جميع فصول : الفصل -الفصل 106

CASSIAN'S POV Time is a cruel thing.People say it flies when you're happy and crawls when you're hurting, but I don't think that's true.Time doesn't slow just because you're in pain.It slows because pain deserves an audience.It stretches every second until it snaps, lingers over every breath, drags each heartbeat across your ribcage like the universe is determined to savor every miserable moment before it lets you move on, and right now, I'm starting to think that's its favourite part.I sit on Lucas's couch with my elbows braced against my knees, my fingernails digging crescents into my palms hard enough to drown out the ache in my side.Almost.The bedroom door stays shut for now, but I know she'll walk through it eventually.She has to.Some things are inevitable.The sun will rise, blood will dry, people will leave, and sooner or later, Nina will walk out of that bedroom and find me sitting here… waiting for the words to calm the tempest in my head. Time seems to know it to

NINA'S POV Cassian never looks at me once during the flight.Not when the jet takes off, not when the stewardess asks if we want dinner…not even when I wake up with my cheek pressed against the window and realise I'd fallen asleep crying.He spoke only when he had to—to the pilot, to the flight attendant, to the driver waiting outside the airport.Never to me.By the time the tyres crunch over the gravel leading into the ranch, I've stopped feeling less like his passenger and more like luggage—like something fragile he’s transporting from one place to another... careful not to break it, careful not to touch it either.And amidst all this, my heart won't stop racing. I've held my breath, clenched my fists and torn my mind away from the steady rise and fall of Cassian's chest, but it just buffers right onto the one man whose last name now echoes in my ears like a haunting.Axel Cross.Cross. It makes no sense yet so much all at once. If only I can get the chance to—No, Nina. We're not

CASSIAN’S POV The moment I snap, something inside me finally stops fighting.It doesn’t feel like surrender.It feels like the darkness I’ve spent years chaining beneath my ribs has finally found a crack wide enough to crawl through.My fingers slip from the curve of her jaw into the silk of her hair, cradling the back of her head with a reverence that borders on desperation, and before reason can drag me back—my lips find hers.God.One touch. That’s all it takes.Forty-nine hours of restraint. Months of guilt. All this time I spent pretending that I could survive without her.Gone.The world doesn’t disappear. It just ceases to matter, like the hallway behind us, the howling wind outside, Axel…none of it matters. Not even the blood on my hands and the promises I made to stay away from her. Every last one of them burns to ash beneath the quiet sound she makes against my mouth.I should stop, I know I should, but the monster I’ve been so terrified of becoming doesn’t want distance a