NOAH
"You have no idea how I see you."
The words didn't just hang in the air; they landed somewhere deep inside me, in a place I usually kept boarded up and dark. I heard them twice, once as a vibration in the cool park air, and once as an echo in the hollow of my chest. The second time was louder. It was a physical weight, a pressure that made it hard to remember how to keep my expression neutral.
A flutter started in my stomach, unbidden and entirely without my permission. It was the specific, terrifying warmth of being looked at by Cassian Wolfe as if I actually mattered. Cassian didn't do anything by accident. He didn't look at things without intent. He was a man of cold logic and surgical precision, which made the way he was staring at me right now feel like a slow-motion car crash.
