Catching Cassidy

by Melissa Foster

  “The truth is, I don’t want to leave Harborside. I want to be a stupid girl who follows her heart instead of her head. I want to stay because I love Wyatt. I might love my job here, but that isn’t the reason I want to stay, and I don’t care that you think it makes me weak or pathetic, because I love Wyatt. And it feels good, Mom. He loves me, too.”

  “Cassidy, slow down. You’re just confused.”

  I walk across the sand feeling empowered and brave, unable to keep the words from tumbling out of my mouth. “No, Mom. I am seeing clearly for the first time in my life. You and Dad need to hear this. I’m staying in Harborside, and if you think that makes me unworthy of what little love you dole out to me, well whoop-de-do, because guess what? I’ve been unworthy in your eyes since I was a little girl. And you know what else? I’m so fucking worthy, it’s sick. I don’t want to go to New York and live in some crazy city where I can’t see the beautiful ocean or hear the waves at night. Where I can’t fall asleep in Wyatt’s arms or watch him running on the beach. I don’t want to live where I’m afraid to walk around the streets alone. I love it here, and I don’t care if you don’t agree with my decision.” A sudden calm comes over me, like I’ve been set free from years of oppression, and in a way, I have. I draw in a lungful of sea air and wipe the tears from my eyes.

  “Cassidy, what about your plan?” she asks with a thread of anger.

  I close my eyes and let the peaceful sounds of the sea drown out my mother’s voice and focus on the breeze as it sweeps across my skin. I love it here. I love the smell of the ocean, the feel of the sticky sea air on my skin. I love the seaweed that lines the shore in the mornings and the gulls that call for food. I love my friends, who haven’t once abandoned me, and I love Wyatt. My head has finally caught up to my smart heart. I know I have a stupid grin on my face because I’m too happy not to, and I can hear my mother breathing hard into the phone, waiting for me to tell her my plan. But I can’t. I think my father was wrong. Planning is not the only way to succeed in life. Following my heart is.

  “Cassidy, what has gotten into you?” she asks.

  I turn and nearly bump into Wyatt, who is standing wide-eyed behind me, his arms open, waiting to envelop me.

  I gaze up at him as a smile spreads across my lips.

  “Love, Mom. That’s what’s gotten into me. Something I’m starting to understand that you and Dad don’t know much about.”

  I end the call and fall into Wyatt’s arms. He holds my trembling body tight. His heart is slamming against mine in the same frantic rhythm, as he strokes my back, soothing me with his strong embrace.

  “Does staying with you make me weak?” I ask.

  I look up at him and see the question in his eyes. If I open my mouth again I know I’m going to cry. Not from sadness, but from knowing that I made the best decision of my life, for freeing myself from the confines of my parents, and for Wyatt and Delilah and their losses. He folds me into his arms and holds me like he’s never going to let me go, and that seems like the best plan ever.

  “Sweetheart, staying makes you a thousand times stronger than anyone I know.”

  Chapter Thirty

  ~Wyatt~

  I LOCK THE bar behind me and reach for Cassidy’s hand. It’s been two weeks since she made her decision to stay with me in Harborside, and I can’t remember a time when she seemed more relaxed. She’s been working with Brooke, and they’re putting together a plan to try to make a go of their party-planning business, which will include Cassidy as the event photographer, and I couldn’t be happier for her—or for us. I can’t imagine my life without her in it, and I feel like the luckiest guy on the planet that she stayed.

  “Are you ready?” She’s wearing the same minidress she wore the night she drank too much and slept in my bed, and a sweet smile that hasn’t faded once since she made her decision.

  “Yeah, more than ready.” We walk to the end of the pier, where one of Dane Braden’s boats is lit up with decorative white lights.

  “Remind me how you know Dane Braden again?” Cassidy asks.

  “Dane’s older brother Treat, is married to my cousin Max. I hooked up Charley with him in the spring.” Dane and his fiancée, Lacy, came into the Taproom last week to talk with me and Delilah about our parents and invited us all on a moonlight boat ride. Lacy and Cassidy hit it off right away.

