Page 171 of The Art of Ruin

Then Casey finally closes her laptop softly and sets it aside before pulling the blanket tighter around herself.

Not shutting me out entirely but not letting me close either. “I’m tired.”

The dismissal is firm, but gentle.

That somehow makes it worse.

I stand slowly from the bed, every instinct in me fighting the distance now sitting between us.

At the door, I stop.

Because there’s one thing she still doesn’t know.

One thing I can’t quite force myself to say aloud yet.

I love you.

The unsaid declaration sits with terrifying clarity, standing there in the half-dark, and yet I can’t tell her now. She’ll see it as manipulation and I wouldn’t blame her. I should have told her weeks ago how hopelessly I’d fallen in love with her but I was a coward.

When I look back, Casey is watching me quietly from the bed.

Her eyes are red and hold all the hurt I put there.

I want to go to her, to kiss away her pain, to tell her she’s mine in every way that matters to me.

And maybe that’s the problem.

Because I think I’d burn the world down before I let anything take her from me.

Even if she ends up hating me for the ashes afterward.

So I do the only thing I can, I give her the space she needs, even if it almost kills me.

28.Casey

Three days passbefore things start feeling almost normal again. Not really normal. Nothing between Adriano and me has felt truly steady since Jasper ambushed me and dropped his bomb. I hate that he’s ruining the best thing that has happened to me in a long time. That he’s tarnished something so beautiful. Yet, I’d rather know than be blindsided again.

We fall into this strange, careful rhythm around each other inside the brownstone with both of us pretending not to notice it. He gives me space even when it’s obvious every instinct in him hates doing it, and I hate how much I miss the easy intimacy we had before all of this. The casual touches. The stolen kisses in the kitchen. Falling asleep with his arm heavy across my waist.

Now everything feels deliberate and measured. Like we’re both trying not to step wrong around something fragile.

He still looks at me the same way, though. That part never changes. Sometimes I catch him watching me across a room with this quiet ache in his expression that makes my chest hurt because I know exactly what it means, even though he hasn’t said the words.

I miss you.

I’m sorry.

I love you.

And the worst part is—I still love him enough that none of those things feel easy to ignore. I want to find a way to make this work between us. I just don’t know how.

Adriano kisses the top of Letty’s head before leaving for work and his hand brushes lightly against my back as he passes me in the kitchen, hesitant enough that it feels more like a question than a touch.

I let him because I need it just as much.

The look he gives me afterward stays with me all morning.

Maybe that’s why the strange feeling settles in my stomach the second I stop outside Letty’s preschool.