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Cass straightened, plastering a smile on her face. “I told you, I’m fine.”
Grayson nodded, deciding to drop it. He’d reached out an olive branch and gave her permission to feel, but maybe that wasn’t what she needed.
“Let’s go in and eat.” Exhaustion crippled his excitement about dinner with Cass. Anxiety weaved a boulder in the pit of his stomach. Despite everything, he’d really hoped that something might come out of this mission—something beyond just catching the red-tailed hawk who’d kidnapped Ellie.
He’d foolishly thought that maybe something could be repaired between himself and Cass.
Instead of surrendering to self-doubt, he opened the car door and got out, leading Cass to the restaurant.
* * *
Cass felt she was under a microscope. After the crash years ago, if she heard one more person ask if she was okay or say they were sorry, she thought she’d scream. Now Gray was treating her like a fragile glass vase. They were nice to look at, but you wouldn’t dare play football with them. Like she was only good enough to be a paper pusher, not tough enough for fieldwork. Cass felt she’d more than proved herself years ago.
She sat opposite him at the corner booth in the back of the busy restaurant. The scents of fried food and tomato sauce paraded past her as a waiter walked by with a tray. Without glancing up at her, Grayson pulled over his menu, burying his face in it.
What was that about in the car?She swallowed the words before temptation overcame her to spew them. One second, he was all business, and the next, he was concerned for her safety, more than a partner on a job. Cass couldn’t tell if Gray wanted to rekindle things between them or if he was just doing his job. She wanted to know his motives. Was there more growing between them? Or was her mind playing tricks on her? She decided upon a rephrase. “Why are you concerned about me?”
Grayson was about to answer when the waitress appeared for their drink order. He asked for water, hardly glancing up. Was he afraid to look at her? Cass ordered red wine before the employee left. She studied what little she could see of Gray’s face, waiting for an answer.
He put the menu down, locking eyes with her. “When you disappeared, I feared the worse.” She was about to brush off his concern when he interrupted, “Cass, those seagull shifters were in bad shape. You could be doing nothing more than muttering my name right now.” His eyebrows lifted, opening his face into an expression of concern.
All those words she cut him to the bone with years ago and he still feared for her safety. It made her feel worse. He was a gem, and she’d treated him like shit. He was a nice enough person to still care at the end of the day if an evil scientist turned her brain to mush. She had a lot of making up to do for what she’d done if she hoped they could be anything like friends someday. As far as anything more than friends? She knew better than to dream of that.
“I’m sorry.” She buried her face in her own menu, afraid for her vulnerability to show.
“You were only trying to get a lead on the case.”
“No. For Toronto.” There. She’d said it. After over a decade. And she felt like shit for not apologizing sooner.
Grayson’s mouth hung open. He’d inhaled sharply as if about to speak when the waitress dropped their drinks in front of them. He smiled up at her in thanks. Cass picked up the wine nearly mid-air. The tart tang of the fermented grapes danced on the back of her tongue. A dark flavor that matched her mood.
She shook her head. “I should’ve told my mother to fuck off.”
“Cass, she led you to believe people were only as good as they looked.”
She laughed bitterly, shaking her head. His words were venom. It was a hard pill to swallow. “Then I broke my face, and the only rules I knew about the world didn’t make sense anymore.”
It was the first time she’d spoken aloud about the emotional scarring of the crash. For so long she thought if she didn’t voice it, some of what bounced around in her skull hadn’t happened. She had gone from beauty queen to disfigured in an instant, and when her own mother visited her in the hospital, she screamed before fainting.
Cass stared at the restaurant wall while the memory singed within her. Though she’d grown from that moment, it still stung. It was barbed wire curled around her psyche, squeezing tight whenever the flashback surfaced. Raw and stinging.
“Broke your…” Grayson blinked, clearly trying to make sense of the small morsel of information she’d shared. “Your mother couldn’t possibly…” Grayson didn’t finish the question.
“She acted like I was dead,” she filled in. “Me being alive wasn’t a blessing to her; it was a curse. All her hard work down the drain.” Cass’ words were clipped with venomous anger. She’d wanted so badly to tell her mother how she felt after her reaction in the hospital, after all that was said. But she’d kept it in, fermenting in her soul. A poison that separated her from her mother. She tasted that bitterness whenever she thought of calling Mother to check in.
“How could she treat her own daughter like that?” Grayson asked with warmth in his voice and eyes.
“Mother never gave a shit about who I was as a person or what my feelings were.” Cass closed her eyes. How she wished she could have had Grayson by her side during her recovery instead of pushing away someone who could have been part of her support system. At least she’d had Bianca. Without her, Cass would have had no one to hold her up after the crash. “When I accepted that, a lot of things made sense.”
“That doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt.”
Cass tilted her head to the side. “True. It sucks. But I know what to expect from her now.” The lets-get-coffee-and-talk-about-your-feelings-so-I-can-support-you mom wasn’t what Cass’d known. It was more like, “beauty is painful, get over it.” Instead of “sorry your face is fucked up,” she got, “I told you playing agent would screw your chances of competing again.” After Cass’ mom left the hospital that first day, Cass started to fear Mother had been right, that Cass had been selfish for joining ASS. That her need to make a difference, her yearning to be known for more than being a ditzy beauty queen, and her determination to show how much she had to offer the world, had just been a faze.
“You two still talk?”
“Yeah. But not about anything important unless I want to leave pissed off.”
Grayson paused, chewing on his next question. “Why do you still talk to her?”