  Music is playing and our friends are already here. I considered having a goodbye ceremony for my parents tonight. I’m finally ready to deal with saying goodbye to them, but Delilah isn’t ready, and I want to wait so we can do it together. When she’s ready, we’ll also deal with all the stuff they left us. For now, a night at sea with our friends is a welcome reprieve.

  Jesse reaches down from the boat to help Cassidy up, then pulls her into his arms and kisses her cheek. “You made the right choice, Cass. Army’s a good man.”

  “I think I like it better when you call me Wyatt.” I don’t mind that Tristan and Brandon still call me Army, but I’ve shed that college-boy attitude and grown into a responsible bar-owning adult, and Jesse has helped me with that transition. I want him to know that I take it seriously. I pat him on the back as I reach for Cassidy’s hand again. I can’t get enough of her, and I know by her smile that she feels the same way about me.

  “Yeah, well, sometimes I revert to your nickname because I don’t want you to forget that although you’re a grown-up, you’re still a twentysomething kid who deserves to have some fun.”

  “Not too much fun,” Cassidy chimes in.

  “Only with you, babe. Only with you.” I press my lips to hers and feel a heavy hand on my shoulder.

  “You got a license for those lips?” Dane is in his late thirties. He’s got a few inches on me, thick dark hair, and eyes as dark as night, like each of his five siblings. He’s got one strong arm wrapped around Lacy, and he pulls me into a hug with the other.

  Cassidy is looking at me with so much love in her eyes I’m sure everyone else can see it, too. She’s easily the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen, but even if she were to lose her looks tomorrow, it wouldn’t make a difference in how much I adore her. It’s her heart that won me over time and time again, and I’ll spend my life making sure she knows just how much I love her.

  I know there will be ups and downs as she figures out things with her parents, and I’ll do what I can to facilitate a friendship between them, but I’ll be damned if I’ll let anyone hurt her ever again. I think Cassidy was forced to grow up overnight, just as I was, only in a different way. I know that if we can weather the loss of my parents and her coming to grips with how her parents have treated her all this time, we can handle anything. We make a perfect team.

  “When are you tying the knot?” I ask Dane. He and Lacy have been engaged for what feels like forever.

  Lacy presses her hand to her stomach and sighs dreamily. “Soon. Very, very soon.” The wind blows her blond, corkscrew curls across her cheeks.

  Dane tucks a wayward strand behind her ear and kisses her cheek. “When Lacy tells me to walk down the aisle, I’ll show up, and with the news we just received, hopefully it’ll be in the next six months.”

  “News?” I notice Lacy’s hand still resting on her stomach and feel a smile stretch across my cheeks. “Are you…?”

  Lacy presses herself closer to Dane as her smile broadens and she nods.

  “Congratulations. You must be so excited.”

  “Yup, Wyatt. Another little shark tagger is on the way.” Dane draws his shoulders back and kisses Lacy’s cheek again.

  “You don’t know that.” Lacy shakes her head. “It might be a girl who hates sharks.”

  “Babe, I don’t care if it’s a he, a she, a shark lover, or a land lover. I just can’t wait to meet our baby.” Dane motions to Jesse and Charley, and they begin untethering the boat from the dock. “Any notion you had of being in charge of your relationship, Wyatt, you might as well toss it overboard right now. If you’re smart, what your woman wants, she gets.�
��

  I pull Cassidy against me, and before I can respond, she does.

  “I have all I want, and he’s right here, right now.”

  Lacy reaches for Dane’s hand. “You guys are so freaking cute.”

  “So are we.” Dane winks at us, then points to the front of the boat, where our friends are gathered.

  We join them at the bow, and it’s windier than where we boarded. Cassidy’s hair whips around her. I gather it in one hand, and her fingers brush mine as she fastens an elastic band around it. As Dane pilots the boat away from shore, the lights of the city fade to mere dots. Dane cuts the engine then, and it’s pitch-black, save for the lights of our boat and the misty haze of the moon.

  Brandon’s sitting on the deck playing his guitar while Cassidy sings. Dane and Lacy are dancing to the slow beat. Ashley’s sitting with Brooke and Jesse, talking about the party-planning business, and I’m standing at the railing with Delilah, who’s looking out into the darkness. I put my arm around her.

