Cassian’s POV

Her words hung between us like smoke soft, but stinging all the same.

“Don’t make promises you might not keep.”

For a moment, I just stood there, searching her face. I wanted to tell her that I wasn’t the same man she remembered that the boy who had once run from responsibility no longer existed. But when I looked into her eyes, all I saw was exhaustion. Fear. A quiet kind of strength that had been born out of surviving without me.

It hit me then, the weight of ...