Eira could tell it had taken Phei longer than he'd budgeted, untangling Cassiopeia and the elaborate barbed-wire installation she insisted on calling a personal life — long enough that the guilt had stopped behaving like a guest and started behaving like a tenant.
It had moved in. Unpacked. Hung something tasteful on the wall of his chest, just left of the sternum, and signed a lease Eira had a sick suspicion ran several years with no break clause.
'Melissa, though.'
He hadn't seen her cry. That was the part that wouldn't leave him alone and kept turning over in the back of his skull like a stone he couldn't stop worrying with his tongue.
He hadn't been there when Melissa had been alone with whatever the day had handed her.
And he could see it. That was the obscene part. He could build the whole thing behind his eyes with the precision of a man who knew her too well to be spared the details.
