20. Cassidy #2
God, I’d let her kill me if she asked in that tone .
“Please,” she says, and it’s softer this time. Less command, more concern.
“All right, all right,” I sigh, dragging the words out. I lean forward and peel off my shirt with slow, grinding care. My shirt sticks to my skin where the blood has soaked through, causing me to bite the inside of my cheek, and once it’s off, I toss the T-shirt to the floor.
“Shit,” Bindi breathes. She moves onto the bed beside me on her knees, her body brushing mine, close enough that I can feel the heat coming off her. Her expression’s a cocktail of fury and fear—classic Bindi. “Why didn’t you tell me it was this bad?”
“Didn’t wanna ruin your noodles.”
No smile, just a quick inhale through her nose. She does not find that funny. Guess that wasn’t a joke.
She slides off the bed and grabs her backpack from the floor, zipping it open. The first aid kit appears in her hands.
“Really, it’s mostly a graze,” I say, peeling back the soaked gauze and wincing. “Bullet just nicked me. Lucky break, all things considered. Another inch and I’d have a new breathing hole in my rib cage.”
Her fingers press gently to my side, and I hiss through my teeth. She ignores the sound and starts cleaning the wound. Her touch is all clinical, but the feel of her skin against mine, even like this, makes me want more.
I watch her face as she works—the furrow of her brow, the way she bites her bottom lip when she’s concentrating. My eyes drop to the curve of her neck, to the soft hollow where her collarbone meets her shoulder.
God, she’s beautiful.
Beautiful and furious and mine .
She dips a fresh gauze pad into antiseptic and dabs it against the cut. I flinch, but she doesn’t apologize. Of course she doesn’t.
“You gonna survive this one? ”
“Define ‘survive,’” I say through gritted teeth.
Her eyes flick up to mine. “You’re being a goddamn baby.”
“You’re hot when you’re playing a pissed-off nurse,” I shoot back, grinning even as the pain spikes again.
She rolls her eyes and keeps working, but I see the twitch at the corner of her mouth. Like she’s fighting a smile.
After an eternity (okay, a minute or two), she finally eases up on the alcohol. The raw, cleaned wound throbs, but at least the stinging’s done. I let out the breath I was holding.
Bindi tosses the stained cloth aside and reaches for fresh bandages. “Keep talking to me,” she says softly, almost absently, as she concentrates on unwrapping a roll of gauze. “Take your mind off it.”
“Hm?” I blink, half-dazed now that the pain is ebbing. I feel oddly exposed sitting here shirtless, under her care, but she doesn’t seem fazed.
Her gaze drifts over my chest, likely taking in the roadmap of scars on display. I wonder what she sees. A collection of old wounds? Evidence of all the ways I’ve screwed up? I’ve long since stopped being conscious of them, but with her, I suddenly am. There’s nothing pretty here.
And suddenly I feel . . . exposed.
Not from the wound, not from the shirt I’m not wearing, but from her looking at me like that.
Her hand hovers over an old, circular scar just beneath my collarbone. Her brows draw together. “What’s this?”
I glance down. “Forty-five caliber. Six years ago.”
Her fingers ghost across my skin, moving higher. They brush a long, jagged scar on my bicep. She traces it carefully, even though it’s old, ugly, and healed crooked.
“And this?”
“Knife fight,” I say, trying to grin. “Lost. Obviously.”
Her touch pauses. She finally looks up—eyes wide, glassy, lashes damp—and I swear it knocks the wind out of me. She’s seeing the ghosts behind the scars now. She’s feeling them.
“So, when did you get out of prison?”
I go quiet—still. Fuck, I never told her the truth.
She thinks I went to prison. She’s built her entire version of me around that idea, the myth of it. The punishment. The time served.
And here I am, still lying to her without even meaning to.
My jaw ticks. I could keep the lie going, let her believe I was locked in a cage, paying for the kill that saved her. But the truth’s worse. The truth is, I wasn’t locked up, I was turned into something worse than a prisoner.
“I never went to prison,” I say finally.
Bindi stills, hands freezing mid-wrap, the gauze dangling between us. “What?”
I exhale slowly. “I got arrested—you know that part.”
She nods once, cautious, waiting for the rest.
“But I never made it to lockup,” I go on. “Someone pulled strings—paid off the right people. Boss man didn’t like losing his investment, so he bailed me out on one condition.”
“Boss man?”
“Deadman’s crew—a motorcycle club. I was already running small jobs for them before that night. Picking up packages, spotting, nothing major. I was saving up, trying to get us out.”
“You were going to run away with me?”
I don’t tell her how close I was. How I had a stash hidden under my mattress and a bus route marked in my back pocket. She doesn’t need the details, because then both of us would grieve a scenario we will never know the outcome of.
“When I got arrested, and they bailed me out, they made it clear I owed them. So I worked off my sentence as an enforcer, fixer, and errand boy. Whatever he wanted, twenty-four seven. Before that, I was just a low-level guy, running jobs for cash. After he ‘saved’ me, I was locked in. Couldn’t say no to a damn thing.
