NOAH
I remained exactly where I was, my head resting against the firm muscle of Cassian's thigh, my eyes tracing the lines of his face as he spoke.
The telenovela on the screen had become nothing more than a flicker of light and noise, and the tea Miss Chen had brought sat untouched, slowly losing its heat to the room.
What I noticed first wasn't the content of his story, but the way his face moved. Cassian Wolfe's face was a masterpiece of management... controlled, deliberate, and polished to a high corporate sheen.
But as he recounted his childhood, things were slipping past the censors. Expressions were arriving before he had the chance to intercept them.
It wasn't grief, exactly; it was something older and more structural. He looked like a man describing a storm he had barely survived... one that had passed years ago but still lived in the marrow of his bones.
