登入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 I have every reason to hate the man lying in front of me.He's broken my heart. Humiliated me. Made me cry until I couldn't fucking breathe.So why am I sitting here counting his breaths...terrified one of them will be his last?Cassian's eyelids flutter open again—not enough to wake up fully, just enough to remind me he’s still here.He's done that three times since Lucas left, and I hate how relieved that makes me each time those grey eyes settle on my face for one second, two, three…My fingers tighten around each other until my knuckles burn, and I keep my eyes on the rise and fall of his chest. That's it…just…breathe.My fingers rake through my hair and form a fist. I can't tell what's making my heart pound harder—the fact that Lucas had shot him, or the fact that if he doesn't make it back from that pharmacy soon, Cassian might bleed to death right in front of me. Okay, Nina, you're overreacting. But he has already bled through the second bandage, and now my hand
CASSIAN'S POV I could stand up. I just can't bring myself to.Nina sits across from me with her hands folded neatly in her lap, her head bowed as though the floor deserves her attention more than I do.She won't look at me.She hasn't looked at me since Axel walked out the front door.But I don't need her eyes to know she's been crying.I see it in the redness lingering on her cheeks, in the way her shoulders curl inward with the careful rise and fall of every breath… like she's trying not to let another one break.And then there's Lucas.Standing in the kitchen doorway with his arms folded across his chest like a prison guard making sure I don't do the one thing my entire body is begging me to do.Cross the room. Apologize. Touch her.I hate him for it.The worst part?He's probably right. I don't know how long we've been sitting like this, but by the time I finally find the voice to speak, the storm outside has stilled, found its way into my chest…and stayed there. “You never got
CASSIAN'S POV The first thing that breaks the silence isn't my voice.It's her body crashing into mine as her arms squeeze around my neck. My heart screams at me to step back, to ask questions, to remember we're not alone.My body doesn't listen.Instead, my arms lock around her waist on instinct, pulling her flush against me as the rain pounds against our backs.Survival.That's all this is.Because after forty-nine hours of believing I'd lost her, my body refuses to believe she's real unless it's holding her.Her heart batters hard against my chest, syncing instantly with mine as my fingers dig into her sides and I lift her off her feet.Her nails dig into the back of my neck, and her breath chatters on her teeth.“You're here… you're really here…”Nina, Nina…fucking hell.I know that I shouldn't. That she's here and that should be enough, but I find myself burying my nose in her hair, searching for traces of her scent. I inhale deeply, tasting the rain on my tongue and that damn
CASSIAN'S POV I open the curtain.Nothing.I let it fall shut, count to three, and open it again.Still nothing.Rain drones steadily on the ceiling and slicks the street outside, swallowing the few faces huddling past in umbrellas before I can properly see them, but I keep looking anyway.Because somewhere beyond that window is Nina—the only thing left in my life that isn't a lie.Everything else had unraveled in a single morning.My mother never abandoned me.She was murdered.I didn't spend fifteen years hating a woman who stopped loving me.I spent fifteen years loving the man who killed her. Trying to make him love me, to see me as the perfect son. The perfect fall guy. Bullshit.The curtain slips through my fingers.Then, almost violently, I wrench it open again.Nothing.No hazel eyes, no impatient stride, no wild curls bouncing against her shoulders and sticking to her oval face. Just strangers.More strangers.I don't even realize I'm pacing until Lucas tells me to stop we
NINA'S POV Forty-nine hours and seven minutes.Not that I was counting or anything.Okay, fine. I was counting. But it's all I can do now…count. Every second, every dead end, every useless lead that dissolved in my hands until I felt like a fish tossed into the wrong ocean—unable to swim forward, unable to swim back, just stuck there with panic clawing through my gills.I watch the rain droning lazily against the window glass in Axel's living room, knees pressing tight against my chest to stop my heart from bursting right through. Forty nine hours since I saw him, and everything in me feels like it's crumbling. Twenty four hours since I saw the news, and I still haven't found him.How desperate I must have looked—peering into coffee shops as if Cassian will ever be found there, or at bus stations. I went to the airport. I stood around checking flights in a blue onesie, nibbling on my nails like a maniac. As if the humiliation wasn't enough for me, I…god…I went to the office. I wen







