Chapter 223: Deja vu

The office felt different.

The door had clicked shut behind Cyan, but his energy lingered like the static charge after a lightning strike, a lingering heat that refused to dissipate. Frankly, It made me a little uneasy.

I sat there, rooted to the sofa, feeling the weight of the last forty-eight hours finally settle into my bones. My jaw still felt tight from the encounter with Nick, but my focus was entirely on the man standing by the desk.

I looked at Cassian. I didn’t realize how much I’d been starving for the sight of him until he was right there, a few feet away, real and solid and devastatingly silent.

“Where have you been?” was the question that I’d asked.

It sounded smaller than I intended. It wasn’t an accusation; it was a leak. A tiny puncture in the hull of my composure that let out the truth of my weekend. I watched his face, searching for the answer before he could filter it through the CEO persona.

Cassian hesitated. It was a micro-flicker of his eyes, a momentary stalling of his breath. It was enough to tell me that whatever he was about to say wasn’t the whole truth.

“I was busy,” he said.

Two days. Forty-eight hours of silence. A thousand scenarios played out in my head while I stared at my ceiling, and he summed it up in two syllables. Busy.

I felt a sharp, bitter pang of disappointment, but I swallowed it down. I wasn’t his partner. I wasn’t his family. I was a “project” he’d picked up from the back of a club. I had to remember that.

“Nick mentioned you two were in communication this weekend,” I said, keeping my voice as level as possible. I wanted to see if he’d lie about that, too.

Cassian’s head snapped up. Genuine surprise flashed across his features… a sharp, insulting kind of shock. “No,” he said, his voice flat and hard. “We weren’t.” He took a short, sharp breath through his nose. “The project is new to me as well. My father didn’t see fit to mention it until this morning.”

“Yeah,” I whispered. “I figured he was probably lying.” I looked at my hands, then back at him. “I was just worried. About you. You didn’t reach out and I just… ”

I stopped. The sentence was heading toward a cliff I wasn’t ready to jump off.

I really looked at him then. I’d spent months now, learning the topography of Cassian Wolfe’s face. I knew the difference between his “bored at a gala” face and his “calculating a hostile takeover” face. This face was new.

The exhaustion was heavy. It wasn’t in the usual places… his suit was still immaculate, his collar stayed crisp… but it was internal.

He looked like a man who had been carrying a weight that didn’t have a handle, a specific, soul-deep fatigue that comes from being somewhere that cost you something you hadn’t expected to pay.

What happened this weekend? I wanted to scream it. What were you doing in that silence?

“Is it work?” I asked instead. “Or something personal?”

Cassian looked surprised by the options. He looked at me as if he hadn’t realized I’d been paying enough attention to know there was a difference. He hesitated again, longer this time.

“Work stuff,” he said, but the usual iron-clad certainty was missing.

I felt the wall go up. It wasn’t a slam; it was a slow, mechanical rising of the gates. The Cassian who had sat on the sofa with me, watching a ridiculous telenovela and letting the world stay outside the door, was receding.

The distance between us was lengthening, and I felt the familiar, pathetic ache of yearning.

It was humiliating, really. I’d spent my entire life being told I was a mistake, a surplus human being that no one quite knew what to do with. I’d learned to expect nothing.

But then this man had come along and systematically taken me apart, reassembling me in an order that made me feel like I actually mattered. And now, the thought of him pulling away felt like losing a limb I’d only just discovered I had.

It was a suffocating fear I had no control over.

I could sense the heartbreak coming. I could see the collision course. But I was desperate. I was so goddamn desperate for him not to leave me behind in the dark again.

Cassian turned slightly, his eyes tracking back to the stacks of paper on his desk. “I’m going to be more busy over the next few weeks,” he said, his tone shifting into the clinical register of a schedule adjustment. “Possibly months. You might not see me as much, Noah. I wanted to let you know so you could manage your workflow accordingly.”

The anxiety hit me like a physical blow. It wasn’t butterflies; it was a swarm of hornets in my chest.

“Why?” I asked, my voice cracking.

“It’s a private matter,” he said, avoiding my gaze.

The words hurt worse than the silence.

Private. As in: not your business. As in: you are still on the outside.

“You’ll be fine by yourself,” he continued, still not looking at me. “I’ll make sure no one gives you a hard time while I’m occupied. If that’s what you’re worried about.”

It made me feel even more pathetic… like a child being reassured that there were no monsters in the closet while the parent packed a bag to leave.

I didn’t care about the office politics. I didn’t care about Nick. I just wanted to know why he was looking at me like he was already halfway out the door, moving to a place I couldn’t reach

He started to move toward his desk, a physical withdrawal that felt like a finality.

I didn’t decide to move. My body just did it. The fear was louder than the caution now, overriding every self-preservation instinct I’d spent twenty-four years honing. I couldn’t let him close that door.

I stood up and reached out. My fingers found the fabric of his shirt, catching the expensive material in a light, trembling grip.

“Wait,” I whispered.

Cassian stopped. He turned slowly, his gaze dropping to my hand on his chest, then rising to my face. I didn’t know what he saw there. I probably looked transparent. I probably looked like a drowning man.

The silence stretched between us, thick and heavy. He opened his mouth to say something… some logical, professional reason why I should let go.

“Stay,” I said. It wasn’t a command. It was the truth, stripped of all its armor.

Cassian’s eyes widened. For a second, the mask shattered completely. I saw the shock land past his defenses, his mouth parting slightly as he looked at me.

Before he could find his voice, I closed the distance.

I didn’t wait for a sign. I didn’t wait for him to lead. I leaned in and kissed him, and it wasn’t like the other times. It wasn’t a surprise or a reaction to a moment of tension. It was a choice. I was choosing to throw myself into the fire, fully aware of what it would cost me when it eventually burned out.

I took the lead, my hand sliding from his shirt to the back of his neck, my fingers tangling in the hair at the base of his skull. I kissed him with everything I’d been bottling up all weekend… the worry, the longing, the sheer, terrifying need to feel connected to him.

For a heartbeat, he was still. Then, the air seemed to leave the room.

Cassian’s hands found my waist, his grip firm and sudden. He pulled me closer, taking over the kiss with an intensity that made my knees go weak.

I felt a sense of deja vu.

All the common sense I’d ever possessed vanished. He lifted me effortlessly, his strength familiar and overwhelming, and I wrapped my legs around his waist, clinging to him as if he were the only solid thing in a world made of smoke.

He set me down on the edge of the mahogany desk, scattering a few folders, but neither of us cared. The kiss went on, deep and consuming, a desperate language of tongues and teeth. This was the only way I knew how to keep him close. If I couldn’t have his secrets, I would have his breath. If I couldn’t have his time, I would have this moment.

Cassian’s mouth left mine, traveling down the line of my jaw to the sensitive skin of my neck. He let out a low, vibrating hum against my skin.

“Did you miss me that much?” he murmured, the bass of his voice vibrating through my entire body.

The sound of it made me ache, a sharp, pulsing need that made my head light. I wanted to scream that I had. I wanted to tell him that the weekend had felt like a year. But I couldn’t speak.

I just arched my neck, pulling him closer, desperate to be consumed by the only person who had ever made me feel like I wasn’t a mistake.

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