Chapter 20 All the Feelings
CASSIDY
Of all the things that James Davis had said to me since we came into each other’s sphere once again, none of it made me feel as though he was being honest with me or himself.
I didn’t know what to believe about our past. Maybe he had a crush on me, maybe he was just trying to repaint an ugly history with a different brush. I didn’t know.
What stuck out to me, though, was that he never left my side.
There were bound to be important things he needed to get to.
One of them was to get back to the clubhouse to deal with Simone.
I had overheard part of a conversation he had with someone when he thought I was sleeping.
Simone wouldn’t cooperate until Knuckles was the one to question her.
Those answers she might have held would help the club, but he was still here with me instead.
He held my hand in his again. It was something he did often, as if he needed that touch more than he needed his sustenance.
Plus, we had nothing but time, so we talked about anything and everything.
It was weird getting to know the adult version of Knuckles versus the boy, James Davis, I had grown up with.
They were the same in some ways and vastly different in others.
It was obvious, almost immediately, that Simone had done a lot of damage in their time together.
He talked to me about not being able to trust himself for a long time.
Back then, he thought it was because of her but I was also in the mix.
He had put me on a pedestal when we were younger, even though he ignored me in public settings.
I was this perfect version of a girl for him and when Simone used me as her excuse to get away and he later found out what she did on her getaways, it was like I had been knocked off the pedestal and cracked on the ground at his feet.
As he described it, there was no way to put the Cassidy shaped pieces back together because the image Simone painted didn’t match the girl he remembered.
Whenever we talked about the past and how things evolved for him, all I felt was sad.
It made me wish that young Cassidy had taken more care of his feelings and maybe snapped him out of whatever weird thoughts he had of being inadequate.
I still had my own feelings to deal with from our past, but it seemed like I’d come to a place where I’d accepted them, processed, healed, and moved on.
Thanks to all the lies he had to unravel from reality, Knuckles’ journey was taking a bit longer than my own had.
I watched him sleep on the cot across the room and wondered if I could trust this version of him to not break me.
It wasn’t that long ago that he doubted me again and ended up with another woman hanging all over him.
What if tomorrow, he went back to the clubhouse and Simone spouted more lies about how I was really the one involved with the cartel.
Would he instantly believe her and doubt me?
I didn’t think so, if for no other reason than the rest of his club brothers seemed to have their heads screwed on just fine where Simone was concerned.
As far as I was concerned, nothing she had to say could be trusted unless it was able to be verified and then reverified again by an independent, unbiased party. I snickered at that thought.
Something made James stir and I realized he must have gotten a text when he pulled his phone out. He responded and stuffed it back into his pocket.
“Everything okay?” I asked.
“What are you doing awake?”
“I don’t know, it generally happens when I stop sleeping,” I sassed. He got up and made his way over to the chair at my side. He had his blanket in tow, and wrapped it around himself as he sat.
“Are you uncomfortable? Do you need anything?”
“I’m fine, just couldn’t sleep. Too much going on up here.” I tapped the side of my head to emphasize the point.
“Sleep is important for healing,” he scolded in that light way that said he didn’t want to upset me, but needed me to listen to reason anyway.
I understood why the staff believed he was my husband.
He played the part well, and while I knew the marriage part was a lie, his concern and care of me were not.
It was so genuine, that sometimes I found myself wishing that things were different and we were truly the couple we pretended to be.
“Talk to me, maybe it will help put me to sleep.”
“Thanks, Cass. Nothing like being told your speech patterns are so delightful they put people to sleep.”
I giggled and for once, it didn’t hurt. I supposed that was the difference between when I first woke up in the hospital and having spent weeks there recuperating.
“You should be happy about that. If I can fall asleep with you talking to me, it means I trust you.” It did.
I could tell by his quick intake of breath that it meant a lot for me to acknowledge that.
“What should we talk about?”
“I don’t know. Fill me on the stuff I missed, but maybe stick to the better stuff. I don’t really give two shits about anything to do with Simone.”
