“That’s fucked up.”
She cackled. “Right? So fucked up. He was just like,” and here, her voice dropped to a gruff approximation of a male voice, “‘…sorry, Cass. I just need time to process things. That accident really messed me up. It wouldn’t be fair to you for us to stay together. I don’t know who I am anymore. I wish I could explain it better, but I can’t. I’m sorry. I just don’t love you anymore.’”
I frowned. “He said that to you?”
She nodded sloppily. “Oh yes. I couldn’t forget that conversation in a million years. I remember his stupid, beautiful face. Those stupid, beautiful blue eyes. His stupid, beautiful cheekbones. His stupid, beautiful, perfect blond hair. Of course, it wasn’t perfect hair anymore because they had to shave half of it to put his brain back in or whatever the hell they did to fix him. But he was still stupid and beautiful. And by stupid, I mean perfect.” She closed her eyes, remembering. “He looked at me with those big blue eyes the color of the ocean, and he told me he wasn’t in love with me anymore, and he needed to be alone. He needed to process who he was. I don’t know what the fuck that means. He had his memory, he didn’t have any broken bones. Didn’t need weeks of physical therapy just to be able to walk again. Didn’t lose anything. But the doctors were all like, brains are so mysterious. Brain injuries can cause breaks and changes in personality. It’s not his fault, and it’s very real.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah.” She stood up abruptly, chair legs scraping loudly against the floor. “Pee. I have to pee.”
“You, uh, you need help getting there?” I asked, standing up and moving to catch her if need be.
She shook her head, took two fierce, determined steps toward the back, and promptly tipped sideways.
“Ooh boy,” she murmured, catching the service bar. “Wheee. Maybe I do.”
I grabbed her bicep—tiny, thin, but hard as nails. Hauled her upright, and wrapped my arm around shoulders, tucking her against my side. “Come on, Cassie. This way.”
She pushed me away. “Too close. Too, too, too close.” She sniffed. “You smell good. But too close.” She peered up at me. “Jesus, you’re big. Like, tall. Really, super, a lot tall.”
“Six-seven,” I told her. I held out my hand, and she grabbed it. “Now come on. Let me help you.”
“But you’re not just tall,” Cassie said, grabbing my hand and using it for balance as she wove her way toward the back hall where the bathrooms were. “You ever see Brave?”
I shrugged. “The little Irish girl, and the mom who turns into a bear?”
She giggled, a snort and a tinkle of laughter. “Scottish, but yeah.”
I laughed. “I’m the bear?”
“The big mean one. Just, you know, you’re not mean.”
“Try not to be.”
She stopped at the bathrooms—peered at the door. “I have to pee.”
I guided her one more door down. “That was the men’s. This is yours.”
She blinked. “Oh. I’m a woman. Gotta use the little women’s potty.”
I sighed. “Yeah, you are, and yeah, you do.”
She looked at me over her shoulder. “You noticed, did you?”
I met her eyes. “Yes, Cassandra. I noticed.”
She wiggled her hips side to side in a sultry shimmy, eyebrows dancing suggestively. “Ooh, I got the full name. You must really like me.”
“Go pee.”
She widened her eyes. “Oohhhh boy. Yeah, I’m about to leak.”
I pushed the door open for her, and she carefully wobbled in. I let the door close, and only moments later I heard a slam, as her body hit a bathroom stall divider.
“I’m okay!” I heard her yell. “I’m fine!”
I grimaced. That was loud.
Another loud sound.
A stream of curses.
“Dammit,” I muttered. Another crash. “Fuck it.”
I pushed into the bathroom, and found Cassie clinging to the outside of the stall, trying to pull the door open—it was a push, which was her problem.
I wrapped my arm around her waist again, holding her up. “Come on, let me help.”
She looked down at my hand, on her waist—carefully placed in a nonthreatening location, above her hip. Touched her hand to the top of mine.
“You have big hands.” She grabbed my hand, held her palm against mine—her hand was dwarfed by mine—the top of her fingers only reaching the first crease at my mid-knuckle. I could fit her entire fist into my palm. “Really, really, really big.”
