Page 70 of That Defining Moment

“I don’t like almonds.”

“Pick them out, then.”

“And the jam is wrong.” Cassian set the muesli down and reached for the jar of marmalade, turning it so Lysander could see the label. “This tastes like someone put oranges in jail, and that made them sourer.”

On any other morning, that line would have made Lysander laugh. He’d have filed it away to text Stephen. He might even have walked to the Tesco Express on Westbourne Grove and found something sweeter, because he knew Cassian’s palate, and that anything citrus or bitter got rejected with theatrical horror.

But this wasn’t just any other morning. Tomorrow he was going to sit down across a table from Dane Nordgren for the first time since their breakup, and his notebook lay open on the table with a page of talking points that he’d rewritten four times since yesterday, each version worse than the last. His handwriting had tightened into a cramped script that barely resembled his own, and the page was covered in crossings-out.

Cassian appeared at his elbow with the offending bowl of muesli.

“Sander, do you think Diwa would have strawberry jam? Not marmalade. Because marmalade isn’t jam, it’s an entirely different category of—”

“Have you checked the fridge?”

“I checked the fridge. There’s raspberry, but raspberry jam has seeds in it, and the seeds get stuck between my—”

“Then eat the granola.”

“The granola’s got coconut flakes, and I don’t like that.”

“Cassian.” Lysander set his pen down. “It’s half six in the morning. Nobody else is awake. I am trying to work, and you’ve gone through every single thing in this kitchen and found a problem with all of it.” He could hear his own voice climbing, and the reasonable part of his brain was sending frantic signals for him to stop talking, but the words were already out and building momentum. “This isn’t your kitchen; it’s Diwa’s. He’s been feeding a sick partner and a newborn on four hours’ sleep a night, and now you’re standing here at dawn whinging about jam.”

Cassian’s mouth opened to respond, but Lysander didn’t let him get there.

“God, Cassian. You’re being rude, and you’re whinier than a one-month-old baby.”

The kitchen went quiet and the brightness drained out of Cassian’s expression. It smoothed out into a careful blankness that Lysander recognised at once as the mask: an expression that said I understand, I’ll be smaller, I’ll take up less space, please don’t hurt me for needing things.

Cassian’s hands came together in front of his body, one wrist folded over the other, his thumbs pressing into his own scars. His shoulders drew inward. He didn’t look at Lysander.

“I’m sorry,” Cassian said softly. “I won’t bother you again.”

He turned and walked out without another word.

Lysander stood at the table with his pen in his hand, his talking points blurring on the page. His pulse was hammering, and beneath it was the sick awareness of what he’d just done.

Cassian had been awake since five in a house he’d never slept in before, eight weeks before he was due to give evidence in an inquiry into the worst interlude of his life. He hadn’t been whinging about jam. He’d been trying to find one familiar thing in a kitchen full of things that weren’t his, and Lysander had snapped at him for it.

He put his pen down and went upstairs.

✦ ✧ ✦

The guest room door was closed but not locked. Lysander knocked twice, paused, and opened it.

Cassian was perched on the edge of the bed with his hands flat on his thighs, his back very straight. His suitcase was open on the floor beside him, half-unpacked, and the room smelled faintly of Hamish’s aftershave from the flannel he was wearing.

He didn’t look up when Lysander came in. “I shouldn’t have said that to you,” Lysander said as he crossed the room and joined him on the bed.

Cassian’s hands pressed harder into his thighs. “You don’t have to apologise. I was being bad.”

“You weren’t being bad, Cass.” Lysander leaned into him, pressing their shoulders together. “That was all me. I blew up at you when I should have been doing my job and taking care of you.” He knocked his knee gently against Cassian’s. “You’re jet-lagged, you’re out of Australia for the first time, and you’re trying to eat breakfast in a stranger’s kitchen. Of course you’re a bit aggro.”

Cassian peeked up at him from beneath his pale lashes, flinching, waiting to find out whether the person who’d snapped at him was about to do it again.

He hated that he’d earned that look and the careful distance Cassian had put between them on the mattress. Cassian’s thumbs were rubbing nervously into the scars on his wrist.

He leaned over and kissed Cassian’s cheek. “Get dressed. We’ll go get you a pastry.”