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She walked toward my bedroom door and glanced back with a smirk. “And we’re not leaving here until you shower. You literally smell like balls.”
I smiled for the first time in what felt like ages. “Like that bothers you. Everyone knows you love smelling like Kline’s sac.”
She flipped me off and strode down the hallway. “Get your stanky ass moving! I’m hungry!”
Slowly but surely, I got out of my bed and hopped into the shower.
I told myself it had nothing to do with Georgia being right about me not being okay and me being desperate to stop the “I miss him” loop of crazy that kept circling inside my brain, and everything to with the fact I hadn’t eaten since the night before.
Yeah, that’s exactly what it was.
I was fine. I was hungry, but I was motherfucking fine.
Fucking liar.
“You didn’t have to do this tonight,” I said loudly while I leaned toward Kline’s ear to be heard over the noise of Z Bar.
“Didn’t have to do what?” he asked back innocently.
I nodded and laughed. “Give me a break. You know what.” There wasn’t a question in my mind he’d rather be at home with his wife than in the middle of some crowded bar with me. But Kline Brooks was a world-class individual, and I was seriously lucky to call him my friend. “But thanks.”
He raised his glass in salute before taking a drink, and I desperately tried to make his effort worth it. I wanted to pretend I was okay, like I wasn’t missing Cassie—like I knew how to go on. But the truth was, I didn’t. She’d become ingrained in every aspect of my life, and I liked her there.
I battled myself, and not for the first time since it’d all gone down. Had I really given her a fair shot? Was I making the whole thing a bigger deal than it was?
Half of me, the part that missed her—and yeah, it was probably the bottom half—thought definitely. I was letting my whole traumatic history with Margo color my opinion. But the other half had a laser-like memory when it came to her face in the moments before she jumped.
It wasn’t a decision in good fun because she couldn’t see how important it was to me. It was a distinct choice. A choice to hold herself away from me and everything we’d built.
A choice where she’d always put herself before me.
Everyone always speaks of selflessness in a relationship, but I expected and respected a little selfishness. I never wanted her to be the person I made her. I just wanted her to trust me enough to know the difference between respecting me and giving herself up.
But the road she was on was dirty, and she hadn’t yet uncovered the center line.
“Where’d you go just now?” Kline asked. The back of my neck felt tight under my palm.
He grabbed my shoulder and gave it a squeeze, and I knew no one knew what I was feeling better than he did. Still, I had to wonder if he would have ever chosen a life separate from Georgie if their circumstances had been the same.
Not a chance in hell, heaven, or Manhattan.
I looked up to see Wes walk in, and I knew they’d called in the cavalry. I shook my head, and Kline looked over his shoulder to find the source of my amusement.
“Jesus. Whitney too?” I asked. “You guys went all out.”
Wes came to us on an easy weave through the crowd, and Kline turned to shake his hand when he arrived.
“Thanks for coming,” I said. He grabbed my shoulder and squeezed. I smiled; I knew it wasn’t my normal, but I tried.
“Ah, fuck,” he breathed before pulling me into a hug. Not a bro-hug either, but a full-on comforting squeeze with one arm tight around my back and the other hand on the back of my neck.
My throat felt tight, and I had to force a swallow down past the imaginary lump.
“Love you, man,” he whispered in my ear. It was so opposite of everything I normally had with Wes—and all the things I knew were always there.
Fast jokes and ribbing, our relationship could look petty from the outside looking in, but that was just the way we lived our day-to-day fun. This right here was all I needed to know to have that freedom—the three of us would be there for each other forever.
Granted, none of us was immortal, so there’d be a limit on the timeline of some kind, but with modern medicine, I was hoping it’d be somewhere in the 120-year range.
“Love you too, Whitney,” I murmured back. He gave me one last squeeze and then shoved me out of the way.
“Great. Now get out of my way,” he said with a teasing smile. “Your fucking huge body is blocking the bar.”
My face accepted the notion of a genuine smile then, and I stepped aside so he could order a rum and Coke.
“Fucking lush,” I teased as he flagged down the bartender with an arm in the air.
“Better a lush than a pussy,” he said with a nod toward my beer.