“Yes, I do.” I used my toe to nudge the stall door open, guided her in. “Here you go. Can you manage from here, or should I get Kitty to help?”
She snorted. “I can manage my own pants, I think.” I let the door close. “I think.”
I rested my head against the stall. “You think?”
“Whoops,” she said, and I saw her feet slip, and then a thud as she landed on the toilet. “I’ve got it.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yep.” A pause. “Go away. I don’t want you to hear my pee noises.”
I laughed. “Fine, but yell and I’ll come help you back out.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah.”
I exited the women’s bathroom and waited outside. A couple of minutes later Bast came by.
“Someone’s going through some shit, huh?” he said, carrying a fresh case of beer back toward the bar.
“No kidding.”
“Kitty was talking about how Roman’s dad was worried about her.”
“I can see why.” I pushed open the door an inch. “Cassie? You okay?”
Silence.
Bast just laughed. “Go get her. She’ll need a friend when she wakes up.”
“You know where she lives?” I asked.
“With her mom,” Bast said. “Kitty can tell you, I think.”
“Cool.”
When I went in, I found Cassie in the stall, passed out.
I made sure her clothing was all in the right places, and then lifted her in my arms and carried her out. Kitty gave me directions to her mom’s house, but I remembered Cassie saying her mom would give her a hard time. I debated, and then figured she’d rather deal with her mom on her own after she’d sobered up.
So, I carried her back to my place.
Tiny little thing. Barely weighed anything at all.
But damn, she carried a lot of hurt inside.
Cassie
Ohhh god. Oh god.
Oh…fuck my entire skull.
Nope. Not time to be alive yet. Too soon. Wayyy too soon.
How about now?
Nope. Still hurts to be alive. Even the thought of opening my eyes sounded like agony.
“Cassie?” A voice, whispering as quietly as possible, but still a deep, powerful, bone-rattling bass rumble.
Who? Familiar, and comforting, somehow.
“Ng. Gah. Nnnng.”
A blast of air through nostrils—a laugh. “Here. I’ve got you.” A paw, so big it cradled my entire skull, lifted me gently. I sighed, sinking into the paw, letting it support me. My head tipped forward. “Open your mouth, darlin’.”
I couldn’t even formulate a protest against being called darling. I opened my mouth, and felt pills touch my tongue. A plastic rim touched my lips, and I gingerly allowed the cool wetness into my mouth.
I swallowed hesitantly—my throat was on fire, raspy, bitter, rough. My mouth hurt, and the water felt nice. My stomach didn’t agree, though.
“Now this.” A different something was being held to my lips, and I let him pour something into my mouth, tasted it, swallowed it. Sweet, but not too sweet.
“It’s water with electrolytes. Keeps you from getting too dehydrated.”
“Nggg.” It was all I could manage, and I wasn’t sure what it was even supposed to mean. I wasn’t even really conscious. I wasn’t a person. Just a puddle of poison and agony.
“Sleep.”
“Mmm.”
Back u
nder the sweet, blessed veil of nothingness.
Personhood washed over me, slowly. Being alive was hot and painful.
My body ached. My soul felt…bitter, razed into coals.
My eyelids felt like they’d been duct-taped to my eyeballs and then the duct tape had been ripped off. Opening them hurt so bad I wanted to cry, because maybe the tears would soothe the burn.
Where was I? I didn’t recognize anything; I was in a loft, something like eight feet wide and square, the entire space taken up by beds—two queen mattresses side by side, it seemed. A steeply sloped roof overhead, with drawers in the walls all around the bed, and a dormer window at my feet, overlooking Ketchikan, mountains in the distance, green and white and brown and slate gray.
I was wrapped in blankets, cocooned in a nest of flannel and fleece. Still dressed in all my clothes, sans socks and shoes. My hair was loose, out of the ponytail.
I took stock, now that I was sort of alive: Fucked. That’s how I felt. But it was more than just being hungover. I was feverish—achy, tingly skin, headache, congested…on top of being hungover.
