Chapter 15
He’s keeping secrets. He talks in his sleep. I don’t know what haunts him like this, and I’m scared to ask.
She felt perilously close to shattering.
It wasn’t necessarily bad, but it definitely wasn’t good.
It was some sort of strange middle place, in which she felt that she was changing, but hadn’t quite managed to get all of the relevant pieces in order.
She was in mid-metamorphosis, some awkward transition between caterpillar and butterfly, her wings soggy and stuck together, her appearance unsettling.
Maybe she was just being dramatic. But she felt dramatic.
She felt … When she was with West, it all seemed to make sense.
But then she had to go back to the snow globe.
Which was generally a good thing. Generally an escape.
But it felt oppressive now. Like trying to squeeze herself into a set of expectations. Expectations that she had set herself.
That was the issue.
Her family was and always had been supportive of her. She was the one trying to figure out how to cosplay being a completely normal family unit, when none of them really were. As wonderful as they were, they were not typical.
She knew that. And yet she still tried to hold herself to a strange standard no one else cared about.
She thought about her childhood. Her mother. She had gone so many years without thinking of her at all, but something about this whole experience had brought back her resentment. Her feelings around her own sexuality. She hadn’t even realized she had those feelings.
And now she really, really needed to talk to somebody.
It was going to have to be Perry. Because she needed honesty, and Perry would deliver that.
She needed to tell somebody what was happening.
That was also going to have to be Perry.
She had a feeling Millie would be shocked.
Jessie Jane was West’s sister. Perry was the one who had been there from the beginning.
The one who had given her condoms and the only thing resembling a safe sex talk.
She trusted Perry. Which was how she found herself driving to the flower shop on Main Street that Perry owned. And there she was behind the counter, her blond hair a wild tangle and a crown of baby’s breath on her head. Perry, the patron saint of feminine influence as far as Cassidy was concerned.
“Hi,” she said.
Perry froze. “Hi, Cassidy. What’s going on?”
“Does it look like something is going on?” She tried to smile. She had a feeling the smile was an abject failure.
“Yes. You look a mess.”
“Thanks,” Cassidy said, blanching and sitting in the blue velvet chair in the corner of the tiny brick florist’s shop.
It was stacked floor to ceiling with blooms of every color.
There were also bundles of dried flowers, crystals, and Oracle cards, which were recent additions to Perry’s stock.
Along with greeting cards, and some gift items to bring more foot traffic into the store.
“I’m not trying to be rude, I’m just saying—” Perry stopped abruptly. “You have a hickey.”
Her hand shot up unerringly to the spot, even though she hadn’t been aware of it before. She could remember exactly where West had bitten her last night.
“Oh my God,” Cassidy said.
“Did you not realize you were walking around with that on your neck?”
“No, I didn’t know.”
“Cassidy,” Perry said. “I am a woman of misadventure. I know a hickey when I see one.”
“Great. I need …”
“I have a makeup bag and some concealer. You’re welcome to use it.”
She grimaced. “Well, a whole bunch of people have already seen it.”
“I’m assuming not your brothers,” Perry said.
“No. Not my brothers.”
Perry reached down beneath the counter and pulled out a white makeup bag with sprigs of lavender printed on it. She unzipped it and held up a tube of pale makeup. It would be a shade too light on Cassidy, but would look better than the bite.
She went over to a mirror hanging on the wall and craned her chin upward. “Oh!” she exclaimed.
“Yeah, you’re going to want to cover it.”
She was thankful there was no foot traffic in the shop at the moment.
Perry rounded the counter and handed Cassidy the makeup so she could spread it onto the affected area.
It didn’t cover it entirely, but it definitely made the hickey less noticeable.
“Is it believably an injury from the Wild West Show?”
Perry looked at her for a long moment. “You know, it might be.”
“I don’t …”
“I was going to ask you if something happened with Dalton. But I don’t think it did.”
Cassidy felt her whole face getting red. “No. It didn’t. And that’s why I really need to talk to you.”
“Okay. I am no stranger to a messy situation.”
“I know. That’s why I came to talk to you. Also, I think you’re the one who is least likely to judge me.”
“Okay.”
“And you’re the only one who has experience with West.”
Perry scrunched her face and pinched the bridge of her nose. “Right. West.”
“It’s just … you … you kissed him.”
“I did.”
