31. Cassandra
CASSANDRA
T here are certain soft skills that are universally imperative no matter what the job is. Organization. Discipline. Time management. Information literacy and research skills. Self-starting and problem solving.
I could handle washed-up starlets on benders. How hard could cows and a half-dozen ranch hands be?
Famous last words.
But there’s another quality that is imperative to success: being a stubborn asshole who refuses to fail.
That was my favorite thing about myself. I simply refused to quit.
Christian’s alarm clock blared at the wicked hour of four-thirty on the dot. I slapped the decrepit machine and shoved my head, face first, into the pillow.
It had been a week and a half since Ray’s accident.
Claire, Silas, Nate, CJ, and Christian had established a rotating schedule of forty-eight hours at the hospital in Houston, and forty-eight hours at home. Two people were always with Ray, waiting. Hoping. Praying for him to wake up.
Christian and Nate had left to go back to Houston yesterday, trading off with Claire and Silas so they could rest and recuperate.
I had arranged the extra pillows on his side of the bed so it didn’t feel like I was completely alone, but I still found myself waking in the middle of the night, seeking his body.
The alarm clock went off again.
I hated that dreadful sound.
Just once, I wanted to go to bed and wake up whenever my body felt like it.
Christian swore up and down I’d get used to the ranch schedule, but I was months into it and I still hated every wake-up call.
But I refused to quit.
Swearing up and down, I rolled out of bed, tugged on a pair of jeans, and shouldered Christian’s thick jacket. It was the closest I could get to hugging him.
I slipped out the door, not bothering to fix my hair, and trudged to the stables.
Dottie, Libby, Anny, and the rest of the horses had the audacity to look at me like I was running late. The sun wasn’t even up.
I went through the routine of feeding and watering the divas, scooping food into Sadie’s bowl, then turned them out so I could muck the stalls.
By the time I kicked off the rubber boots that lived in the barn and plodded back to the house, the girls were rumbling around upstairs.
The smell of coffee hit me when I yanked open the door.
“I love you,” I declared to Becks.
Like most mornings when Christian and Nate were gone, she woke up to feed Charlotte, put her in a baby carrier, then walked down to Christian’s house.
She handed me a mug. “Don’t say that too loudly or Christian might change the locks so I can’t get in.”
I snickered as I downed half of the coffee in one gulp. “That would be true if he actually locked the door.”
Bree thundered down the steps first. “Morning, Miss Cass! Morning Aunt Becks.”
“Morning,” we said in tandem.
“What kind of cereal do you want today?” Becks asked while I pulled out the tackle box of hair supplies.
Bree grabbed the milk from the fridge. “Lucky Charms.”
“Girl after my own heart,” Becks said as she reached into the top of the pantry and pulled the box down.
“We’re almost out of milk,” Bree said as she filled her bowl with cereal, and topped it with milk. She brought it to the table and sat in front of me.
I went to work on the tumbleweed on top of her head.
Truthfully, I always thought it was a little strange that Christian still did his children’s hair every morning. They were both big enough to do it themselves.
But ten mornings in, I realized that this was his intentional time with them each day. I knew it was eating at him to be away from them. But, for once, I wanted him to be able to sit with his family in crisis, rather than having to truck through to keep things running.
“I’ll pick some up after I drop you guys off at school. I’ve gotta get lunch stuff.” I parted her hair and started a neat Dutch braid. “Do you need anything for your house, Becks?”
She looked a little sheepish. “Toilet paper, if you don’t mind. That’s really why I was down here so early today.”
Bree and I laughed.
“What are we doing for dinner tonight?” I asked as Gracie loped down the stairs, dressed but still rubbing the sleep from her eyes.
“Claire’s cooking,” Becks said.
Thank goodness for that.
Gracie got her cereal, then sat down for her hair to be done. “Can I just leave it down today?”
“You can do whatever you want,” I said, giving her blonde hair a quick brush. “It’s your hair. Your body.”