And I had to pee worse than I’ve ever had to pee in my life, and I once held it for an eleven-hour high-speed train ride from Paris to Rome. My problem right now was that I hurt too bad to move. I was weak, to the point of paralysis. I summoned all my strength, and managed a hoarse whisper.
“Hello?”
“Hey, there you are.” I heard the creak of a heavy tread on a wood floor, and then the same heavy tread was climbing up the ladder. A head—long, thick, raven-black hair gathered at his nape in a loose ponytail, a massive bushy neatly trimmed beard, the end of which hung to his chest, dark skin—Native American—and tattoos, ohhh lordy, the tattoos.
Ink.
Vague memories washed through me, but his name came attached to his face, so there was that.
Piercing, deep, warm, complex, wise, compassionate, impossible brown eyes.
He clambered up into the loft with a lithe ease his size should’ve precluded; perching on the edge of the bed, one foot still on the ladder, Ink reached out and pressed the back of his hand to my forehead. “Still burning up.”
I moaned. “Where am I?”
“My house.” He brushed a tendril of my platinum blonde hair away from the corner of my mouth. “Been sick for three days.”
“Three days?”
He nodded. “Hungover for the first day, and down with a brutal flu for the last two. Ran a temp of a hundred and three for forty-eight hours. Couldn’t keep anything down.”
“I don’t…” My voice gave out, raspy, burned. “I don’t remember anything.”
He shook his head. “I ain’t surprised. You were bombed out of your skull for the first part of it, and then the fever took you and you were just delirious after that. Threw up about a dozen times, at least.”
“No wonder my throat hurts so bad.”
“Yeah, well that’s probably from the flu, too. You’re sick as hell, girl.”
I glanced out at the room—I couldn’t see much besides the roof and a bit of walls, a hint of windows. “You’ve been taking care of me the whole time?”
He nodded. “You only started being able to keep liquids down about twelve hours ago, which is when I brought you up here. You were down on my couch while you were puking.”
I closed my eyes. “I feel so stupid.”
“Don’t.”
“But I—”
“You been through hell, that’s what.”
“I just…I’ve made a shitty impression on you. I’m not usually this girl. I don’t drink like that, I don’t eat like that, I don’t…” I felt tears welling, and forced them back, viciously, brutally. “I’m not this girl.”
“I know.”
“You don’t know me, though, so how can you know that?” I wiped at my face with both hands, using a gesture of exhaustion to cover my need to wipe at my eyes.
“Because sometimes you just…you just know somebody.” Ink’s massive presence filled the loft with heat and masculinity, but also…peace. “I may not have known you very long, but I can tell sure enough that you needed to let go a little. That’s what you did. You got that freedom. Course, freedom to let go ain’t gonna protect you from the consequences of whatever shit you do, but sometimes, you just gotta let go.”
“I may have let go a little too much.”
He fixed his eyes on me, seeing into me, deep brown wise ursine eyes seeming to know me, to see the contents of my soul so clearly that I had to look away after a moment. “Cassandra.”
I frowned. “The full name. What, Ink?”
“Quit the bullshit.”
“What bullshit?” I asked.
He reached out a gargantuan paw, a hand so big it could probably fit at least halfway around my waist, if not most of the way. Touched my knee with it, a momentary, hesitant touch so gentle and soothing I didn’t know how to process how it made me feel.
“Give yourself a little grace, little sparrow.” His voice was deep and wild, a rumble of waterfalls and avalanches and thunder in the mountains, the growl of bison on the plains, the murmur of a Kodiak bear. “You’re too hard on yourself. Be kind.”
I swallowed hard. “Little sparrow?” I snorted. “More of a badger, most days.”
He shook his head. “No. You hide behind the badger, but that’s not you.”
My heart pattered, thumped. His hand was still on my knee and it was sucking in all my focus, all my attention. His hand was heavy, warm, and absolutely monstrously huge. Each of his fingers was more than twice the size of mine in length and width. I placed my hand over top of his; he turned his hand over and my little hand was lost, engulfed in his.