“Right. Well, my dad hauled ass out of town about a year after you left. Turned out he wasn’t a good rancher and he was an even worse businessman.
Saying he was a worse businessman is kind of an understatement.
He was a fucking scam artist at best. He left my grandparents with a mess to clean up and they almost lost their land.
Had to sell a good chunk to the club to get out from under shit. ”
“I remember,” I said.
“How? You weren’t here for all that.”
I cocked my head to the side and studied James for a minute. “I have always been in touch with your grandparents. They were the only people who knew I left for the Army and they stayed in touch with me over the years.”
He sat quietly and stared at the ends of the blanket he twisted around in his fingers. “They never once mentioned that you were in the Army or that they kept in touch with you. All the times I brought up Simone going to see you at college…” His voice was a wounded whisper at the end.
“I asked them not to tell you anything about me and they kept their word because no one else had done that for me. Please, don’t be angry with them.”
“I’m not. I understand, Cass. It just would have changed a lot of things if I’d known sooner.”
“I’m sure if you think back on it, there were giant red-flag sized hints that were waved in your face and you didn’t want to see them. Your grandparents might have kept their word to me, but I guarantee they tried to tell you the truth in other ways.”
He was lost in thought for a while and then turned his gorgeous face back up toward me.
“You’re right. I remember some of the things they said back then that I thought were weird.
Every time someone mentioned you and college, they would ask which one you attended.
I never knew. Simone would always change the subject.
I guess if I had pulled my head out of my ass at any point, that was their way of trying to get me to ask questions that would lead to the truth.
” He chuckled then. “They must have thought I was a complete fucking idiot.”
I laughed along with him. “You had a lot going on.”
“No, I was stuck in some weird, stubborn penance where I felt I had to pay for losing you and stupid enough to go there with Simone in the first place. I was drunk off my ass that night because I thought you were going to be at the party and when you didn’t show up, I drank my disappointment away.”
“Why? You knew where I’d be if I wasn’t at a party. You could have left and come to see me.”
“That wasn’t the point. I had finally worked up the courage and wanted to ask you out, in front of everyone, so you would know I was serious.”
I stared in disbelief as he dropped that bomb on me. “So, you were going to ask me out and wanted me to believe how serious you were about it, but then ended up sleeping with my best friend because I didn’t show up to a party when I was known for NEVER showing up? I’m so confused.”
“Simone told me that you’d be there. I asked her to make sure of it earlier that day.”
“Well, that was dumb. She clearly had her own agenda, as you pointed out to me when you asked why I was never with Simone at parties.”
“It wasn’t until that night, or I guess the next day, that I put everything together myself. It never occurred to me that you didn’t come because no one - including your best friend - ever invited you. I thought you just didn’t like drinking or people or whatever.”
I laughed. “A lot of shit could have been avoided if you had just talked to me, you know?”
“I do. If I could go back and kick my own ass, I would.”
“Nah. As hard as it was to go through at the time, I’m glad everything happened the way it did,” I told him.
“Why the fuck would that ever be a good thing?”
“I am who I am today because there was no one here for me, well in Violence anyway. I had to join the Army to escape and it was the best decision I ever made. It turned out not to be an escape so much as a freeing myself to be more than the box I was shoved into back home. The forgotten daughter, the castoff friend, the girl who would never get the boy because her best friend decided she would make sure that never happened.” I shook off the past and looked back up into James’s eyes.
“I became a better person because of the way those events shaped my life and pushed me into a direction I would have never chosen for myself otherwise. And it brought me Collette, Amberlee, and Finch. Those three are priceless.”
“I get it. I suppose the Kings wouldn’t have been in my life - at least not to the extent they are - if it hadn’t been for the way everything went down. I joined out of desperation, too. My life felt like was out of control and when Simone lost the baby so violently, it shook me.”
“I am sorry about the baby,” I offered quietly.