  “You okay, sis?”

  “Yeah. I was just thinking about how much things have changed since Mom and Dad died, and how much things haven’t changed at all.”

  “What do you mean, haven’t changed at all? I feel like my entire world has shifted.” I glance at Cassidy, who’s singing her heart out and sounds like she’s been heaven sent. I blow her a kiss.

  “Yeah, yours has.” Delilah sounds sad, and I know she’s talking about her personal life.

  “Dee, what can I do to help?”

  She turns around and leans against the railing like I am. “Nothing. I just have to figure out how to navigate my life. We don’t have to talk about it, Wy. I’ll figure it out.”

  “It’s okay. I want to help.”

  “I’m not sure you can. I’m not sure anyone can.”

  I follow her gaze to Ashley. “You and Ashley?” I can’t hide the surprise in my voice. I thought Ashley was straight.

  Delilah blushes and turns away. “No. No, Wyatt. God.”

  “What? She’s great-looking and really sweet.”

  “She’s also my closest friend right now, not to mention that I think she’s straight.” She shakes her head. “Besides, even if she’s not, I’ve never been with a woman, so…”

  This isn’t new information for me. She never wanted to take the chance that our parents would get wind of her sexuality. “But now you can, Dee. No one here will judge you. We love you.”

  “Can we not talk about it? It’s not just that. It’s everything.”

  “The look Mom and Dad gave you?”

  She steps back. “Wyatt, please. Let’s not ruin tonight. I’ll figure it out.”

  “Okay, but this stuff doesn’t wig me out, you know. I might be able to help.”

  “I know, and I love you for that.” She hugs me, then goes to sit beside Ashley.

  Ashley leans over and whispers something that makes Delilah laugh, and somehow I know she’ll be okay. Even if she has a long road ahead of her, she’s surrounded by people who love her.

  We’re all pretty lucky to have each other. I used to think it was strange that my conservative parents opened a business in such a diverse place. I will never know what drew them here or why they stayed, but I think Dee and I are lucky they did.

  I watch as Cassidy takes her camera from her bag and begins snapping pictures. I love the way she concentrates when she’s taking pictures and gliding across the deck like she’s in a trance. When she turns the camera on me, I smile, and she clicks off at least ten shots, then lowers the camera, and my father’s voice comes back to me as strong as if he were standing right beside me. And when you graduate and get a job and find the one woman who finally stays—who you want to stay—she won’t care that there’s not a chance in hell you’ll ever figure her out. I wish my father were here right now. I want to tell him that he was right.

  “You look pretty cute with that haircut I gave you.” She runs her hand along her camera strap.

  I swoop her into my arms before she can lift it again. “Maybe I need to start paying you as my barber. I pay with sexual favors.”

  “Oh, look. You need another haircut.”

  I take her in a brain-numbing kiss, ignoring the cat calls from Brandon and Tristan. “Are you glad you decided to stay in Harborside?”

  “Yes, but it’s not Harborside that I stayed for.” She slips the camera strap over her shoulder and entwines her arms around my neck. “I stayed for you. I’m Weak-Girl Cassidy, remember?”

  “You have that so wrong, Stronger-Than-Anyone-I-Know Cassidy. I’m the luckiest guy on the planet, but I have to clear something up. Remember when I said that I couldn’t think about us because I could barely handle myself?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I was wrong. There is no me without you.”

  Please enjoy a preview of the next

  Harborside Nights novel

  HARBORSIDE NIGHTS

  Book Two

  #LGBT

  Melissa Foster

  Discovering Delilah Excerpt - Chapter One

  ~Delilah~

  “COMING OUT OF grief is like coming out of a long, dark tunnel.” Meredith Garland folds her hands in her lap. Her feet are crossed at the ankles and tucked primly beneath her chair, one pointed toe touching the carpet. Her warm brown eyes slide around the room, slowing on each of the other four attendees of the grief-counseling session.

