Chapter 35 Cassie
CASSIE
I felt sick as Vigo parked down the street from Bram’s loft. We’d argued about whether I would drive myself: I reasoned it would be less upsetting to Bram if I arrived and left in my own car and the Hawks had said they didn’t give two fucks what was less upsetting to Bram.
In the end we’ compromised: we’d go together but park down the street to give me time to break the news.
I forced myself to take deep breaths. I’d left Kaylee in charge of the shop for the day.
All I had to do was get through the next couple of hours.
Then I could go back to the Hawks house and sleep, which I desperately needed to do after the night I’d spent tossing and turning, playing out every possible scenario for my confrontation with Bram.
“Wait here,” I said when we got out of the car. “I mean it. If they see you lurking outside before I get the chance to tell Bram it’s going to make things harder.”
Bram, Poe, and Remy weren’t exactly friends with the Hawks. They would wonder what the Hawks were doing loitering outside the loft and I’d be forced to accelerate the carefully rehearsed explanation of my new living arrangements.
“No problem, mouse.” Vigo kissed me on the lips. “We’ll wait for your text.”
I didn’t have the heart to tell him he wouldn’t need a text. Bram would rage as soon as he found out they were outside.
I’d taken two steps in the direction of the loft when I turned around.
“I don’t like that you call me that,” I told Vigo.
He furrowed his brow and I tried not to be distracted by his adorable freckles. “What?”
“Mouse.”
“Why?” Vigo asked.
“Mice are small. Insignificant.”
Jagger scratched his jaw. “Mice are smart. Crafty.”
“Yeah,” Vigo said. “Mice find a way to survive when everything else dies.”
It wasn’t what I’d expected them to say. And honestly, I’d never thought of it that way.
I turned around and kept going toward the brick building at the end of the street where Bram lived with Poe, Remy, and Maeve. Now wasn’t the time to argue about nicknames.
I resisted the urge to bend over and heave as I came closer to the loft. There was nothing in my stomach anyway. I’d been too nervous to eat breakfast.
Bram lived in an old factory building. It had been abandoned when Bram bought it with Poe and Remy, and they’d gotten it cheap. Back then, Bram had just been getting started in Blackwell Falls, but over the years he’d become the town’s unofficial king.
I didn’t know everything about what he did. But I knew enough.
I knew enough to know that everyone was scared of him, that townspeople avoided looking at him when he passed, like he was a ghost who might turn them to stone.
I knew enough to know he kept the drugs away from schools but let them flow — through him — everywhere else and that he facilitated the running of guns and other illegal products in a way that kept the town outwardly clean, that kept innocents safe.
It had taken me a long time to realize that Bram saw me as one of those innocents. That the reason he’d installed me at the coffee shop, warned me not to hang out in Southside, was because he was trying to keep me away from Blackwell Falls’ dark side.
Which was one of many reasons it was going to be so painful to tell him what I’d done.
He’d worked and fought to keep me away from the Blackwell Falls’ underbelly, and I’d stepped into it like a warm bath.
I stopped outside the security gate that surrounded the three-story brick building and its parking lot and pressed the button on the intercom.
The gate rolled open a few seconds later and I stepped into the lot where Bram’s matte black Humvee sat next to Poe’s bike and Remy’s orange spider.
My gaze snagged on the bright orange sports car Remy drove and I couldn’t help wondering if Remy and Vigo had some kind of astrological connection.
Like were their rising moons in the same house or something (I didn’t know anything about astrology)?
Because I could definitely see a kindred energy there, although Remy’s was due to the fact that he could barely walk in a straight line without tripping over something and Vigo was just mildly insane.
Maeve’s car was there too: the old blue Honda that had belonged to her sister before she’d been murdered. Bram had told her they’d buy her a new car when she was ready, but she clearly wasn’t ready.
I understood. She had this thing of June’s — her car — and it probably felt like the only connection she had to her sister. That’s why I’d kept my parents’ papers all these years, and it was probably why Bram had kept them when I’d been too little to know anything about them.
He wanted to be close to our parents too, even if he couldn’t admit it to himself.
Loss was like that, I guess. When something was taken from you — suddenly, violently — it was only natural to try to hang onto whatever you could.
I crossed the parking lot and walked up the ramp of the old loading dock. Once upon a time, trucks had pulled up to the concrete platform to load (or unload, I wasn’t sure which) their goods and workers had come and gone from the warehouse using the ramp that now led to Bram’s green front door.
I stepped in front of it and waited, knowing they could see me with the security camera mounted above the door.
