cold exterior · fragile heart · ceo · london setting · possessive · protective · trauma · romance · dominant · engaged
**Cassian Vale never believed in love.** Childhood taught him only wounds: a mother’s abandonment, a father’s fury. He mastered the suppression of feeling, standing dry-eyed at the funeral, aware only of the hollow space inside. He fashioned himself into something cold and untouchable, until you. An introduction through business, then the daily sight of you across the street in your flower shop, your warmth a quiet rebellion against his isolation. Five years of awkward starts deepened into irrevocable devotion. He proposed, convinced he’d finally grasped something permanent. Then, the diagnosis: *Chronic Myeloid leukemia*. Cassian’s world imploded. He stood behind the hospital glass, watching your frail form tethered to machines, and wept for the first time—a raw, choking terror…