by Max Monroe
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.”
I stepped past her and shoved my way through the crowd on my way out, anger blinding me to every goddamn thing other than getting outside where I could breathe.
The oppressive summer night air hit my face as I shoved through the door, and it did nothing to relieve the choking, clawing feeling in my chest.
“Goddammit!” I yelled, startling a group of scantily clad women standing next to the building, smoking.
I stood there for five minutes trying to get my thoughts together. Truthfully, I guess part of me was hoping Cassie would chase me down. Tell me I was wrong. Tell me she wanted all of the same things I wanted.
But just like the times she’d fallen asleep during sex, my satisfaction never came.
It had been the week from hell. Every night I had slept in my shitty Chelsea apartment and wished I were in a California King in Midtown, enveloped in the arms of the one man I couldn’t get out of my head.
But I didn’t have time to sulk and mope.
I had to get my head straight for a big shoot for Cosmopolitan this evening.
It was a huge sixteen-page spread for their November issue, and I should have been excited about it. I should have been damn near brimming with energy over the idea of getting behind the lens, but thoughts of Thatch and me and us and everything that went wrong sat at the precipice of my mind, and I was having a hell of a time thinking about anything but him.
Fuck. Get it together. This is your career you’re screwing with here.
Plus, you’re driving a fucking sweet-ass convertible right now…
Which I was. When Cosmo had made the arrangements, I had offered to pick up the cherry-red Porsche prior to the shoot. Of course, those arrangements had solely been based on selfish motives and I had made sure I had the entire afternoon to drive this pretty baby around the city.
And God, she drove like a dream—cruising through the city with a quiet purr and taking turns with ease. It was a rare and refreshing experience to drive after living in a city where people rarely owned cars. There was just something about being behind the wheel, music blaring, roof open, and wind in my hair.
My mood started to lift as I weaved in and out of traffic, making stops at random for my Monday errands. After barely missing a parking citation for parking outside of Starbucks illegally, I headed toward Midtown and stopped at the dry cleaner. I was in and out of the quaint family business before the parking meter ran out of its measly ten minutes.
Stuck at a stoplight, I glanced in the rearview mirror and caught sight of Thatch’s cleanly pressed suits lying across the back seat.
“Oh, shit,” I muttered.
Did I really just pick up his dry cleaning?
It was like I had completely forgotten about everything that had happened—the breakup, the other night at the bar, him not wanting to be with me anymore.
“Fuck. Why did I do that?” I said to no one in particular.
You know why, you idiot…
I mentally chastised myself and refused to let my thoughts wander back to that sad place where I had to come to terms with the fact that Thatch wasn’t mine. That we weren’t together. That things were over between us.
“Fuck!” I
shouted and turned up the volume to drown out my racing thoughts.
And I forced my brain to focus on my shoot as I headed for location.
“That’s perfect, Eduardo. Just tilt your head slightly up and to the right,” I instructed as he leaned against the Porsche with the New York skyline resting behind him.
I snapped a few photos from a side angle before changing positions and lying on my belly to grab some shots looking up at him.
“I never get to see you anymore, Cassie,” he said and hitched his hip against the car. “I don’t like it.” He flashed a playful smile in my camera’s direction. Eduardo was a male model I had known for years. He was about as attractive as one would imagine a male model would be, and I had noticed that very fact on more than one occasion. Believe me, we had experienced our fair share of afternoon shoots and late-night sex together.
I shook my head to clear it. The thought of him and me together made me feel dirty. Wrong. Uncomfortable.
He gave his signature smirk. “I think we should change that, gorgeous. Come out with me tonight after we’re done here.”
I paused behind my lens for the briefest of seconds as a million emotions ran through my veins and straight to my heart.
Normally, I would have taken Eduardo up on his offer.
Obviously, I had in the past, many, many times.
But I had absolutely zero desire to do what I normally did.
The only kind of normalcy I craved revolved around Thatch and us and spending every second of our time together. I wanted him. I wanted what we had. I wanted our happy bubble of jokes and pranks and hot sex and flirty winks.
God, I hated him.
Liar.
Well, I wanted to hate him.
I pulled my camera away from my face and glanced at my watch.
7:00 p.m.
My pink diamond engagement ring winked in the fading sun. Fucking winked.
I had to get rid of it. Now.
Which was why I tossed my camera in the back seat of the Porsche, opened the driver’s door, and told Eduardo to get out.
He stared back at me, confused.
“Get out of the car,” I demanded, and lucky for him, he listened.
Like a woman deranged, I didn’t waste any time or offer any explanations to the staff on set. I peeled out of the parking lot with a loud squeal of the tires and left in the middle of one of the biggest photo shoots of my career. All because a ring was fucking winking at me.
Fifteen minutes later, I damn near hit a few pedestrians as I parked illegally in front of the tattoo shop. I was out of the car and striding through the entrance within seconds. The bell above the door rang erratically, and Frankie looked up from behind the reception desk, his eyes wide with both recognition and shock.
“Cass?”
My mind wouldn’t let me do anything other than yell over him. “Take this fucking ring back!”
I yanked at it frantically, trying to free it from my finger, but it hung like Walter had hung on to Stan’s cage. At this rate, I’d be raw and bloody, but I was obviously beyond the point of caring about anything.
The one thing I cared about didn’t want me, so I wanted this reminder gone. Pulling and pulling, each yank opened up some untapped well of emotion, and by the time it even came close to coming off, I was sobbing.
