Chapter 105 The Reunion

Chapter 105 The Reunion

I was still awake when the knock came.

The apartment was dark except for the lamp I had left on in the living room, and the bed still felt wrong without Cassian in it. I had been lying on my back for too long, staring at the ceiling, replaying the last few days in my head and waiting for a reply.

The knock came again, softer this time.

I sat up immediately.

For one second I thought I had imagined it, but then it came again, three quick knocks that made my pulse kick hard enough to wake me all the way up.

I crossed the apartment barefoot and looked through the peephole.

Cassian stood in the hallway with his hood up and his face blotched red around the eyes. He looked like he had been crying for a long time. His hair was messy, his shoulders were tense, and his hands were curled tightly around the strap of his bag like it was the only thing keeping him upright.

My chest tightened.

I opened the door before he could knock again.

He froze when he saw me.

Neither of us spoke right away.

The hallway light caught the wetness still sitting in his eyes. That hit me hard enough to make my own throat tighten. He looked exhausted and raw and too tired to be pretending anything at all.

His voice came out rough when he finally spoke. “I read your text.”

I nodded once and stepped back immediately. “Come in.”

He walked past me slowly, like he was afraid the air inside the apartment might break if he moved too quickly, I shut the door behind him and turned.

He was standing in the middle of the living room now, bag still over one shoulder, not looking at the couch or the kitchen or anything else. Just standing there with that same tight expression, breathing too carefully.

The apartment was too quiet.

I moved towards him and stopped a few feet away, not wanting to crowd him. He looked at me like he had already used up most of his anger and now only had the wreckage of it left.

“Do you want water?” I asked.

He gave a tiny shake of his head. “No.”

“Sit down.”

He did not move at first.

I waited.

Then he let out a slow breath, crossed the room, and sat on the floor with his back against the couch instead of taking the seat. He folded his arms loosely over his knees and tipped his head forward for a second like he was trying to get through the last of the tension before he said anything.

I sat down too, on the floor beside him, back against the couch. Close enough that my shoulder brushed his, close enough that I felt him go still for half a second before relaxing into the contact.

The silence between us was not empty.

It was full of everything we had not said.

Outside, the city was quiet. A car passed somewhere below. The apartment heater hummed faintly. The world kept going, but right here, on the floor of my living room at two in the morning, it felt like the only thing that existed was the space between my apology and his silence.

I spoke first. “I am sorry.”

Cassian’s jaw tightened. He kept looking at the floor.

I waited a beat. “I know I crossed a line.”

He said nothing.

I kept going because I needed the words out before I lost my nerve. “I know I keep doing that thing where I think I am helping when I am really deciding for both of us, I know that is not okay.”

He looked at me then.

I stared back and kept my voice steady. “I was scared.”

That got a small reaction out of him, I saw it in the way his shoulders shifted slightly, like the words had hit a place he had already been carrying too much in.

“I know that does not fix what I did,” I said. “It just explains it.”

He looked away again, then rubbed a hand over his face and let out a rough breath.

“I hated the text,” he said quietly.

My chest tightened.

He continued, still looking down at his hands. “I hated reading it the first time, I hated it more the second time because I knew you were right about some of it. And the third time I read it, I hated how much of it I believed.”

I stayed still.

He turned his head slightly toward me, eyes still red, voice rough around the edges. “I hated that I left angry.”

I swallowed.
“I did not want to be mad at you anymore,” he said. “But I was, and I was tired. I did not know how to stand in the same room with you and not feel like everything was breaking.”

The honesty in that almost knocked the breath out of me.

I looked at him for a second before I said, “I was scared too.”

He nodded once. 

“I know I keep trying to get ahead of the problem,” I said. “I know I keep acting like if I handle things first, nobody else has to feel the hit as hard. That is a bad habit, I know that now.”

His face stayed turned towards the floor, but I could see the tension in his jaw easing by a fraction.

I kept going because it mattered. “I do not want to lose you.”

That made him look up.

The room felt different immediately.

