Chapter 27
"Are you sure you're okay?" Payton asks when she catches her sister with a faraway look, coffee cup hovering just short of her lips.
Cassidy blinks, takes a sip of the dark liquid, and looks at her.
"Sure," she half-lies, because she's fine — just not fine enough to sell it.
Payton tilts her head, then pulls out a chair and sits down across from her.
A few months ago, her sister had seemed completely broken.
The color had drained from her face and the light had gone out of her eyes.
Payton hardly saw her, since Cassidy spent all day at the office, and when she came home she shut herself in her room.
Payton asked again and again what was wrong, and the answers ranged from I'm fine, to the pathetic excuse of being tired, to claiming she'd caught a cold.
She obviously didn't believe a word of it, and one night, fed up with watching her sister drift through the apartment like a hollow shell, she cornered her — and it worked.
"You're going to tell me what's going on, no lying, Cassidy." She pointed a finger at her. "We've been pretending long enough."
The blonde gave in. Besides, by then she'd already cried enough, screamed into her pillow enough times, replayed every single thing she might have done wrong. She was ready to talk.
"I've been having an affair with Diane Carter for months.
Everything seemed to be going well, and when I felt like I needed something more, I asked her out on a date.
" Cassidy pulled both legs up onto the couch to get comfortable.
"She basically accused me of asking for too much — that what we had wasn't serious enough to be a relationship. "
Payton, a cookie halfway to her lips, froze in the middle of the living room. Not just because of Diane's response, but because of the flat, detached way her sister said it.
"But… how…" Payton shook her head to clear it and sat down on the coffee table across from the couch. "Wasn't what you had important?"
Cassidy shrugged and pushed her hair out of her face.
"It was to me, and I was pretty sure it was to her too.
I don't want to get into specifics, but she showed me in a lot of ways that she wanted to keep seeing me.
" She pressed her lips together at the sudden memory of the two of them wrapped up in bed together at dawn.
"But apparently asking to stop sleeping together on her desk and go to dinner on a random Saturday night was too much. "
Payton spent the next hour listening to how the whole thing had started, how it had evolved, and the bitter ending they'd had at Diane's house.
Cassidy had the decency to skip the more intimate details and focus instead on the moments that had actually connected them — the conversations about their families, the problems Diane had been dealing with, the things they'd both always wanted.
"I didn't tell you because at first that's all it was: a very satisfying, very forbidden hookup with my asshole boss." She bit her lip, swallowing a sigh. "Then I wanted to protect her privacy. She's very guarded, and I chose to respect that."
"And when she broke your heart?" The question came out sharper than Payton intended. "Why did you keep lying and saying you were fine?"
Cassidy didn't have to think long before answering.
"I'd lost my head." She said it like it was the most natural thing in the world. "I was always attracted to Diane, from the first time I saw her, but when it ended I finally understood what I was actually feeling. I'd fallen in love with her."
She paused, letting all those painful, far-from-fleeting moments wash back over her.
"I was confused and hurt. I didn't feel capable of explaining something I didn't fully understand myself.
" She brought her hands together in a silent apology.
Payton squeezed them gently. "I'm okay now.
I still love her — you know that doesn't just disappear overnight.
But after all these weeks I've realized I did the right thing, and she's the one who made the final call. She has to live with that. I don't."
A few months later, Cassidy Collins's reaction was something else entirely. There was no introspection, no confusion — just a rage she couldn't put out.
"She's a goddamn coward." She said it in the same living room where she'd first told Payton what had happened, except this time she was pacing the floor with her fists clenched.
"I held her in my arms when she was falling apart.
I saw it in her eyes that she missed me.
And then all of a sudden: 'Nothing has changed.
'" She mimicked Diane's voice with a slightly sharper pitch.
"This time it's really over, Payton. I'm moving on with my life, because God, I'd actually made progress and then I went and fell right back like an idiot. "
Since then, a lot of weeks have passed — twelve, maybe fifteen?
Payton has lost count, but she's been keeping a close eye on her sister, and until now she'd been satisfied.
Cassidy had been acting like herself again: she'd gotten her social life back, and no doubt her sex life too.
Twice Payton had run into Heather in the kitchen looking way too good for seven in the morning on a Tuesday.
Cassidy had seemed happy — with a faint shadow crossing her eyes every now and then, but nothing that worried the lawyer. Until now.
"Okay." Cassidy raises both hands in surrender. "Yesterday I broke things off with Heather. Nothing dramatic, but I feel guilty."
Payton raises her eyebrows, surprised. She hadn't spent much time with Heather — just a little, the two times their paths crossed — but they seemed to get along fine, and more importantly, Cassidy had seemed at ease.
"What happened?" The lawyer takes her hand. "It was pretty obvious she was into you."
The blonde makes a face.
"I liked her too. Just not enough to want something more with her.
" Payton notices the real sadness in her sister then, and realizes it isn't about breaking things off with Heather — it's that she's probably put herself in Diane Carter's shoes and felt just how little she'd mattered when it came to taking the next step.
"She'd started making plans — beach vacations, Christmas at her parents' place.
She was way ahead of me, and honestly, I'm not sure we ever would've gotten to the same page. "
Payton squeezes her sister's hand tighter.
"You did the right thing, Cass," she says, holding her gaze. "And don't punish yourself for it. Every relationship is different, and if you knew from the start that it wasn't working for you, then the decision was right."
Cassidy doesn't mention — though she knows Payton is no fool — that without meaning to, she'd been looking for something of Diane in that girl.
The confidence, the certainty, that way of looking at her that could make her feel like she'd travel to the ends of the earth in a single instant.
That had been the mistake, and Heather had ended up becoming an example of exactly what she didn't want.
"Did she take it badly?" Payton wants to know.
"She didn't throw a party, that's for sure, but she said she appreciated that I hadn't dragged out something that wasn't going anywhere.
" Cassidy turns her head and realizes with a jolt of horror that time has gotten away from her.
It's way too late. "God, if I don't leave right now, traffic is going to make sure I don't get to the office until tomorrow. "
Cassidy jumps to her feet and disappears through her bedroom door with the easy conscience of someone who has no idea what's waiting for her.