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“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“Nothing. Bad memories, that’s all.”

She was curious. “Of what?”

“My dad was shot to death in a gas station convenience store, kind of like this one. He was in the wrong place, wrong time. Walked into an armed robbery. Sometimes it just hits me, that’s all.”

Now she looked distressed and I wished I hadn’t just brought it up. “I’m sorry, Curtis. I knew your dad was gone but I never heard the whole story before.”

“It was a long time ago,” I assured her.

“I’m sure it’s still painful, for you and your brothers.” Her face was full of sympathy. This girl who had just experienced the most violent scare of her life was feeling sorry for me. I felt like an asshole for mentioning it.

“Let’s get out of here,” I said, trying to sound more upbeat.

I encouraged Cassie to drink an entire bottle of water before we walked back to her street. She didn’t need my arm around her waist anymore but I stayed on alert in case she stumbled.

“Damn, I forgot about my car,” she said. “I left it by Baca’s.”

“I’ll go get it.”

“How are you going to drive my car and your car at the same time?”

“I’m not. I’ll walk over and drive your car home.”

“It’s like four miles away, Curtis.”

“That’s nothing.”

Cassie opened another bottle of water. “Do you still want to hear about my sordid history with Parker the Prick?”

“Only if you still want to tell me.”

She sighed and spoke haltingly at first. The story itself was bad enough; the party, the betrayal, the humiliation. But the worst part was the aftermath. Cassie began suffering from anxiety and depression. She was bullied right out of school, forced to finish her senior year online.

“It changed me, Curtis. I guess I’m ashamed of that. I let some high school bullshit strip away my self-confidence and I’ve never gotten over it completely. I was lost. The girl you seem to think I am, the carefree privileged princess who has never been touched by anything bad, that’s who I used to be.” She shook her head and looked miserable. “But I haven’t been that girl for a long time.”

I digested everything she’d just told me. There were so many things I wished I’d never said to her, that she led a charmed life, that she had everything so easy. I should have known better by now, that people couldn’t be wrapped up and labeled so neatly. Reality was more complex. And sometimes terrible.

“I’m sorry,” I told her. “I was wrong about you. And I hate the idea that some of the careless comments I made might have hurt your feelings. Cassie, I didn’t know what the fuck I was talking about.”

She stopped walking. “I didn’t mean to imply that I was angry at you. I can’t even tell you how grateful I am that you came along when you did. I’m pissed at myself for trying to see the good in someone like Parker Neely. And for being such a clueless idiot.” She sighed and crossed her arms. “How the hell did I manage to do this again? To once more cast myself as the damsel in distress? You know, last summer I went to a club with Cami and was nearly assaulted by some creep. I had to be rescued by Dalton for crying out loud. I don’t want to be the girl who always needs to be rescued.”

“Cassidy,” I said sternly so she’d look at me. “You are not to blame. You were in the company of a fucking predator. He is the only one in this equation who bears the guilt.”

She nodded. “I know. I’m thinking about it now and there are things that don’t add up. He said that he’d been working on a cattle ranch in Nebraska and hadn’t been to college. My friend Debra told me she heard he’d graduated from the University of Nebraska with an engineering degree. He wouldn’t talk about his day job. And tonight I noticed he had a University of Nebraska license plate so Debra must have been right. And there’d be no reason at all for an engineering graduate to be taking an introductory statistics class at a community college. He was there for a different reason.”

“He was there for you,” I said and a chilly sense of dread rolled through me. I hadn’t wanted to push her but this was an even more dangerous situation than I thought. “You should at least file a police report tonight. I’ll go with you. And you need to talk to your folks. Especially since he’s already shown up at Scratch once.”

She was already vehemently shaking her head before I finished talking. “No. You don’t know how it was. After I left school I could barely be persuaded to leave the house and I actually made myself sick. The whole thing just shattered my parents. I can’t handle putting them through any more pain. I swear I’m not going to go off the rails this time, Curtis.”

“I believe you. But he might try something else.”

“I don’t think he will after the way you dealt with him.” She let out a bark of laughter. “Did you see the way he wet his pants?”

I snorted. “I might have noticed that.”

We walked side by side in silence for a moment.

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