by C. L. Parker
He cocked his head. “Then why did you come here to begin with?”
“Because she wanted to!” I was so tired of repeating myself.
“And you think she wanted to because everything was fine? Because she was happy?” He let that hang in the air for a moment. “Were you?”
I could’ve killed him in that moment. I could’ve snuffed out that know-it-all’s existence in a nanosecond using nothing more than my bare hands. But I didn’t. I didn’t because I knew the point he was driving at was legit and I just wanted someone else to blame for it. So before my frustration with myself got the better of me and I took it out on the man we were paying to do the very thing he had done, I turned on my heel and followed Cassidy’s lead.
“Shaw,” he called after me, and I stopped without facing him. “Is it true what she said? Do you think she’s too good for you?”
I turned my head to the side. “Of course, I do. Because she is,” I grated, and then I was out of there.
Shit. Just…shit.
CHAPTER 13
Cassidy
Two steps forward, three steps back.
Shaw and I had come so far in our therapy, only to now find ourselves worse off than what we had been before we’d ever started. I supposed it was true what they said about it always getting darkest just before daylight. As it was, I was drinking, drowning myself in the deep, dark abyss of “I don’t give a damn.”
But that wasn’t entirely true, the “I don’t give a damn” part. I gave a damn. I gave a big damn. Sitting at my usual table at Monkey Business, I let the happenings of the past two weeks have their way with my gloom and regret.
Even after the massacre of a session we’d had with Dr. Sparling, Shaw and I still kept our appointment with Katya the next day. I was sure the animosity he and I had felt toward each other was palpable to her, but she didn’t acknowledge it. Instead, she’d congratulated us on a job well done for the “I am beautiful” thing and had explained the second part of that lesson was that, sometimes, even failure had its own reward. I think the overall message was that I was too hard on myself. Maybe I would’ve heard it loud and clear if not for the Dr. Sparling debacle, but I was still feeling guilty as sin over my part in that.
Then Katya had given us the next assignment. Ha! That one was a joke.
Role-playing. Shaw was supposed to show up at our door, disguised as the pizza delivery guy while I played the lonely housewife whose husband was away on business. Only, Shaw had stayed over late at work, conferencing with Dallas’s general manager to get Marcel the best deal he could, and I’d fallen asleep. When I’d heard the knock at our door, I’d been startled, nearly falling off the couch before taking a moment or two to remember what was supposed to go down. And then I’d finally opened the door to find Shaw standing there with a pizza in hand, still in his suit and tie from the day and looking nothing at all like a pizza guy.
“Special delivery for the lady of the house,” he’d said, porno creep factor in full effect.
I’d frowned at his pathetic attempt, not at all trying to look the part of a sexy minx prepared to give him the tip of a lifetime. But Shaw had forged on ahead, propping himself against the doorjamb like the neighborhood pervert and saying, “Don’t you want to unwrap your package?” with a Chippendale-esque thrust of his hips.
With an exaggerated huff of annoyance, I’d said, “Shaw, you’re supposed to be the pizza boy, not the mailman,” before turning and walking away, leaving him standing in the doorway.
Like I said, it was a joke, and not a funny one. Plus the pizza was cold.
When we’d gone to see Katya again after that, Shaw had wanted to lie to her, to tell her that we’d done exactly as she’d directed. But I knew she’d be able to see right through it, and lying wasn’t going to do anything to help solve our issues, so I’d come clean with the truth.
Katya had merely given us that knowing smirk I’d become accustomed to and said, “You could not complete the task because you do not want to be with anyone but each other.”
I thought she was reaching on that one since the reason was more likely that our newly opened wounds were still super-fresh. Though if I put all of that to the side, I knew we still would’ve failed because she was right. I didn’t want to be with anyone other than Shaw, which was exactly the reason I was so stressed.
It always gets the darkest just before dawn? Yeah, well, it had been another long week since our last session, and I wasn’t even seeing a sliver of the moon at this point.
