NOAH
The mind has a strange way of holding onto things it shouldn't. It fixates on details that hurt, turning them over like a jagged stone in a pocket until the edges draw blood.
For me, that stone was a photograph.
Two days ago, I was in Cassian's villa. I shouldn't have been looking through his things, I know that, but the wallet was sitting there on the desk, open, vulnerable. And inside was a picture.
And It wasn't a picture of me.
It was a younger Cassian. He looked different, lighter, somehow. But it was his expression that stopped my heart.
It was a look I had never seen on his face, not once, in all the time I've known him. It wasn't directed at the camera; it was directed at the man beside him.
His hair pulled back into a loose, messy bun. His face was a confusing, beautiful contradiction, masculine and delicate all at once.
