Page 50 of The Last Call Home
A broken laugh escapes me.It’s bitter, empty.“Don’t.”
“Why?”
“Because once you start to understand me, you’ll see there’s nothing worth staying for.”
Cassian swears under his breath.Something guttural and hot that cuts through the tension like a blade he didn’t mean to unsheathe.
I don’t look at him.
Can’t.
Because if I do, I’ll see everything I lost.
And worse—everything I might still want.
Delilah?She just watches me like I’m a puzzle she’s already halfway through solving.
“I don’t scare that easily,” she says, not blinking.
“You should.”
I turn away.Step back toward the stove like I need to check something.I don’t.The burner’s off.Everything is already cold.
Just like this part of me.
Just like it always is.
“You want to know why I didn’t say anything back then?”I ask, not facing them.“Why I let Rachel become the excuse, the wedge?”
Neither of them says yes.
So I keep going.
“Because it was easier to lose him than admit what I felt.Because I knew if I said it—if I let those words out—I’d never survive him walking away.”
The cabin stays still.Even the wind outside quiets, like the whole world is listening now.
“I didn’t grow up with the kind of love that stays.Not from my parents.Not from anyone.So when Cassian looked at me like he could love me, I panicked.”
I face them.Both of them.
And it’s like peeling off skin.
“You told her you loved her,” Cassian says, the bitterness in his voice quiet but brutal.“But not me.”
“She wanted me to say it, and so I did,” I clarify.“It’s survival.I became who people needed me to be—said what they wanted to hear—because if I didn’t, they’d leave.I thought that if I did, she’d understand that I wanted you both.Instead you fucking left.”
Delilah’s mouth parts like she might speak, but I hold up a hand.
“I need to finish this,” I say.“Because once I do, I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to again.When he left,” I say, eyes flicking to Cassian, “I told myself it was a relief.That it was clean.Final.Easier.”
My jaw locks.
“But it wasn’t.His memory became a ghost.He was in every damn thing I did.Every mission.Every bed.Every goddamn morning.And when I saw him again, here, in this town ...”
I look at Delilah now.
“When I saw you talking to him, laughing with him ...”I pause, the words raw on my tongue.“It felt like watching my past flirt with my future—if I were ever brave enough to want one.”