“I don’t know,” Kline interjected. “Pussies are pretty nice.”
“Right?” I agreed with a laugh, and Wes smiled at the sound.
My eyes felt downright misty at my friends’ effort to make me feel better. Goddamn, this breakup was turning me into a premenstrual woman.
And then Wes’s face turned from a smile to something else as he stared at something over my shoulder.
I told myself not to turn around, but apparently Cassie wasn’t the only one who didn’t listen to me.
Kline turned too, and I knew the moment he registered Cassie’s eyes because his gaze shot to the ground before glancing back at Wes surreptitiously.
It didn’t upset me to see her. Fuck, it was the opposite of that.
I missed her.
As I turned to set my empty beer bottle on the bar, both Kline and Wes gave me assessing looks. I nodded my assurance and then walked the short distance to where Cassie stood waiting for me.
“Thatcher.”
“Crazy,” I whispered, and her eyes closed tight and her chin dropped toward the ground.
I picked it up with the gentlest of touches from my index finger and waited for her eyes to meet mine.
“What are you doing here, honey?”
She shook her head and looked to the side, and I turned her face toward mine once more.
“Look me in the eye,” I demanded softly.
She shrugged, helpless to her own emotion as a single tear rolled down her face. Her voice was barely audible over the din, but I heard it. “I miss you.”
Florida Georgia Line’s “H.O.L.Y.” started to play over the speakers of the bar, a low, seductive beat thrumming through my chest with each chord, so I pulled her hand into mine and said the first thing that came to mind.
“Dance with me?”
She nodded, putting her arms around my shoulders right there without moving a step and beginning a sway to the music. Cassie closed her eyes, and her head swished back and forth until I held it steady with a hand on each side of her throat.
Fierce and feeling, her eyes jerked open and held mine in their grasp until I couldn’t remember anyone or anything other than her or that moment in time.
My lips sought hers of their own accord. Flesh on flesh, all of her breath left her in a rush, and a sob bucked the entirety of her upper body. I pulled her closer, sealed my lips tighter to hers, and pushed my tongue through the seam of her lips.
She met me lick for lick, lost in each other, the feel of her tongue on mine sending shock waves through every single muscle in my body.
“It’s all right, baby,” I told her there, directly against her mouth. I rubbed my thumbs at the line of her throat as I kissed her again, and the tips of her long hair tickled the skin of my exposed forearms.
“I’m sorry,” she apologized through a whisper, and I sighed. Relief took forty pounds directly off my chest. “I hate the way everything happened between us that day,” she went on. “But I don’t need anyone, you know? I’m my own woman. I can watch out for myself. I can make my own decisions.”
I had to work to stop my eyes from narrowing.
“I’ve been telling myself I was fine. God, for a week, every day, all I’ve fucking done is tell myself I’m fine.”
I closed my eyes and stepped back, setting her body apart from mine with my hands on her arms.
She still didn’t get it.
Here I was thinking we were over this, that I had completely overreacted, and she still didn’t get it.
“Thatch?”
“It’s not good enough, Cass. You have no idea how much I want it to be, but it’s not. I deserve better.”
“What?” she asked, and then, when she thought she realized what I was saying, she started to get angry.
“You deserve better?” she asked, her voice rising. “Why the hell does a woman have to need you to be worthy? I guess I’ll never fucking understand men.”
I caught her wrist as she turned away and pulled her back. I wasn’t letting it go like this.
“It’s not that, and you know it. You think about me, you think about the way I am with you, and then tell me you still think you needing me is what this is about.”
“What’s it about, then? Margo? I’m not her.”
“I don’t want you to be!” I shouted. “Margo is so fucking far out of this equation it’s not even funny. This is about you and me, and you being ready to be in a real relationship.”
“I was ready!”
“No, you weren’t,” I disagreed. “Because someone who respected me and trusted me would know that I’m not out to fucking control you or change you. I don’t want a Stepford girlfriend. I don’t want to stand in front of you and keep you from things, and I certainly don’t want to be pushing you from behind. All I want is someone who trusts me enough to know I never ask for anything other than respect and trust. And when you jumped that day, you robbed me of both. That’s what this is about.”