She dropped her chin into her hand and swirled her spoon in the cereal.
My instincts were telling me to leave her alone and not bring up the obvious mood when we had to leave in a few minutes, which is why I did the opposite.
“What’s the matter?”
Her eyes were sad, locked on the floating pieces of cereal. “I miss Daddy.”
My heart sank. “Me too.”
She looked up at me. “Really?”
“Yeah.” I nudged her shoulder with mine. “I miss him a lot, but he’ll be back tomorrow.”
She managed a measly bite. “Do you think Uncle Ray’s gonna wake up?”
“I don’t know,” I said honestly. There was no use in lying. “I wish I did know. What I can tell you is that the surgeries he needed are over, which means the doctors will start trying to help him come back.”
“So they’ve been keeping him asleep?”
“Kind of. He hit his head really hard and they needed to give him plenty of time to rest so it didn’t get worse. When I talked to your dad last night, he said that they’re hoping to run some tests today to see when he might wake up.”
I glanced at the clock. We really needed to get going.
“Can we go see Uncle Ray this weekend?”
“I don’t know,” I said honestly. “But I will ask your dad.”
“Promise?”
I arched an eyebrow. “Do I lie to you?”
She smiled down at the cereal that was quickly turning to mush. “No.”
“Good. Eat or you’ll be a cranky, miserable child for your teachers.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Excuse me?”
Gracie snickered. “Yes, my queen.”
“That’s better. Be ready to go in ten minutes.”
“Miss Cass?—”
I turned to find Gracie spinning in her chair to catch me before I went to change clothes.
“What do you need?”
She worked her lip with her teeth for a moment. “If Daddy ever gets married again and we get an evil stepmother, I hope it’s you.”
Well, shit. “I promise to limit poisoning attempts with apples to twice a day,” I said as I hustled back to my room, blinking back tears.
Becks was sitting on my bed, nursing the baby again. “Well, that was the cutest thing I’ve ever heard in my entire life.”
“Say nothing,” I clipped as I shirked off the chore clothes and wiggled into a pair of flowing trousers and a tailored blouse.
Becks rolled her lips between her teeth. “Come on. You can admit that you like kids.”
“I don’t like kids,” I said as I ran a brush over my hair and twisted it into a low bun. “I like those kids. There’s a difference.”
We made it out the door and into Becks’s SUV in record time. She had offered it to me since it was easier to drive than Christian’s truck.
Bree and Gracie talked the entire way to school and didn’t stop as the doors flung open in the drop-off line.
“Bye Miss Cass. Love you,” Bree said as she shouldered her bag.
“Thanks, Miss Cass,” Gracie chirped, grabbing her lunch box. “I love you.”
“Love you too. Have a good day,” I called after them, then froze.
The minivan behind me honked and I didn’t even feel the urge to flip them the bird.
Gracie and Bree stared back at me, blinking.
Slowly, smiles grew until they were ear to ear, first aimed at me, then each other.
Christian called as soon as I pulled out of the school parking lot.
“Hey,” I said as I took a left and headed to the grocery store. “How was your night?”
“Doctors and nurses coming in every hour,” he said with a sigh. “But I don’t want to talk about me. You doing okay?”
My throat was still tight from saying ‘I love you’ to Bree and Gracie. Why was it easier to say it to Christian than to the girls?
I didn’t regret it in the slightest, but it left me reeling.
I could expect things from Christian. As much as people liked to say that relationships were unconditional, that was the furthest thing from the truth. I expected his love and support, and he expected the same of me.
But kids were one-sided. They had expectations of the caregivers and protectors in their lives, but that love didn’t have to be reciprocated.
They didn’t owe me anything.
But they said they loved me anyway.
“I told you not to worry. I’ve got it handled.”
“Cass…” He sounded more tired than I had ever heard.
“I don’t want you to worry.” I pulled into the grocery store lot and threw the car into park. “Focus on Ray. Things are fine.”
