Chapter 104 The Solitude

Chapter 104 The Solitude


The bed looked wrong without him in it.

That was the first thing I noticed when I came out of the shower.

The second was how quiet the apartment had gotten.

The third was the empty space on Cassian’s side, still pulled back from days before, the sheet folded where his body had not been since he walked away from me angry and tired and too hurt to hide it anymore.

I stood there with a towel around my waist and one hand on the doorframe, staring at that empty side of the bed like I could fix the last twenty-four hours if I looked hard enough.

The room smelled like soap, clean laundry, and the coffee I had made earlier and forgotten to drink. 

I dressed slowly, because I had nothing else to do and because I knew if I moved too fast I would end up pacing.

That was how the rest of the night went.

I walked from the bedroom to the kitchen and back again.

I checked my phone twice even though I knew he had not texted.

I opened the fridge and stared at it without seeing anything.

I sat on the couch.

Then I got up again.

At some point I ended up back at the edge of the bed, staring at the place where he had slept when he was here, then at the phone in my hand. There was no message or reply to the one I had sent earlier asking if he had gotten through practice okay. There was no sign that he wanted to talk, no sign that he was less angry than when he had looked at me in the hallway and told me I was suffocating him.

That line still sat in my head.

I had not slept much since hearing it.

It was one thing to know I had been wrong. It was another to hear him say it with that much certainty and realize I had hurt him by trying to keep him safe in a way he had not asked for. I kept replaying the GM meeting, the hallway, the way I had moved in first, the way Cassian’s face had changed when he realized I had made the choice without him.

The worst part was that I still understood why I had done it.

That did not make it right.

I sat on the edge of the bed and rubbed a hand over my face. My phone was in my other hand, unlocked, the cursor blinking in the text thread with Cassian’s name at the top.

No reply yet.

I had started and deleted the message three times already.

The fourth draft sat there now, longer than the others, because the truth was longer than the anger had been. I stared at it for a full minute before I started typing again.

I knew I was controlling, I knew I was stepping in too fast, I knew I had made decisions for both of us and told myself it was protection because it was easier than admitting how scared I was.

I stared at that last line before I kept going.

Scared of what?

Losing him.

That was the simple answer, and it was ugly enough to be honest.

I typed, deleted, then started again.

By the time I was done, the message was longer than anything I had sent him since we had first started figuring out what we were to each other.

I read it through twice before I hit send.

‘Cassian,

I know I crossed a line.

I know I keep doing that thing where I think I am protecting you when really I am just deciding for both of us. That is not fair. You were right to be angry.

I did not go to the GM because I do not trust you. I went because I was scared of losing you and I thought if I acted first, I could keep somebody else from deciding your future before you had a say in it. That is not an excuse. It is the truth.

I have been trying to stay ahead of every problem because I am terrified of what happens when I cannot control it. That is on me, not you.

You are not something I get to manage. You are not a problem I get to solve. You are the man I love, and I should have let you in before I walked into that office. I should have told you what was happening. I should have trusted you to handle it with me.

I am sorry.

Not for caring. Not for fighting for you. For doing it in a way that made you feel shut out.

I will do better. I mean that.

No more making decisions for both of us without talking first. No more deciding what you can handle. No more trying to save you from your own battles when you have made it very clear you do not want me doing that.

I still want to protect you. I always will. But I need to learn how to do that without taking your choices away.

If you will give me another chance, I will earn it.

I love you.

~Torin

The message sent.

For a second nothing happened.

Then the screen showed delivered.

I stared at it longer than I should have.

I put the phone down and picked it back up almost immediately.

No reply.

I set it down again.

Then I sat with my elbows on my knees and stared at the floor for a while because looking at the bed again felt too much like standing in the middle of the thing I had made wrong.

The problem was that I knew exactly why I had done it. The part of me that wanted to keep him safe was the same part that had always acted before thinking when the stakes got too high. The same part that had gone to the GM alone. The same part that had tried to absorb pressure before it reached him. I hated that it came from love. That made it harder to dismiss. It also made it easier to excuse, which was the real danger.

My phone buzzed.

I grabbed it so fast I almost dropped it.

It was just a notification from the team app about tomorrow’s schedule.

I stared at it, then locked the screen and tossed the phone onto the other side of the bed.

The mattress barely moved.

The apartment was still too quiet.

I got up and went to the window, looking down at the street. Cars moved through the intersection below. Somebody walked a dog on the sidewalk across the road. A light flicked on in the building opposite mine. Life kept moving in a hundred small ordinary ways while mine sat in pieces in the bedroom behind me.

I turned back towards the bed and saw Cassian’s hoodie on the chair again.

He had left it there the last time he stayed over, probably because he had been distracted by whatever had been on his phone when he got dressed. I walked over and picked it up. It still smelled like him, a little like detergent, a little like cold air from the arena, a little like the familiar heat of his skin that always lingered on fabric after he wore it.

I held it for a second too long, then set it down carefully.

That was the thing about fighting with Cassian.

It did not just leave anger.

It left everything else too.

The silence. The tension. The way he looked at me in the hallway before he walked away. The way I had wanted to reach for him and knew that would only make it worse. The way my body still remembered his mouth, his hands, the weight of him against me when there was no argument between us and no reason to hold back.

I hated that part almost as much as the fight.