CASSIAN
My mouth was still moving against Cyan's, my hands locked around his waist, pulling him down until we were both sprawled out on the cold hardwood floor.
I didn't know what I was doing.
Every single drop of whiskey in my blood felt like liquid fire, scorching my veins, burning away whatever tiny shred of sense I had left.
My brain was a chaotic, snarled knot of grief and panic. I was drowning in the memory of Noah sitting across from another man at that restaurant.
I was suffocating under the heavy, crushing weight of Julian's ghost. And right here, beneath me, was Cyan.
Cyan, who had just laid his bleeding, broken heart bare on the floor.
Cyan, who had confessed that he loved me... not as a friend, not as a companion in the dark, but with the desperate, starving desperation of a man who had kept it locked in a cage for years.
And I kissed him.
I didn't push him away. I didn't offer him a gentle, platonic pat on the shoulder and tell him to go home.