“I’m not hiding behind anything,” I said. He just snorted, and I knew he didn’t believe me. I sighed. “Ink, it’s still me. It is who I am. I’m a fierce, and determined person. I made lead dancer at one of the most highly competitive professional dance troupes in the world. You don’t get there without a certain amount of ruthlessness and determination.”
“Didn’t say you was pretending to be anything you’re not. I said you’re hiding behind that.”
I shook my head. “You’re wrong.”
“I’m not.” His gaze remained level, imperturbable. “It’s who you are, sure. But it’s not everything. It’s all you’ve let yourself be, because it served you. Got you where you wanted to be.” A pause, a thick silence. “Now, you’re lost, because that part of you doesn’t serve you anymore and it’s all you’ve let yourself be.”
“How the hell do you think you know this shit about me?” I demanded, yanking my hand free, anger boiling through me. “You don’t know the first thing about me.”
He let out a slow soft breath; his eyes were thoughtful, his jaw working as if he was literally chewing on what to say, making the tip of his beard waggle. “You talked a lot, both when you were drunk and when you were delirious. The shit you said when you were delirious, half of it was just fever delirium nonsense, but the other half was…” He shrugged. “Shit, you probably would rather have not said.”
I lay back on the bed, letting myself slip back down. “Shit.”
“It’s okay. It’s just me, and I’m the best secret keeper there is.”
I closed my eyes, suddenly weaker than I’d ever felt, exhausted beyond all comprehension. “I can’t handle this conversation right now.”
He reached into the pocket of his shorts—the only article of clothing he was wearing, a pair of loose, shimmery pale blue basketball shorts which hung to his knees—and pulled out my cell phone. “Your mama been callin’ you like crazy. I sent word through Juneau to your mom that you was sick and being taken care of, but I guess she’s gotta put eyes on her baby girl, or at least hear your voice.”
My heart seized—three days in the world of a worrying mother was an eternity. I took the phone, unlocked it, and glanced at my notifications: sixty-three text messages, fourteen missed calls, seven voicemails. “Damn, Mom. You have
no chill,” I muttered to myself. I dialed her number, and it rang precisely half a ring.
I was too tired to hold the phone so, with a brief, apologetic glance at Ink, I put it on speaker and set the phone on my chest.
“Cassandra Danielle Goode!” she yelled. “Where the hell have you been?”
“Did you not get the message?” I asked, letting my voice sound as raspy and weak as I really did feel. “Ink said he passed a message to you that I’ve been sick.”
She sighed, a pained, irritated, complicated sound. “Yes, yes. Lucas called and told me that, and I quote, Roman told him that Remington was told by Juneau, who was told by Kitty, who was told by I’m not sure who, that you were very sick and that you were being taken care of, whatever that means, by someone named Ink, whomever that is.” Her voice rose again. “But that’s just a big game of telephone tag. Doesn’t tell me where you are, who you’re with, how you got sick, why you left without telling me—”
“Mom—”
“Cassandra, I know you’re an adult, but you can’t just run off without—”
“Mom!” I shouted, making my head pound. “Fuck, that hurts.”
“Cassandra, language! I raised you better than that.”
“God, could you please not be Captain America for ten seconds, Mother!”
“I don’t even know what that means,” Mom muttered.
“Could you just…not yell?” I rested my forearm over my eyes. “I’m really sick, Mom.”
“What kind of sick?”
I sighed. “You know what? I’m a grown woman, mother.”
“I know that, I just—”
“I got hammered, if you must know. Obliterated. Drunk beyond all reason. Completely and totally fucking shit-faced.”
“Cassandra—”
“If you warn me about my language one more time, I swear I’ll hang up on you.”
A tight, tense silence. “Fine.”
“So, yes, it started out as a severe hangover. And then, apparently, I developed the flu.”
“Well, overindulgence in alcohol can compromise your immune system,” Mom said.
“You don’t say?” I sniped.
“Sarcasm is unwarranted, Cassandra. I’m worried about you.”
For A Goode Time Call... Page 3