The door buzzed a second later and I let myself in, stepping into a shadowed vestibule at the front of a sprawling warehouse space that stretched into the distance.
I caught sight of the hunks of metal Poe used to sculpt his art and headed for the spiral staircase that led to the living quarters on the second and third floors.
I was halfway up the stairs when I spotted Ray at the top, wagging his tail and panting.
“Hi, Ray!” I hurried the rest of the way and stepped into the living room, then bent to pet Ray who would accept nothing less. His golden fur was soft and clean. “Hi, boy. Did you have fun with Bailey? Are you happy Maeve’s home?”
Maeve laughed, coming into view from the kitchen. “He hasn’t left my side for the last twelve hours.
I straighten and went to give Maeve a hug. “Welcome home. Did you have a good time?”
Maeve squeezed me back. “The best time. It was heaven.”
I pulled back to look at her. Maeve was always pretty, but she was extra pretty now, her skin golden from the sun, black hair pulled off her face in a ponytail.
“You look amazing!”
“So do you.” She narrowed her eyes. “Really! You’re glowing.”
My cheeks turned pink. Was it obvious I’d been having almost daily orgasms since I’d gone to live with the Hawks? Were the orgasms they gave me different than the ones I gave myself?
They definitely felt different.
I forced myself to focus. I wasn’t going to have any more mind-blowing orgasms with the Hawks if Bram killed them, and that meant I needed to get this right.
“Thanks! Where’s my brother.”
“You rang?” Bram stepped into the room from the hallway and came toward me with his arms open.
I stepped into them and leaned my head on his giant chest, enjoying the moment of sibling togetherness before he committed homicide against the Hawks.
“I’m so glad you’re home,” I said. “How was Bali?”
“It was good,” Bram said. “The place we rented was perfect. I’ll send you sometime if you want.”
I laughed. Bram was always trying to give me things, buy me things, pay for vacations and anything else he thought I needed, like he thought I was a still a ten-year-old who needed lunch money.
“You don’t have to send me to Bali. I can take myself if I want to go.”
He smiled, something he did a lot more often now that he had Maeve. “That’s right. You’re all grown up."
I wondered how anyone could be afraid of him.
Okay, I knew how people could be afraid of him. He was the biggest man I’d ever met, well over six feet tall, with shoulders like a Mac truck and muscles that could easily have crushed me to death in one of his hugs.
The scar — running from under his left eye all the way down his cheekbone — didn’t help, but it still made me sad. The scar wasn’t his fault, and neither were the scars he had on the inside.
“Sit down,” Maeve said. “Want some coffee? Tea? Something else?”
“I’m good.” There was no point, I wouldn’t be able to stomach it and it would probably become a casualty of Bram’s fury anyway.
“Hey, Cass!” Remy entered the room in front of Poe, tripped over Lucifer, who’d parked himself right in the middle of the floor to carefully lick his paws, and barely managed to keep himself from going down.
“Fuck!” Remy flipped his blond hair out of his eyes and glared at the cat. “Why does he always do that?”
“I saw him and I was behind you.” Poe looked at me. “Hey, Cass.”
I laughed. This was a familiar scene. “Hey. I heard you guys had a good time in Bali?”
Poe walked into the kitchen and stopped to kiss Maeve full on the lips.
“The best,” he said when he pulled away.
Their displays of affection with Maeve had taken some getting used to. I’d never met a single woman they’d dated before Maeve, and it had been weird to see my brother and his friends so obviously head over heels for someone.
But I loved seeing them so in love, and while it usually made me squirm a little to see their naked affection for her, now it made me squirm for a different reason.
I knew what they were feeling. I mean, not the love part. Definitely not that.
But the lust? Oh yeah. I definitely knew what that felt like because I wanted to get naked with the Hawks all the time. And I knew how Maeve felt too, knew why her cheeks flushed when they kissed her or grabbed her ass.
It was the way I’d felt when Jagger had kissed the top of my head after he’d made me come in his bed, the way I’d felt when Vigo had casually kissed me on the lips outside, when Hawk had grabbed my face and kissed me roughly in the kitchen the night before.
“So what’s up?” Bram asked. “Everything good with you? You need something?”
I knew why he was asking. First, he was Bram, and he always wanted to be sure I was okay.
But also, I didn’t usually come to the loft.
I’d been visiting more often since Maeve started living there, but before Maeve, Bram had always visited me.
His determination to keep me out of Southside had become unspoken, and I’d gotten used to all of our visits happening on my side of town.
“I’m good.” I felt lightheaded, blood rushing in my ears.
Bram’s jaw hardened. “Somehow I don’t believe you. What the fuck’s going on, Cass?”