  I’ve been coming to a grief-counseling support group for the past month at the YMCA. My friend Brooke Baker brought me to my first session, having attended herself a few years back to get over her own grief. Only she didn’t lose her parents to the drunk driver of a tractor trailer like I did. She was merely getting over a bad breakup. Merely, because really. Can anything match the grief of losing your parents at twenty-two, on the evening of your college graduation, when you should be celebrating and making plans for your life?

  Meredith is talking about the stages of grief, all of which I know by heart: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. When we first moved here after our parents were killed, my twin brother, Wyatt, was also dealing with his new feelings for our best friend, Cassidy. I, on the other hand, was not dealing with anything. I was thoroughly entrenched in denial. One night a guy forced himself on Cassidy, and Wyatt beat the crap out of him—and scared the daylights out of me. Wyatt went straight to anger, skipping over denial altogether. I couldn’t watch Wyatt falling apart, so I moved in with Brooke, who has been a family friend for years. It’s been a little more than two months now, and I’ve finally made it past denial. Now that I’m living at our beach house again, I’m trying really hard to find a way to deal with my grief as well as the personal desires that I’ve spent a lifetime repressing—and hiding from everyone I know other than Wyatt and Cassidy.

  “You must learn to envision a future for yourself without those you have lost.” Having lost her husband a few years back, Meredith says this with the confidence of someone who’s achieved such a future. “Find ways to turn your memories into something you can live with and celebrate, rather than something that pulls you under.”

  Meredith smiles at me, but I’m unable to muster one in return because my toes are dipping in the anger pool. I’m not thinking about envisioning a future without grief. Although that would be nice, I’m pretty sure grief will be my partner for a very long time. Sometimes it hides in the shadows, waiting to swallow me whole, while other times it’s front and center, taking a bow for the way it’s laid me out flat.

  No, it’s not grief I’m thinking about coming out of, and I can’t return Meredith’s smile because my parents left me a legacy of fear and shame. The dark tunnel I’m thinking about coming out of feels even scarier than grief. I steal a glance at the other people in the group and envy the way they know who they are, even if they’re a little lost at the moment. I envy the way Michael eyes me and the other girls in the room and how Mark and Cathy hold hands during the entire hour. I try not to look at Janessa, because I can�
�t help but stare, and I know how rude that is. She’s a little older than me, and I don’t have to look to know that her head is held higher than mine and her cocoa-brown eyes glisten with a surety that I can’t even imagine how to possess. She wears shorts and loose shirts that show her cleavage, and if I look at her, I know my eyes will be drawn to the swell of her breasts and the curve of her bare shoulder as her blouse slips down, which it always does.

  My attraction to Janessa is not because I want her. It’s not the same heart-pounding, palm-sweating, I-can’t-breathe attraction that I have to my friend Ashley. It’s more of an appreciation of her beauty and her confidence, and for the first time in my life I have no one standing in my way of acting on my feelings toward girls. I am free to look at whomever I please and feel whatever my body wants to feel. I’m free to come out, but thanks to my parents’ disapproval, my desires are still tightly encased in shame, so I don’t lift my eyes to admire Janessa.

  Come out.

  Gosh, if that isn’t the stupidest phrase in the world, then I don’t know what is. Do straight people have to come out and announce they’re straight? For that matter, do they even think about their sexuality in terms of caring how others perceive them? I think the whole idea of coming out makes it ten times worse for someone like me, whose parents were ultraconservative and made no bones about their opinions against same-sex relationships. I was both elated and mortified when states began to debate same-sex marriages. Elated because, let’s face it, it’s a personal decision that others shouldn’t have a say in, and mortified because it meant that every time the issue was mentioned in the news, I’d have to sit through my parents’ lectures about why same-sex relationships are wrong. And weak little me never wanted to rock the boat, so I hid my attractions. All of them. My whole life. I even went so far as to hook up with a few guys to try to fit in and figure out if I was sure I liked girls. Well, I know I don’t get all fluttery inside like I have over the years when I’ve been attracted to girls, and I definitely don’t get wet between my legs over guys, like I do over Ashley. But then again, I’ve never been intimate with a woman, so my only validation is what I’ve felt toward women, and more specifically, what I feel when I’m with her.