt too tight for the amount of tension sitting inside it. “You always say that like it makes it better.”

“It does not make it better,” I said. “It explains it.”

“No.” His voice dropped. “It explains you.”

I could feel my own jaw tighten now.

He was angry enough to be reckless, but he was still choosing his words carefully. That was how I knew this had hurt more than he wanted to admit.

“You are standing there,” he said, “acting like you had to save me from my own life.”

“I did not say that.”

“You did not have to.” He stepped closer again. “You went into that office alone.”

“Yes.”

“You made a decision about me without me.”

I swallowed once. “That is not what I did.”

He gave me a look that said he was done being patient.

“Yes, it is.”

I held his gaze and felt the argument shift under both of us. It was no longer just about the GM, it was about the pattern; the one we kept circling. The one he had finally gotten tired of pretending not to see.

I lowered my voice. “I was trying to protect our future.”

Cassian stared at me for a second.

Then he gave a bitter laugh that sounded too close to pain. “You always say it like that makes it noble.”

“It is not about noble,” I said. “It is about protecting you.”

“From what?” he snapped. “From hearing a rumor? From having an opinion? From being part of my own life?”

I did not answer fast enough.

His mouth tightened. “You think because you are the one with the captain letter on your chest, you get to decide when something is serious enough for me.”

“That is not what I think.”

“It is what you do.”

I looked at him, and for a second I almost said something defensive. 

I did not.

Because he was not wrong.

He took that silence as confirmation.

He let out another breath and pointed towards the locker room behind me. “I was on my way to see him myself.”

I went still.

That was not what I had expected him to say next, and he knew it.

He kept going, his voice was rougher now. “I was walking down this hallway with the same exact thought in my head, and then I saw you disappear into the office before I could get there.”

My throat tightened.

Cassian’s eyes stayed on mine. “Do you have any idea what that felt like?”

I knew.

That was the worst part.

I knew it had felt like being left behind, like being treated as a side note in a conversation that directly involved him. Like the decision had already started moving before he had even been told it existed.

I had done that.

I had done it because I thought I was shielding him from the worst of it.

He was staring at me now with an expression I knew well enough to dread. The one that meant he was trying not to shout because shouting would turn this into something louder than he wanted.

“You always do this,” he said.

“Do what?”

He let out a short, incredulous laugh. “Save everybody.”

I frowned. “That is not what I am doing.”

“It is exactly what you are doing.”

I stepped towards him before I could stop myself. “You think I did this because I wanted to control you?”

He did not hesitate. “I think you did it because you always think you have to fix everything before anyone else gets to touch it.”

That made me stop.

He was angry enough to spit the words, but underneath them was something else; frustration and hurt. The kind that had been building since the moment he saw me walk into the GM’s office alone.

I looked at him and said, “I was trying to keep them from turning you into a trade package before I could stop it.”

He stared at me.

I kept going because I had already crossed the point of no return. “I was not going to sit there and let them discuss you like you were a number on a page.”

His face changed by a degree.

“That is not the part I am angry about,” he said.

I waited.

He stepped even closer, and now there was almost no room left between us. The hallway felt smaller with every word, every breath, every second we spent not stepping away.

“The part I am angry about,” he said, voice low and sharp, “is that you keep fighting my battles for me.”

The words hit hard enough that I actually felt them.

His chest was rising faster now. Mine was too.

He looked furious.

“I can fight my own battles,” he said.

“I know you can.”

“I don’t think you do.”

I stared at him.

He stared back.

The heat between us was not the good kind right now, though it was impossible to pretend it had disappeared completely. It sat under the anger, under the frustration, under the fact that we knew each other too well for this to be only about the GM and the trade rumors and the office door he had seen me walk through without him.

He took another breath and then said it more quietly.

“I am tired of you making me feel like I am always one step behind your decisions.”

That hurt more than the yelling would have.

I could feel it settle in my chest.

“I did not mean to make you feel that way,” I said.

His eyes narrowed slightly. “But you did.”

I could not argue with that.

The silence after that felt too big for the hallway.

Then he said the thing that made everything in me go still.

“You’re suffocating me.”

The words hung in the air like they had weight.

For one second neither of us moved.

I heard the door to the training room open and close somewhere behind us, the whole corridor felt sealed around that one sentence.

You’re suffocating me.

I looked at him.

He looked back, face tight, jaw set, eyes still bright with anger he had not burned off yet.

The silence stretched.

I could feel all the things I wanted to say pressing against my mouth and none of them coming out clean enough to help. He had hit the exact place I was most afraid to hear named.

The part of me that thought if I held too tightly, everything would slip anyway.

The part of me that had been trying to keep our future from being decided by anybody else.

The part of me that had thought protecting him was the same as keeping control of the situation.

It was not.

I knew that now.

That did not make the words hurt less.

Cassian saw it in my face, because his expression shifted just slightly after that. 

His hand flexed once around the strap of his bag.

He looked at me for a long second, then said, quieter now, “I need space, Tor.”

He turned towards the locker room without saying anything else, and I stood in the side hallway outside the training room with the words still hanging there.