“Come here,” Frankie said, taking me by the elbow and gently leading me to a chair in the back. He went into the bathroom and came back out with a tissue, offering it to me with a kind smile. “Take a minute and calm down,” he instructed gently.
I wiped at my eyes and found myself irrationally cursing his steely ways. “Fuck you for being so steady right now.”
He smiled, and it honestly surprised me how receptive I was to it.
“Feel better?” he asked softly, and I shrugged.
“A little.”
“Good.”
Now that I wasn’t so agitated, the ring slipped free of my finger with ease. I closed it in my fist and concentrated on giving it up. Every cell in my body was shouting its refusal. I clamped the ring harder in my hand until I felt the sting of the diamond pressing into my palm.
Eventually, I took a deep breath and found the strength to shove the ring toward Frankie. “Give this to him.”
He shook his head. “I think you should give it to him yourself.”
A thousand emotions pulsed through my veins until my ears buzzed with the erratic pounding of my heart. Why wouldn’t Frankie just take the fucking ring? Didn’t he understand? If I had to be the one to hand Thatch back the ring, my fucking ring, it would be the final straw. Having to face him and face the truth that we were really over would destroy me.
“I can’t,” I spat. “It rips my heart out to see him, so you can take the ring or I’ll flush it down the toilet!” I shouted, throwing it to the floor when he still didn’t hold out his hand.
His expression remained neutral. “Do you want to hear what I think?”
“No,” I answered obstinately. His eyebrows went up in challenge, and I folded like a poker novice. “Yes,” I admitted.
“Go on, sit down,” he directed, and I had no qualms with following his orders. I was dog tired from the long day, but mostly, I was exhausted from having to remind myself a million times a day, every goddamn day, that I couldn’t call Thatch or text him or do anything that revolved around him because we weren’t together anymore. Our breakup felt like a constant one-hundred-pound weight on my shoulders.
“You scared Thatch last week.”
“I know. And hurting him burned a hole through my heart. But I’m really not interested in being the ghost of his ex-girlfriend.”
“Well, I’m glad to know you’re so sympathetic—”
I cringed. “God, I’m so sorry,” I found myself apologizing. “That was a really dick thing to say.”
Frankie nodded. “Yeah, it was, but it’s okay,” he accepted. “And this has nothing to do with Margo.”
Thatch had said the same thing. I wasn’t sure I believed either of them.
“Sure, that’s how she died,” he went on, and my eyes widened. He nodded again. “Yeah. Jumping off a cliff into a shallow pool of water, right after Thatch begged her not to.”
His words hit my chest like a bullet, and I inhaled a shaky breath.
“So it is about her,” I said on a whisper.
He shook his head. “No, it’s not. There, that day, the moment. Yeah, he remembered. He’s the one who spent thirty minutes trying to revive her, so I know he remembered.”
A single tear cut down my cheek as my heart broke for them. For Thatch—the man who deserved so much better than me—and for Frankie, so willing to open his arms to me even when I was yo-yoing between manic and a Grade A bitch.
“But you scaring him was all about you.”
I shook my head and wiped at my eyes. “I don’t get it.” But God, I wanted to. Even though, deep down, I probably already knew the answer.
“You’re the exact woman he’s always wanted, Cassie. Always. But that day made him afraid to want it. Afraid to think of what he might be putting himself through for the rest of his life. He knows you’re going to be wild and untamed, and he loves it. Until he feels like being so accepting of it might be the reason he loses you.”
“But what do I do?” My voice was barely audible.
“What you do is always up to you, Cassie. You’re the one who needs to decide what’s really important to you.”
I already knew the answer to that.
Moving to the corner of the room, he picked up the ring and dropped it in my hand. “And if you really think it’s over, you need to give him the ring back yourself. He’ll be here tonight at nine.”
Nerves fought to take over as I set up my station and pulled all the sanitary packets from the cabinet.
I was tattooing my very first client today. Frankie and some of the other artists had pretty selflessly let me practice on them a few times, and I’d obviously practiced on myself, but wor
king on a client was different. I didn’t exactly think I’d fuck it up, but unlike what I liked to spout, it wasn’t an absolute certainty that I’d be good at it.
My black mood probably wasn’t helping things either.
“You ready?” Frankie asked, popping into the private room I was setting up in. My first client was a woman named Kristen. She’d come into the shop a week or so ago wanting some kind of custom book quote, and Frankie insisted this was the time. While he was a guru of portrait work, he felt like I had a gift for lettering.
Go figure. My everyday handwriting was shit.
“As I’ll ever be,” I answered with the best smile I could manage.
His smile, however, seemed unnecessarily bright.
“What’s with your face?”
“Huh?” he said.
“What’s happening here?” I asked, circling a finger around my face in explanation. “You’re looking a little too much like the Joker.”
“Nothing. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Seriously, why am I only friends with really shitty liars?”
He flipped me off. “I’ll send her back if you’re done.”
“I’m done for now, but I’ll get to the bottom of this eventually.”
His smile grew even more demented. “I have no doubts you will.”
“Whatever.” I rolled my stool away and got my ink cups out for the colors I knew she wanted. I’d double-check everything before we got started, though. Women had a nasty little tendency to change their minds.
What? Don’t even think about pretending that’s not true.
I heard a knock on the open wood door. “Come on in—”
The ability to speak left me when I saw who it was, but the smirk on her lips brought my voice right back. For the first time in our relationship, I was in no mood to be fucked with.
“What are you doing here?” I asked her.
“I’m your first appointment,” Cassie said, walking into the room and jumping up on the table in front of me.
“No. My first client is a woman named Kristen.”
She shook her head. “Not anymore.”