Page 63 of Due Diligence

“So let me get this straight: He has no dos and don’ts?”

“They’re lenient. Like, he’s allowed to binge drink in public whenever he wants. They say it builds off his persona as the hottest guy in the tech industry.”

“Debatable,” Cass murmured, which made me want to reach over the table, grab her into my arms, and take her mouth so hard that she would moan loudly enough to drown out the insufferable top forty music blasting over the speakers.

“And you resent Alex for having all the freedoms that you don’t,” she concluded, quick to make the connection as usual. “He gets to eat his cake and have it too.”

I nodded, unable to say anything else about that. If I started talking about all the resentment I held towards Alex, we would be at this table all night.

“When is the contract up?”

“When I’m thirty, or when I quit working at Libra. Whichever comes first.”

“Ah,” she said knowingly. “No wonder you’re so keen to sell.”

“Of course I am. I amconstantlypretending to be somebody else. Cass, that messes with my head in ways I can’t even put into words.”

Cass was quiet. I looked up at her and she was watching me. When she picked up her beer and took a drink, she kept her gaze on me. Instantly, that became one of the hottest things I had ever seen a woman do.

“You understand it though, don’t you,” I stated. I wasn’t asking; I was observing.

She raised a shoulder. “I do what I have to.”

“When did that all start?” I inquired. “When did you start going to dive bars and piercing your…Back in college you were—”

“Perfect,” she filled in, even before I attempted to. “Or I pretended to be.”

“When did that change?”

She brought her beer to her lips and she finished it. “Right after college, I had some stuff happen in my personal life that made me think about who people wanted me to be versus who I wanted to be. I ultimately decided that nothing—nothingwas worth giving up my sense of self.”

“But you still know how to be Cassie Pierson,” I replied. “The chiffon and the money. It wasn’t until I saw you at Shelf Atlas that I even realized you were any different than you were back in college.”

“I know,” she noted, grimacing as she spoke. “Like I said, I do what I have to do. I know what my job and coworkers expect from me, and I know I have to keep working if I want to survive.”

To survive.

“The dive bars and nightclubs and the drunk bathroom hookups—that’s the real you?”

“It’s part of it,” she said with a nod. “But there are other things. The horror movies. Traveling. I read like any normal person. I just like to do things that make me feel good. So, drinking, dancing, fucking—I’ll do them as long as they feel good to me.”

God, she fascinated me. She was complexity personified. All I wanted to do was explore her—to go back to college and get the bachelor’s degree I never finished with a major in Cass Pierson.

“What we did on Friday was…that was the first night in six years that I’ve broken any of the rules. Drinking in excess. Chugging. Smoking. Weed. Hooking up in public, and with someone who wasn’t pre-approved.” I steeled myself before I admitted, “Cass, I can’t stop thinking about it.”

“You weren’t worried about getting caught?” When she spoke, her eyes lowered to my lips.

I recognized that look; I fucking loved that look.

“I was,” I admitted. “I knew it was stupid. But…”

“What?”

“I wanted you,” I said. To my relief, my voice didn’t waver. “I saw you in that bar and I thought I would stop breathing if I couldn’t have you. You just looked so…forbidden.”

She smiled when I said that. It was subtle, like I was tickling some element of her pride.

“As stupid as it was, it felt so good to break the rules, Cass.So fucking good. I might even say it made it more fun for me, knowing I was doing the opposite of what people have been telling me to do for years.”

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