Page 87 of Hot Shot

My hands leave my face in order to slap my thighs. “No! And I don’t know how much longer I can hold out. The other day, we were talking about Cricket’s birthday, and he went off with ideas about centerpieces for it.Centerpieces, Jess. How am I supposed to survive when he’s out here throwingcenterpiecesaround? I swear to God, if he busts out some burlap ribbon or evenmentionsbaby’s breath, I’m just gonna hand him my panties and give up. Let the river take me.”

Jessa makes the mistake of taking a sip of her drink in the middle of my rant and nearly spits it out, coming up coughing when she swallows.

“It’s not funny,” I note, but I’m trying not to laugh as I hand her a glass of water.

“Yes it is,” Shelby says, and Jessa nods, still clearing her throat.

“Why on earth should you be holding out still?” she asks.

“What do youmean? You agreed I’m not ready!”

Jessa folds her arms, tilting her shoulders. “And when did I say that?”

“Like a thousand times!”

“Name one.”

A frown weighs my face down. “Well…I…you said that…I mean, when I told you about the whole thing, you said?—”

“I asked you what you needed from me, and you said support.”

I blink, my brain clicking through memories. “But you helped me come up with icks.”

“Because you needed a plan and I was being supportive.Yousaid you weren’t ready, and I wanted to help you. Neveroncehave I said it’s a bad idea.”

“No.” I’m shaking my head as I realize she might be right. “No way.”

“If you’d asked me for my opinion, I’d have told you things you didn’t want to hear.”

“Like what?” I challenge.

She straightens, her blue eyes blazing with victory as she ticks each point off on her fingers. “You’re in love with Wilder. He’s in love with you. You have been ready to move on since the bonfireat least. And most of all—you never really, truly loved Davis.”

My jaw is unhinged and my eyes are testing the elasticity of my eyelids. “I’m sorry, what?”

“That’s right,” she proclaims like Sherlock Fucking Holmes solving the mystery of Cass’s burning love. “First, the moment Wilder caught you naked in front of that bonfire. It was so obvious how you felt, you could have seen it from space.”

“But we weren’t evenanythingthen!”

“Exactly!” she declares. “I honestly thought he took you upstairs to claim you for all the pheromones you were flinging about the place.Second,I have spent weeks watching the two of you traipse around townpretending,and I have never seen two people so perfectly obsessed with each other in my life. Even just the sight of you together sets some wrong in the universe right.”

“She’s right,” Shelby adds, watching intently, save the smirk on her lips. All she’s missing is a bucket of popcorn. “Always have been like that.”

“Third, and most importantly,” Jess continues. “You’re over Davis. Mostly because you never loved him in the first place.”

I gape at her. “A few months ago I was in a church, minutes away frommarryinghim.”

“Yes, well, he was a despicable cunt, wasn’t he? Love isn’t possession, Cass. It’s not control or safety or contentment, either. He did not truly love you, and you didn’t love him either. How could you? I could tell you a million ways I’ve seen you adore Wilder these last several weeks, far more than inten yearswith Davis.”

“I was pretending!”

“Ha! That is alie, Cassidy Winfield,” Jessa says.

I reel from the truth of it. “But I…I’m not ready. Am I?”

Jessa sighs and sets her glass down so she can take my hand. “Darling, I’m going to hold your hand while I say this. Yes, Davis hurt you. Yes, he humiliated you. But tell me—were you devastated because you loved Davis so very much? Because you miss him? Long for him?”

I scramble around in the jumble of my feelings. Surely I do. There must be a piece of me that misses him, even just a little.

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