” I give a hollow, shaky laugh. “Hell, sometimes I think rotting in a cell might’ve been better.
At least in prison there are rules, some kind of code.
With him, it was just . . . do whatever he says, or die. ”
She steps back off the bed like the truth physically pushes her. Her arms cross tight over her chest in that furious, trembling look she gets when she doesn’t know whether to scream or sob.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
I throw my arms out. “When have we had time, Binx?”
She doesn’t flinch. “You made me believe you went to prison, Cassidy. For five fucking years, I pictured you behind bars. I thought about writing to you. I tried to find records, to?—”
“There were none?” I snap. “That should’ve been your first clue.”
“I don’t know how that shit works!” Her voice breaks on the edges. “I didn’t—I’m not like you, Cass. I didn’t know where to start. I just knew you were gone.”
Gone.
I slide forward, off the headboard, lowering myself to the edge of the mattress so I’m sitting right in front of her. My feet hit the floor and my knees brush between her thighs. Still, she’s standing over me, angry and raw and radiant.
“I wasn’t gone. I was out there bleeding for people who didn’t give a fuck about me, doing jobs I didn’t want, all because I saved you .”
Because I loved you.
“Oh, don’t you dare—” she bites back, eyes flashing.
She stares down at me like she’s trying to make sense of the boy she knew and the man in front of her. She’s deciding if we’re even the same person.
And maybe we’re not.
But I want her to look at me and choose me, anyway.
“I did it for you, Bindi. I let them own me. I let them burn out every soft part I had left because I thought maybe, just maybe, it would keep you safe.”
“And look where that got us! You protecting me? That’s the one constant in this whole fucking nightmare! What good did it do, Cass? Look at us.”
Her chest heaves, her face is flushed and furious, and somehow— somehow —I still want her. Still want to grab her and press my mouth to hers and beg her to believe I’m not the monster I became without her.
I don’t say anything.
I just look at her.
And maybe it’s that. Maybe it’s the way I look. Maybe it’s the crack in my voice, or the way my hands tremble, because I’m not holding all of this together nearly as well as I want to.
But something in her shifts. The line of her jaw softens, her shoulders drop, just slightly, and when she speaks again, it’s not harsh anymore.
“Cass . . .”
That’s all she says—just my name. But she steps closer, into me.
She shakes her head, and before I can brace for it, her hand lifts to my face—warm. A little shaky. Her fingers press gently to my cheek like I’m something breakable. I’m not. But God, I want to be—for her.
My stubble scrapes against her skin, but she doesn’t pull away.
“Cassidy . . .” Her voice is barely there. “You don’t lie to me.”
The word lie sticks in my throat like a splinter. But when I swallow, the lump stays.
She exhales. “You’ve been lying to me our whole lives, acting like nothing touches you.
Like you’re made of iron or stone or some shit that doesn’t bleed.
” Her thumb brushes under my eye, slowly, gently.
Killing me. “You always did it to protect me. But do you think if you carry the whole world on your back, I won’t feel it crack beneath us? ”
I cover her hand with mine, not to stop her, to anchor myself. To keep from unraveling under that look in her eyes.
What do you want me to say, Bindi? That I’ve been drowning without you? That every scar on my body still somehow hurts less than the thought of you choosing a life that doesn’t include me?
“I don’t know how to be an honest man, Binx. I was never taught how.” I force the words through clenched teeth. “But I swear to fuck, I’d slit my own throat before I lie to you again.”
She blinks like she wasn’t expecting that. Maybe she thought I’d deflect, make a joke. Say something slick and Cassidy-coded that would let her shove this all back into the vault we both pretend doesn’t exist.
But I’m done pretending.
Her hand’s still on my face, my fingers still wrapped around hers.
“Cass . . .”
I lean into her palm just slightly, just enough. “You can hate me. You probably should.”
Her lips part like she wants to argue, but nothing comes out.
“I’m not asking for forgiveness, I’m asking for you—whatever’s left of you that still wants me.”
She shifts closer, knees brushing mine on the sagging mattress. I feel her thigh press between my legs, right against where I’m already straining for her—and fuck, she has to know what she’s doing.
Her thumb strokes under my eye again, slowly. “I don’t know what’s left of me, but it’s always wanted you.”
Something in my chest snaps, or explodes, I don’t know. I just know the feeling—wild and terrible and holy.
I lean my head back and she leans hers down slightly, her breath hitting my lips. Her body fits into the space like she’s always belonged there. Her knee presses higher, grazing where I’m already hard for her, and my hands move on instinct, gripping the backs of her thighs.
Our foreheads touch before her eyes drop to my mouth, then flick back up.
And in the space of a heartbeat, I’m not sure who moves first.
One second, I’m staring into her eyes like a man starved, and the next . . . I taste her.