Page 47 of Beware of Dog

“I don’t feel like she’d say that about boy band t-shirts and skinny jeans.”

Cass shot an appalled look over her shoulder, and it was only partly for show. She didn’t wear boy band t-shirts…anymore. But some of them still lived in the very back of her closet. “Are you saying I don’t dress well?”

He rolled his eyes, but his cheeks turned noticeably pink. “I’m saying let’s not call it ‘fashion.’ Not the way Raven means, anyway.”

“Hmph.” She made a show of tossing her hair as she turned back around. That, at least, she had in common with Raven: thick dark waves with natural sun streaks in summer. Raven wore hers sleek and shoulder-length these days, smoothed every morning with a straightener. Cass had grown hers out down past the middle of her back, and let it air-dry for extra curl. Sometimes, when they sat on the couch watching a movie, Shep would play with it. Just a little, but enough to warm her blood.

Toly was in the kitchen when she entered the flat’s great room, peering through the oven’s glass door at whatever was cooking inside. He lifted a two-fingered wave in response to Cass’s “hey.” Shep broke off to grab a beer out of the fridge, and Cass went down the hall to start a load of clothes in the washer. Then she followed the sounds of a fussing baby to Raven and Toly’s room.

The door was open, and Cass stood in the door a moment, unnoticed, floored all over again, as she occasionally was, by the sight of her sister as someone’s mum. Their brothers—asshole ones, anyway—had expressed overdramatic shock that she, as Tenny charmingly put it, knew which end to put the diaper on. (Walsh had materialized in the background of that Zoom call to smack him deservedly upside the back of the head.) But Cass wasn’t surprised that Raven was very good at taking care of a child; she’d mothered Cass more than her actual mother. All of her best childhood memories of being safe, and loved, all of her best days from her earlier years, were Raven-shaped; it was Raven’s manicured hand she’d held while she exclaimed over fireworks, and theme parks, and tea parties just the two of them. Raven’s dark lipstick prints on her cheeks and forehead. Raven’swisdom she’d wrapped around herself as a blanket and shield on tough days.

The surprising part to Cass was that Raven had allowed herself to have this. That she’d softened enough first to fall in love, then to get married, and then willingly started a family.

In that sense, it was a miracle any of Devin’s children had become parents.

Raven wore a burgundy hoodie and sweats, designer of course, but loose and comfortable. She walked barefoot circles around the rug at the foot of the bed, bouncing Natalia in her arms. The baby wasn’t screaming, as she often was, but fussing: quiet little snuffles and hitches. Raven was singing, her voice low and soothing.

“Hello, darling,” Raven greeted, gaze still trained on Nat’s face. “Good day at school?” Even with her head bent, the deep shadows beneath her eyes were visible, fatigue exerting itself in the shape of her mouth, and the flag of her lashes.

After Shep’s insistence, Cass had been toying with the idea of telling Raven about Sig and Jamie and all that was developing, but as Nat quieted, and Raven smiled down at her, Cass couldn’t bring herself to do it.

“It was fine.”

~*~

Dinner proved to be roasted chicken topped with tomatoes pan-seared in olive oil and rosemary, fingerling potatoes, and a salad. Shep ribbed Toly about broadening his culinary horizons, but didn’t hesitate to heap his plate with protein and veg, and only a few potatoes. He had a physique to maintain, after all, and Cass found herself wondering just who he was trying to impress with it. A Lean Bitch in Albany? Someone here in the city? She spent enough time with him that she didn’t think he was seeing anyone…but that didn’t mean he didn’t go home with women hemet at bars here and there, a thought that turned her food to ash in her mouth.

Raven took her first bite of chicken, paused, then leaned over and squeezed Toly’s wrist in silent praise. Toly nodded, expression impassive save a bloom of color in his cheeks.

“Cass,” she said, in that crisp voice Cass’s mother had never used on her, but which meant Raven was about to ask a series of very maternal questions. “Ian said you came to see him.” Her mildly judgmental expression said she wondered why Cass hadn’t come to her office instead. “Something about a problem with your roommate.”

“Oh. Um.” She made a point of not looking toward Shep, which didn’t matter, because he kicked her foot under the table. She kicked him back—in the shin.

“Shit,” he hissed.

Raven and Toly both turned to him wearing near-identical frowns.

Shep shrugged and said, “Chicken’s good.”

Raven shook her head, her standard gesture where Shep was concerned, and returned her attention to Cass.

“Jamie and I were having a stupid fight,” she said, playing at casual. She threw in a shrug. See? So easy breezy. “Jamie wouldn’t talk to me, and I didn’t want to be on the receiving end of the silent treatment the whole rest of the semester, so I went to ask for advice. I wasn’t going to get that from this one.” She hooked a thumb Shep’s direction and he tsked.

Raven’s already-big eyes went bigger, edged with sadness, and even though Cass knew she wasn’t doing it on purpose, the expression still tugged hard on all her guilt strings. “You could have come tome.”

Cass hadn’t expected to feel quite this shitty about keeping things from her sister. But she had vowed not to cause her morestress, and she was going to stick to that. “You’ve had wall-to-wall meetings, and the baby, and you’re…” She gestured.

“I’m what?” Raven asked, voice hardening.

Cass gestured some more, and wished she could rewind and edit her initial statement. “You’re running a company. And you’re married.”

Raven’s gaze sharpened. “Ian’s running a company. And is married.”

“Yeah, but…” Cass’s pulse picked up, flashing under her skin like a warning sign.Danger, danger. Proceed with caution. “He’s been married longer. So he and Alec probably don’t even…” She trailed off as one of Raven’s dark brows cocked to a disbelieving angle.

“You’ve seemed overworked lately,” Cass said, and the other brow joined the first. “I didn’t want to dump my problems onto you.”

Shep cleared his throat, loud and unsubtly. A darted glance proved he was giving her anI told you solook, one that Toly definitely noticed if his quick frown was any indication.

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