Chapter 9
Cassian stayed.
Not at the estate.
At a hotel downtown.
He requested dinner.
I almost refused.
Then accepted.
Neutral restaurant.
No entourage at the table.
He looked annoyingly relaxed.
“You ended it.”
“Yes.”
“Sorry.”
“Are you?”
He considered.
“About hurting you?”
“Yes.”
“About kissing her?”
No.
Honest bastard.
I appreciated it despite myself.
Then he said:
“I’m not leaving with her.”
“Why?”
“Because she didn’t choose me.”
I frowned.
“She kissed you for three months.”
“That isn’t choosing.”
Fair.
Coralie wanted leverage, affection, escape, validation.
Maybe Cassian too.
Neither had actually built a future.
He continued.
“She wanted you to change.”
“And you wanted?”
“To know whether Blackwell changed without me.”
There it was.
He came back partly for himself.
He wanted proof I had failed.
Or proof his old argument had been right.
“Did you hope the eight would leave me?”
Cassian thought.
“Some.”
At least honest.
“Then what?”
“Build something smaller.”
With Coralie?
“Maybe.”
Not a plan.
A fantasy.
I realized something.
Cassian had spent four years outside Blackwell imagining the family frozen exactly where he left it.
I had spent four years imagining Cassian as permanent rival.
Both wrong.
He ran a logistics firm now.
Legitimate enough to bore him.
Had twenty employees.
A life.
He did not need my chair.
He needed his version of history validated.
“I threw you out because you organized behind me.”
“Yes.”
“Would I do it differently now?”
He watched me carefully.
“Would you?”
“I’d give you one open meeting first.”
He smiled.
“That’s progress.”
“Then I’d throw you out.”
He laughed.
Good.
Some truths survive reform.
Then I asked:
“Why the kiss?”
Cassian’s smile disappeared.
“Because she was lonely.”
“And you?”
“Because I was angry at you.”
There.
Not noble love.
Not destiny.
Two adults using intimacy partly as argument against a third.
Ugly.
Human.
I paid the bill.
Cassian objected.
I told him exile had made him cheap.
He insulted my suit.
For the first time in four years, we left a room without being enemies.
Not family restored.
May you like
Not yet.
But no longer mythology.