“Did the girls get to school okay? How’d it go this morning?”
I yawned, feeling the coffee wearing off already.
“Got up at the ass crack of evil and fed the animals. Becks was over by the time I got back up to the house. Got the girls fed and I just dropped them off. I’m gonna run into the store and get a few things for us and Becks, and head back to start work.
Your mom’s picking them up from school and taking care of dinner tonight. ”
It sounded like he let out a sigh of relief. “You have the company credit card, right? I don’t want you paying out of pocket for my groceries. Use that one and I’ll sort it out.”
“Christian, it’s fine. I’m not charging it to the ranch.”
“Cass, please,” he begged.
“No.”
He was arguing, but I could hear the tightness in his voice easing. “Have I told you how much I love you?”
“Not since last night, so feel free to tell me again.”
“I love you.”
I closed my eyes and reveled in the comfortable silence that lingered between us. “You know, I actually believe you when you say it.”
“Yeah?”
“Mhm.” I chewed on my lip. “Your—um…” I took a deep breath. “Your girls said ‘I love you’ this morning… to me.”
There was a slight note of surprise in his voice. “Really?”
“Yes. And I said it back. But it was just kind of a spur of the moment thing. And if you’re not cool with that, then you might need to have that conversation with them,” I blurted out.
“Cass?”
“Dear God, yes. Please say something. I hate rambling.”
Christian chuckled. “I know.”
“Wait…” I blinked. “What do you mean you know? You know that they said it or you know that I hate rambling?”
“Bree has been standing in front of her mirror, practicing saying it for about two weeks. They finally brought it up, and we talked about it when I called to say goodnight yesterday.”
Oxygen leeched from my lungs. “Oh.”
“Gracie wasn’t a surprise,” he admitted. “She’s adored you since the moment you met. But Bree…”
“Bree remembers Gretchen,” I said.
“She and I had a long talk about it,” Christian said.
I didn’t realize that his reassurance was exactly what I needed.
“Are you sure this is okay?” I pressed. “I’m not trying to put myself in the middle of your?—”
“I want you in the middle of it, Cass. So do the girls. We’ve just been waiting on you.”
Before I could come up with something to say, he butted in.
“Hey, a doc’s coming in. I’ll call you back.”
“Okay, I love you,” I said. Goosebumps tickled my cheeks when he said it back.
The grocery store was nearly empty, so I ran in and out as fast as humanly possible.
When I made it back to the ranch, Becks was on Christian’s couch with the TV on.
“I got your toilet paper,” I said, hauling the bags in and dropping them on the kitchen counter.
“Get over here,” she said, her eyes locked on the TV.
I pulled the milk out and slid it into the fridge. “I gotta go check in with CJ to make sure he’s good, and then get to the office to do payroll.”
“Shut your beautiful face and look at the TV,” she demanded.
“I really have to go?—”
“Cass! Look !”
I was a little antsy because Christian hadn’t called back. Was that good or had something happened and Ray took a turn for the worst? I huffed and craned around to look at the TV.
“Oh my god.” I crammed onto the couch with Becks and baby Charlie as I watched Tripp be led away from his apartment building in handcuffs in a flurry of flashing blue lights.
“Disgraced A-lister publicist arrested after client pressed charges for embezzlement.” Becks cackled. “He cheated on you with Lillian Monroe and then stole her money?”
“Spenser Crenshaw must have taken the tip I gave him and worked his magic. This is even better than I had hoped.” I was laughing too hard to even be the slightest bit mad. “Now that is poetic justice.”
Becks lifted her coffee and toasted me. “Karma’s a bitch. What goes around comes around, motherfucker!” she shouted at footage of Tripp being shoved into the back of an NYPD cruiser.
I thought about my apartment that had been sitting untouched for months. I couldn’t wait to go back to New York, but only to pack it up and come back here.
To community.
To sisterhood.
To family.
To home.
To him.