Chapter 5

Aria found him in the kitchen that evening.

She'd spent the whole drive home running through everything in her head. The admin office. The family dinner that didn't exist. The three different guys, three different excuses, not one of them the same.

She was done letting it go.

"We need to talk," she said.

Cayden was leaning against the counter, scrolling through his phone. He didn't look up.

"Do we?"

"You know what you've been doing."

"I genuinely don't know what you're referring to."

"The excuses," she said. "Mrs. Patterson. The family dinner that Victoria somehow forgot to mention to me. The guy from history class."

"Coincidences."

"Three of them. In one day."

"Bad luck."

"Cayden."

He finally set his phone down and looked at her. Completely calm. Completely unbothered. Like she was mildly interesting at best.

That was what made her angriest. Not what he was doing. The way he looked while doing it.

"I don't need you interfering," she said. "Whatever you think you're doing — stop. I can handle my own life."

"Nobody said you couldn't."

"Then why do you keep doing this?"

"I'm not doing anything."

"You show up every single time. Different excuse every time."

She stepped closer, voice dropping.

"You think I haven't noticed?"

"I think you're looking for a problem that isn't there."

"I think you're lying to my face right now."

Something shifted in his expression. Not guilt. Something harder to name.

He pushed off the counter. Slow. Deliberate. Taking up more space in the kitchen than he needed to.

"You want to be careful," he said quietly, "about the things you accuse people of."

"Or what?"

He tilted his head slightly. Looking down at her with that expression — the one that wasn't quite a smile, wasn't quite a warning, was somehow both at the same time.

"Or you'll spend a lot of energy being angry about nothing."

"It's not nothing."

"Prove it."

She couldn't. That was the thing. She couldn't prove a single one of them and he knew it perfectly well.

Which was exactly why he stood there looking so calm while she felt like she was unraveling at the edges.

She shoved his shoulder.

Not hard. Just enough to do something with the frustration that had nowhere else to go.

What she didn't expect was how fast he moved.

He caught both her wrists. Easily. Like he'd been ready for it. His grip wasn't tight — not rough, not meant to hurt — just firm enough that she couldn't pull free without making a scene.

She went still.

They were close now. Closer than they'd been since the doorway on moving day. Close enough that she could see the exact shade of his eyes and the way his jaw was set and the fact that his expression had changed — just slightly — into something she didn't have a name for yet.

Her heart did something ridiculous.

She hated it.

"Let go," she said. Quieter than she meant to.

He looked down at her for a long moment.

Something moved behind his eyes. There and gone.

Then he released her wrists. Slowly. Stepped back like nothing had happened.

"Try not to go around shoving people," he said, voice back to its usual lazy tone. "It's not a great habit."

"Don't give me a reason to."

"I haven't given you anything."

He picked his phone back up.

"That's kind of the whole point."

She stood there for a second longer, wrists still warm where his hands had been, heart still doing the thing she refused to acknowledge.

Then she turned and walked out.

She made it halfway up the stairs before she stopped, one hand on the railing, and just stood there breathing.

Her wrists didn't hurt. That wasn't why she'd stopped.

She started moving again before she could think about what it actually was.

In the kitchen, Cayden set his phone down on the counter.

He stared at the wall for a moment.

His pulse was doing something it had no business doing. He was aware of it the way you were aware of something you weren't supposed to notice — with effort, from the corner of your eye, hoping if you didn't look directly at it, it would stop.

It didn't stop.

He picked up his phone again. Put it back down.

Upstairs he could hear her door close — not slammed, just closed — and the quiet that followed.

He stood in the kitchen for a long time after that.

Telling himself it was nothing.

Getting less convinced every time.

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