Page 77 of Break Me Apart
I nod. “You didn’t know I was back?”
“No.” He exhales. “I didn’t. You look thinner,” he says, then looks faintly annoyed with himself for saying it out loud.
“I am,” I say. “You look...” I look at him again, because apparently I need to. “Like you live here now.”
“That’s one way of putting it,” he says, a corner of his mouth lifting.
“I didn’t know you were being reassigned,” I say.
“It was sudden,” he replies. “They pulled us into a briefing and shipped us straight out.”
I glance once toward the corridor, then back to him. “We’ll talk about it later.”
“Okay,” he says immediately.
I set my bag properly against the wall, more because I need my hands free than because I care where it goes. When I straighten up, he’s still there, close enough that if one of us moved forward half a step, that would be it. Caiden lets out a breath like he’s been holding it too long. “I didn’t know how to tell you,” he says. “About Cassie. About being here. You were gone, and then everything started happening too fast.”
“I know.”
“I was relieved when you said that you knew already. I didn’t want that to be the first thing I told you.”
“It wouldn’t have been,” I say.
He studies my face more slowly now, like he’s matching me back up against his memory. “You’re really here,” he says.
“I’m really here.” He takes a step closer and stops, still giving me the chance to back away if I want to.
As if that would happen.
I close the last bit of distance for him. The hug isn’t dramatic. There’s no collapse, no clutching, no theatrical reunion nonsense. I put my arms around him and feel him exhale, folding into it properly, his forehead pressing briefly against my shoulder. I hold him hard between the shoulder blades and let myself lean into it.
He’s here, and that’s all I need for the next few seconds.
“I thought I was losing my mind when I opened the door,” I say quietly.
He laughs softly against my neck. “I thought you were a hallucination.”
We pull back just enough to look at each other, neither of us letting go completely. “How’s Niko, really?” I ask.
His face shifts slightly. “He’s... functioning,” he says. “I’m trying to make sure he eats. He sleeps when he can, but he doesn’t ask for help.”
“I wouldn’t expect him to.”
“No,” he says. “But he doesn’t stop me either.”
That tells me enough. “And Vladimir?”
“Loud. Stubborn. Hungry at inconvenient times.” He pauses. “He’s all right.”
I nod once. “Good.” There’s more to say than this. About what happens next, about distance, risk and all the things I’d just started to believe in before everything shifted under me, and I kept having that same recurring dream since. But none of it belongs here right now. “You shouldn’t have had to do this alone.”
“It’s okay,” he says straight away, then after a second, “I’m glad I can help.”
I tighten my arms around him. “Six months,” I say again as we separate reluctantly. “Stay with me,” I add.
“I was planning on it,” he says, laughing softly.
Tomorrow will be worse than today; there will be conversations we can’t avoid and grief we can’t keep boxed up. But for now, he’s here, and I’m here, and that will have to do.