Good God, I needed a beer. Or two. Or three. So when I’d gotten the phone call from Quinn to meet him and the girls at Monkey’s, I’d practically run the couple of blocks to get here.
Apparently, Shaw had received a similar phone call to hang with the boys. Part of me wondered if this was our friends’ idea of staging some sort of secret intervention, but there had been no way they could have known about what had been going down between Shaw and me. If I drank enough, the truth would likely spew out of me like vomit into a toilet after way too many beers. Yeah, I wanted to get that drunk.
When my three friends arrived all together, my suspicions about the intervention escalated and my defenses were at DEFCON 4 in preparation for the possibility of an attack. I’d planned to plaster a smile on my face—the whole fake-it-till-you-make-it—but found it wasn’t necessary because there was something infectious about my friends and their devil-may-care personalities that made everything else not matter.
I was simply going to enjoy this time I had with them while I had it.
It had been too long since Quinn, Demi, Sasha, and I had been able to all be together at the same time and in the same place. Demi and Sasha had remained the closest, but Quinn was off jet-setting with Denver and I was busy being a mommy. Child and Family Services sort of frowned upon a mother taking her baby to a bar so she could kick back a few with her gossip buddies.
Once we’d done the whole round of hugs and “Oh, my God, you look so great!”s, we settled down into our normal spots around our regular table. It was luck that had kept it clear for us, seeing as how Chaz was out with the boys and not on shift to reserve it for us this time. Sandy, the server, came over to take our orders—another weird thing I hadn’t been used to since Chaz always had our drinks prepared and slid down to the end of the bar.
Another beer for me, one for Quinn, two for Demi, and…an iced water for Sasha?
Quinn and I both pulled up short, drawing our heads back in unison with matching expressions of WTF.
“What’s going on?” I asked, unknowingly calling the “meeting” to order.
Sasha crossed her legs and then sat forward, leaning on the table as she looked all around us to be sure no one else was listening in. I was 99 percent sure she was about to tell us the location of Jimmy Hoffa’s body or maybe where we could find D. B. Cooper and all that money.
Boy, was I wrong.
“I’m pregnant,” she said, her nose bunching up, shoulders lifting to her ears, and eyes squinting with a smile that was so wide, I swear I could see all of her teeth.
Chaos erupted after that with a slew of squeaks, claps, hugs, and congratulations. And then Quinn plopped back, eyes narrowing with an expression of resentment preempting his “You just had to steal my thunder, didn’t you?”
Sasha’s smile faded with confusion. “What are you talking about?”
Quinn sighed and sat his beer back on the table. “Fine. I might as well tell you anyway. Denver and I are adopting.”
“What!?!” we all shrieked.
“Holy crap, Quinn!” I was shocked, stunned speechless because I’d had no idea that he and Denver even wanted children, let alone that they’d gone through the grueling process and had been approved for adoption. And he was my best friend, for crying out loud.
Instantly, I turned to Demi. “And what about you? Are you preggers, too?”
Jesus, did I need to go take a pregnancy test? I picked up Sasha’s water and sniffed it, sure I’d find pr
oof of the secret string of pregnancy virus that everyone had always said was in the water.
Demi’s shoulders slumped as she stuck out her bottom lip. “I wish.”
“Well, just to be safe, don’t drink the water,” I grumbled.
My besties looked at me like I was the Antichrist.
“What’s gotten into you, Debbie Downer?” Sasha asked. “I always thought Abe was the best thing that ever happened to you?”
“He is! It’s just…You know what? Never mind,” I waved them off, grabbing my beer up because I definitely needed more of that. “Just forget I said anything. Really. Congratulations! I’m so happy for you both! Do you already have a baby in mind, Quinn, or are you still looking? I mean, like, they don’t exactly make a catalog for that sort of thing. Or do they?”
No answer.
