Page 94 of Dust Storm

She licked her lips. “Are you bribing me?”

“Is it working?”

“We’ll see.”

“Then I’ll keep bribing you.”

“So, you admit to bribing me,” she said with a hint of smug victory in her voice.

I dropped her mug into the sink, ripped a paper towel off the roll, and wiped up the coffee spill. “And you just admitted to avoiding me. I think we can call it even.”

A mischievous smirk worked up her lips as she took a bite. “You keep bringing me breakfast, and I might keep avoiding you. It’s working out pretty well for me.”

She was trying to put up a good front, but I could see the mistrust and hurt lingering in the steel blades of her eyes.

I had a laundry list of things to do today. Usually I would have been three or four hours into my workday by now. But for some reason my boots were rooted to the kitchen floor and that to-do list didn’t seem so important.

“How’d you sleep?” I asked, resting my ass on the counter’s edge and crossing one ankle over the other like I had all the time in the world.

“Fine,” she mumbled around the roll.

“I suppose so.” I stretched my arm out behind her back, and she hunched forward. “Especially since you went to bed at what—seven? You know, after you ate dinner over at Becks and Nate’s house.”

“She wanted to catch up, then I was tired,” Cassandra objected.

“Cut the shit, princess.”

She balled up the wax paper, tossed it in the trash, and started to pace. “What do you want me to say?”

I stayed right where I was, not wanting to add to her nervous energy. “I want you to be honest with me. Are you okay?”

“No.” She threw her hands in the air. “I’m not. Is that what you want to hear?”

Shit.

“Cass…”

She ran a hand back through her hair. “I felt like I was going to start climbing the walls. Okay? It was quiet after you left, Ijust kept watching the clock for the girls to get home, and then I panicked. I didn’t know what would happen after the situation at the school with Bree, then after what we … you know… did. I needed time to think it over. So yeah—” she threw her hands in the air “—I walked down to see if Becks was home. The repairs on their house are done, so I helped her fold baby clothes and put things away in the nursery. And, yes. I came back after I knew you’d have the girls getting ready for bed so I could slip in undetected. I didn’t have the capacity to deal with feelings or not swearing around them or whatever you obviously have the patience to deal with every fucking day.”

“Cass.”

“If avoiding a situation I didn’t have a plan for makes me the bad guy then?—”

“Cassandra.” I caught her around the waist. “Stop.”

Tears filled her eyes and it broke something inside of me.

I cupped her cheeks. “What’s the matter?”

“I just told you?—”

“No. You told me why you were scarce last night, and that’s fair. I don’t blame you.” I wiped beneath her eyes. “Why are you crying, sweetheart?”

She looked at her right hand as it lay against my chest. “I think it finally hit me last night.”

I knew that feeling all too well. Realizing that the person I thought I would spend the rest of my life with was gone without warning.

Grief doesn’t come in stages. Frankly, it would be easier if it did. It ebbs and flows like waves. Bad days always follow good days, but better days are never far behind.

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