“You kissed him, and then you ended up with my brother. So I just … You know what a good kisser West is. But you went with the guy who’s safe. The one who’s always been there for you, the one who feels like home and all of that.”
Perry’s eyes went wide, and then she bent at the waist and slapped her knees, letting out a startled hoot that turned into a peal of laughter.
“What?” Cassidy asked, blinking rapidly.
“You think … You think I chose your brother because he was the safe option?”
“Yes.”
Perry held her hand up like a stop sign. “Okay, back up and start from the beginning.”
“Okay. It’s just that ever since West and I started doing the Wild West Show together, there’s been something.
Something between us. We didn’t really talk about it, but then one day in the barn we kissed.
But I love Dalton. And Dalton asked me to go away with him, and I did.
And on that trip, he asked me if maybe I wanted to see if we could be more than friends.
And then he kissed me. But it wasn’t … it wasn’t the same. ”
Perry pressed a finger to her lips, her brow creased as she nodded slowly. “Right.”
Cassidy was heavily editing, and she knew it. But she didn’t think Perry needed to know that West’s first kiss had ended in her having an orgasm, or that she and West had engaged in intense texting before and after the kiss with Dalton.
She also didn’t feel like getting into the fact that she had lost her virginity with West.
“So I feel like I’m caught between these two guys,” she said. “Because West told me that nothing permanent could ever happen with us. And Dalton is offering the potential for something real.”
“What is real in this scenario?”
Cassidy stood for a moment, stuck her pinky finger in her mouth and gnawed at the edge of her nail. “Marriage and a family, I guess. A chance at love.”
“Doesn’t sound all that real to me, Cassidy. It sounds like wishful thinking. It feels like manufacturing an idea of what perfect is.”
“But you and Carson—”
Perry chuckled. “Carson is not safe, Cassidy, and I understand that you don’t get that because he’s your brother.
But for me, Carson was never the safe choice.
Carson was the choice that made me feel like I was being flayed alive, thank you very much.
And West is a good kisser, but he didn’t set me on fire. ”
Cassidy huffed a laugh. “That is objectively impossible.”
“Honey,” Perry said, “that’s called chemistry. It’s not an immutable truth. He’s not the best kisser in the world.”
“Well, but then Dalton …”
“You don’t have chemistry with him.” There was that word again. Chemistry. Perry looked at her speculatively. “You’ve probably known him for too long.”
“That doesn’t make any sense. You’ve known Carson all your life.”
“Yes. I have. And I’ve loved him just as long.
And we spent years fighting it. It wasn’t easy, Cassidy.
It was terrible. He married somebody else.
And my heart broke. Then his wife died and my heart broke all over again because it hurt him so much.
Nothing was easy about loving Carson. But what we have is undeniable.
Whatever you think happened when West came into that bar and kissed me—and I know this is hard for you to imagine because he’s the main character in the story you’re in right now—he was in on.
It was me playing games in Carson’s face.
If kissing West felt good, it was because it made Carson mad. I was so tired of him not seeing me.”
Cassidy felt her entire narrative being disrupted. About life. About everything.
But she was sitting there with concealer on her neck, and she could only think about one man, a man she’d never thought of until recently. Nothing made sense.
“Cassidy,” Perry said, “it’s okay to not know what you’re doing.”
“It doesn’t feel like it. This feels like high stakes.”
“I didn’t say it wasn’t.”
“I don’t want to hurt anybody.”
“You might.”
“I don’t want to get hurt.”
“You might,” Perry said. “Look at what Carson and I did to each other for years. And we’ve always cared a lot about each other. But we made some really bad decisions along the way. Not on purpose.”
“But I just want …”
“You want to make the picture perfect. I understand that impulse. But do you love Dalton, Cassidy, or do you love the idea of him? Because the things you feel for West shouldn’t be separate from the kind of love you’re talking about.
They shouldn’t be a totally different thing than wanting to spend the rest of your life with somebody. ”
“I don’t want to spend the rest of my life with West,” Cassidy said, pushing hard against that idea, because West had said it wasn’t possible.
“I get that. And I’m not suggesting you should. By all means, sleep with him. You already are, aren’t you?”
“How did you …?”
“You came in here with a hickey. You’re trying to tell me that you kissed him once, when … a week ago? No. Sorry. Bad lie. I know there are other things happening between you.”
“But it’s not what I wanted.”