“Oh, Sasha! Are you hoping for a boy or girl? Hey, you know what? At least you won’t be having yours out of wedlock.” I stopped to gasp. “I bet Landon is on cloud nine! He’s going to be such a great dad! That’s what the guys are doing now, right? He’s telling them?”
No response.
There came a moment when I finally realized how quiet it had gotten and that I was doing all the rambling while my friends sat there staring a hole right through me. Smiling, happy faces gradually turned into sad puppy-dog eyes as they regarded me with pity, like someone had just died and I hadn’t quite gotten the memo yet because I was stuck in the denial stage.
And that was when I felt the first tear streak down my face. I averted my eyes, fascinated with picking the label off the bottle of beer that had become my focal point. As I slumped low into my chair, hoping to simply melt into the polished wood, a voice as small as a traumatized child’s said, Everything is going to change now, and I realized it had come from somewhere deep inside me.
Sasha reached over and took my hand, stopping me from completing the removal of the label. “Cass? What’s wrong?”
The label thing bothered me more than I could admit out loud, simply because it was just hanging there with clumps of paper still stuck to the glue on the bottle. Messy, messy. I hated leaving things undone.
“Cass?” Sasha’s persistence demanded my full attention.
I looked up, my eyes meeting hers, then Quinn’s, and finally Demi’s. A waterfall of tears gushed from me then, as did all the miserable details of my life as of late. I let it all spill—the issues Shaw and I had been having, that we’d been seeing a relationship coach, that we’d been seeing a sex therapist, that Abe was in Stonington until we could get our acts together, that I was terrified that I was on the verge of losing the man I loved because I wasn’t sure if we would or could ever work things out completely, and that I knew but didn’t want to admit that I knew what that might mean not only for me but for Shaw and Abe as well. I told them everything. And my friends…my friends sat there, letting me get it all out, absorbing every single detail even as they kept handing me tissues and beer because that was such a healthy combination.
“Aww, sweetie.” Sasha handed me yet another tissue from her purse. “Why didn’t you talk to us about this?”
I shrugged and sniffled. “Because you guys are busy living your perfect lives with your perfect men.”
Demi guffawed. “Ha! Perfect? Not hardly. Honey, every couple has issues. Look at how long it took for Chaz and me to hook up in the first place. And now, not only are we not married, but we’ve also been trying to get pregnant. Out of wedlock and without success.” Since her beer was empty, she took mine, gulping it down. Taking a deep breath afterward, she continued, “Truth is, we don’t know if the issue is just with the timing, or his sperm count, or my girlie bits. And both of us are too chicken to go see a professional to find out because what if they tell us we’ll never be able to have children of our own?”
She took another deep breath and then finished off the beer.
Sandy brought over another fresh one, and Quinn grabbed it the second she sat it on the table in front of me, taking a swig for himself before adding his own two cents. “And Denver and I are constantly battling the rumors of infidelity, thanks to his fame. I’m not just talking about from female fans either. Since he came out, all kinds of mister-sisters have made allegations that my Rocket Man has been blasting off into every planet in the universe. I know it might look like I’m living the dream, but, honey, loving a superstar ain’t easy. Just yesterday, I found a gray hair. Can you believe it? I’m twenty-nine!” He shook his head, disgusted, and then chugged the beer again.
“Where?” Demi asked, invading his personal space to find it for herself.
Quinn shoved her shoulder, pushing her away. “Stop it! I yanked the fucker out!”
“Oooh,” Demi drawled out like a child telling a sibling he was going to be in trouble. “You shouldn’t have done that. You’re going to get three more in its place now.”
Ignoring them, I turned to the only one of us who hadn’t said anything. “What about you, Sasha?”
“Um, okay, so Landon and I are sort of the perfect couple,” she admitted, looking guilty as hell when the rest of us grumbled. “Buuut…you remember how long it took me to see what was right in front of my face, right? Landon went through all of those horrible relationships with me, even did the cleanup after the shit hit the fan with each one of them. He never brings that up, but I know it’s got to weigh on him from time to time, and that kind of messes with me, you know? Like, I’m always wondering when he’s going to finally realize that he’s too good for me. I bet Shaw wonders the same thing about you.”
