NOAH
I completed the sentence I had been avoiding for weeks.
Cassian wasn't just healing from his injuries, he was living in the past with the only person who had ever managed to get behind his wall.
A sharp, hot spike of jealousy hit me right in the throat, and I hated myself for it the instant it arrived.
It felt small and pathetic to stand on a public pavement feeling bitter about a name, especially when the man who uttered it was currently hooked up to a machine that kept his heart beating.
But the feeling wouldn't go away.
It turned into something heavier than anger, the cold certainty that this name mattered more to Cassian than anything I had given him over the last few months.
He didn't let things matter to him where people could see, but he was weeping for this boy while his body was too broken to even speak to the doctors.
