“Tight is an understatement.” He bent, and I half-expected the tunic to rip up the center of his back as he picked up his straps. “I would call him an asshole because he is one, but right now, he gets to be an asshole.”
My smile faded as I remembered the look of absolute desolation on Reaver’s face. “I’ve never seen him look like that.”
“Do you know what their relationship is?” Casteel slipped the strap over his chest, the simple act loosening the stitchesalong his biceps. He sighed. “I thought they were related, but apparently, they were only raised together.”
“He’s never really talked about her much, so I’m not sure.” I drifted over to the window. “Whenever he did speak about her, I heard the sadness in his voice. I know he believed she was already gone.” Her hoarse words echoed in my mind. “She said she didn’t…”
“She needs time.” He sounded closer. “To get through what she’s been through.”
What she’s been through…
The breath I took was sharp. It stung, and the dense, scale-like foliage of the cedars blurred. I knew only a fraction of what Casteel had suffered while in captivity. How long did it take him to getthrough? “Did you…?”
He leaned against the window’s ledge. “Did I what?”
My fingers dug into my sides as I looked at him. I had a faint memory of him talking about how he’d dealt with the trauma he’d experienced, but I knew we hadn’t had that conversation. “Did you not want to live after you were freed?”
Turning his head, he was silent as he watched the wind sway the branches, shaking their deep bluish-green needles. “I wasn’t thinking of anything when I was first freed. Or it felt that way. Maybe there wastoomuch going on in my head.” He squinted as the warm rays of sunlight sliced over a cheekbone, magnifying the natural hollow beneath it. “But later? Weeks, months, and years later? Yeah, there were times I didn’t want to wake up when I went to sleep.”
Pain lanced my chest, and I forced myself to breathe through it.
“Don’t.” He turned to me, the line of his jaw hard like the iron surrounding us. “Don’t pity me, Poppy.”
“I don’t,” I said, ignoring the sharpness of his tone.
He crossed his arms. “You forget I know what you’re feeling.”
“Well, you must not be that good at deciphering it,” I countered, angling my body toward him. “I feelsadthat you wished not to live. Iempathize. I’mangrythat you experienced what you did. And I feelhelplessbecause I can’t do anything to change it. What Idon’tfeel is pity.”
He silently held my gaze for a few seconds and then exhaled roughly. “I’m sorry.”
“You don’t need to apologize, Cas. I get it.”
The aura of eather pulsed behind his eyes as he let out another breath, this one less harsh. “You do. We don’t have the same past, but we both have things we don’t want to be pitied for.”
We did.
I ran my tongue over the backs of my teeth. “How did you cope?”
“I didn’t. Not really.” His throat moved on a swallow. “I drank the memories away. Fucked them out of my head. And when that didn’t work, I was reckless with my life and Kieran’s.” A faint pink stain climbed up his throat as his words struck a chord of familiarity in me. He exhaled slowly. “I used to think I got my shit together before I started planning to find and free Malik. That having that goal cleared my head or was proof I cared about life, but that’s bullshit. My plan was reckless as fuck.”
“It was,” I agreed, resisting the urge to reach out, touch him, and ease the pain I knew he shielded me from. But he wouldn’t want that. Not right now. “You didn’t care about life even then?”
He inhaled through his nose and continued watching the cedars. “I cared about life—Malik’s. I cared about Kieran’s. So, I stopped doing extremely dumb shit. But mine?” He shook his head. “No.”
The ache expanded in my chest as I followed his gaze.
Several long moments passed before he said, “Ask what you want to.”
“It’s annoying how well you know me.”
He responded with a low chuckle. “The answer is yes, by the way. I care about my life now.” He pushed off the window when we felt Seraphena, then dipped his head and kissed me softly. “Ask me why later.”
I met his eyes. “I will.”
Draping his arm over my shoulders, we turned to find Seraphena coming up the hall. She was pale, her eyes glassy.
“Aurelia will return shortly,” she told us. “She knows she is needed here.”