Clearly, she’d forgotten who the man was. “Pfft! Shaw Matthews holds himself in high enough regard to never think anything of the sort,” I said, despite the fact I’d accused him of thinking I was too good for him during our meeting with Dr. Sparling. He’d never denied it, but he’d never admitted it either.
Sasha furrowed her brow in contemplation. “Hmm. You definitely know him better than I do, but I think I’m going to have to disagree with you on that point.” She reminded me so much of Landon in that moment. While Sasha had been the somewhat flaky one of us, Landon had been the quiet observer, wise and insightful, with a knack for seeing and hearing things the rest of us might have missed.
“Oh, really? And why’s that?”
“Because I think maybe his egotism is his way of overcompensating for the positive reinforcement he never got from anyone else. I mean, look at his childhood, Cass. Isn’t it possible that he’s still trying to prove himself to himself? The mold that contains our perception of self-worth is forged during adolescent years. What do you think his mold might look like? The man never had anyone to tell him they were proud of him. Maybe he’s just trying to make himself someone his son can be proud of, that you can be proud of.”
The bottle I was about to drink from was forgotten, suspended in midair, as her hypothesis sank in.
Freaking. Lightbulb. Moment.
I set the bottle down, allowing my slightly inebriated mind to sober in order to process the clicking of the puzzle pieces.
Baggage. Shaw had plenty of it. And though he didn’t acknowledge its existence, though he’d figuratively replaced his own parents with a surrogate in Abby along with the rest of my family, that didn’t mean his baggage had magically disappeared. It was still there, an invisible weight around his shoulders that kept him fighting just to be able to keep his head above water while the rest of us without the stuff were buoyant enough to simply float along the current of life.
Dr. Sparling had been trying to help us get to the root of our issues so we could repair and rebuild from the ground up. Maybe, just maybe, those roots ran deeper than our relationship alone. Maybe our roots were being entangled and smothered by those attached to his past.
I jumped up and lunged across the table, taking all of my friends by surprise when I grabbed Sasha’s face and laid a big, fat smackaroo on her lips. “Sasha, I love you! And P.S., I’m calling Mulder and Scully because I’m pretty sure you and Landon a
re the same person.”
She laughed. “Nah. He just completes me.”
Balance…she and Landon had it, I wanted it. So it was time I helped my other half help me help us.
It was time we both came clean.
CHAPTER 14
Shaw
“A career is wonderful, but you can’t curl up with it on a cold night.”
That was what Landon had told me last night when Chaz and I had gotten together with him for dinner. The meal was so he could tell us he was going to be a daddy. The advice was a direct result of me spilling my guts to my two best friends about what had been going down between Cassidy and me as of late. Better out than in, right?
The man was a guru, an elder of wisdom, and, apparently, he was also the number one fan of Marilyn Monroe because that had been her quote, not his. Either way, it was spot-on.
Cassidy and I hadn’t spoken much since the War of the Roses incident that had gone down in Dr. Sparling’s office. Neither of us had brought that shit up again because nothing good was going to come of it until we had the time to simmer the fuck down and process it. A lot of stuff had been said. Hurtful stuff. Hurtful stuff that was now out there and no longer capable of being put back into Pandora’s box and hidden out of sight in a dusty attic as if it didn’t exist. It did. And the only way to exorcise it was to acknowledge its existence, admit my fault in every part, and simply beg Cassidy for forgiveness. But I knew I couldn’t go to her with a bunch of empty promises. Cassidy was all about “show, don’t tell,” so I’d been busy working behind the scenes to do just that.
“Hey.”
I looked up from the stack of getting nowhere fast on my desk to see Cassidy standing in the doorway to my office. Something about seeing her there made me feel equal parts relief and trepidation. She hadn’t been back at Striker since she’d taken her maternity leave, but there she was, not looking the least bit out of place.