I held his gaze and let the next part out before I could overthink it. “That is the truth underneath all of it. I was terrified that if I stood still for one second, the whole thing would get taken out of my hands and you would be the thing I lost.”

Cassian stayed very quiet.

He was looking at me with that same direct expression he used on the ice when he was trying to decide whether a pass was really there or whether the defense was baiting him. 

He said, “You should have told me.”

“I know.”

“You should have let me in before you walked into that office.”

“I know that too.”

He looked at the floor again, then back at me. “I was furious because you made me feel like I was a spectator in my own life.”

The words landed hard.

I nodded once because I could not argue with them.

He kept going, voice lower now. “And then I got even angrier because I knew why you did it. That was the part I hated most, I knew you were trying to protect me.”

I looked at him. “I was.”

“I know.”

The apartment went very still around that.

We were both breathing a little too hard now, not because we were yelling. The fight had burned itself down to the part that mattered, and now there was just the truth sitting between us on the floor.

Cassian leaned his head back against the couch and closed his eyes for a second.

“I do not want to keep doing this,” he said quietly.

Neither did I.

“I know.”

He opened his eyes again. “I hate that I can still be mad at you and still want to reach for you.”

That hit me hard enough that I had to look away for a second.

When I looked back, he was already watching me.
He had that exhausted, honest expression on his face that made it impossible to pretend this was only about the argument now. The tension between us was still there, but it had changed shape. It was softer and older somehow. More dangerous because we were both too tired to keep fighting it properly.

“I love you,” I said quietly.

His eyes stayed on mine.

I let the words sit there before I added, “I am not saying that to fix this. I am saying it because it is still true even when I get everything else wrong.”

That did it.
His expression changed in a way I felt all the way through my chest. He did not smile or look away. He just sat there looking like he was trying to decide whether to be angry or relieved or both.

Then he said, “I love you too.”

I closed my eyes for half a second.

That was the part I had needed most.

He asked, “Did you really think I would have walked away if you told me?”

I answered honestly. “I did not think you would walk away.”

“Then what?”

“I thought you would be hurt.”

He looked at me for a long second and then nodded once like he understood exactly how much that answer had cost me.

“I was hurt,” he said.

“I know.”

He let out a breath that almost sounded like a laugh. “You keep saying that.”
“Because I do.”

The corner of his mouth moved just a little. 

We sat there for a while without talking after that.

Eventually Cassian tipped his head back against the couch again and said, “I do not want to keep doing this without help.”

That made me look at him.

He kept his eyes on the ceiling. “I know how that sounds.”

I did not answer right away because I was already thinking the same thing.

He turned his head toward me. “Couples counseling.”

I blinked once.

He gave a small, tired shrug. “I am serious.”

The tension in my chest loosened in a way I had not expected.

I looked at him, and for the first time all night the room felt less like a place where we were rebuilding after a crack and more like one where we were finally letting ourselves be honest enough to do the work.

“Yes,” I said.

He studied my face. “Yes?”

“Yes.”

That pulled the smallest breath of relief out of him.

I went on, because it was my turn to be honest all the way through. “I think we need it.”

Cassian nodded slowly. “Good.”

The word was quiet, but it mattered.

He reached over then and let his hand rest briefly against my forearm. The touch was light, but it lit up every part of me anyway. 

We stayed there on the floor for a long time after that, talking about the parts we had both been trying to outrun. My fear of losing him, his fear of being suffocated, my habit of making decisions first, his habit of carrying hurt until it turned into silence. We did not yell, we did not need to.

By the time the conversation started to slow, the apartment had gone from dark to softly lit by the morning edge creeping through the blinds.

Cassian looked at the light, then back at me.

“Do we really do this?” he asked.

“Do what?”

“Counseling.”

I did not hesitate. “Yes.”
He nodded once.

Then, after a beat, he leaned his shoulder lightly against mine. 

“All right,” he said.

I let my head rest against the couch for a second and looked up at the ceiling.

The fight was not gone.

But it was no longer between us.

It was something we were finally going to deal with together.