NOAH
"With Cassian."
The two words sat in my brain like lead weights, refusing to move, refusing to arrange themselves into a shape that made any kind of sense.
My face did something... a twitch, a falter, a sudden widening of the eyes.. that I couldn't reel back in fast enough. It was a tell, a loud, glaring neon sign of my internal collapse, and Nick was reading it in high definition.
His smile widened. It was the specific, oily pleasure of a man who had just hit the jackpot. He didn't just see my shock; he was savoring it, rolling the taste of my discomfort around his mouth like an expensive wine.
"You look like you've just been told the sky is falling, Noah," he said, his voice dripping with that familiar, mocking amusement. He wasn't even pretending to be a concerned brother anymore. The mask was off because he'd already won the round.
