53. Cassie
CASSIE
Jagger and I immediately went to work helping Maeve in the kitchen, whipping sweet potatoes and cutting fruit and pulling rolls from the oven.
Maeve didn’t need the help — she made everything in the kitchen look easy — but cooking with her was quickly becoming one of my favorite things to do, and Jagger seemed to enjoy helping too.
Ray ran through the loft chasing Lucy, the cat Bram had given Maeve (Lucy was short for Lucifer, the cat hated Bram for some reason) and Vigo and Hawk had joined Remy and Poe in the living room to watch football.
“Hey, Cass,” Bram said, entering the room. “Happy Thanksgiving.”
I smiled at my big brother. “Happy Thanksgiving.”
He kissed Maeve on the lips, lingering a little longer than necessary.
Jagger caught my eye and a flare of heat blossomed between my thighs.
“Can I help?” Bram asked against Maeve’s lips.
She turned and handed him a platter groaning under the weight of a huge golden turkey. “You can take this to the table for carving.”
He carried it to the table, and I had a flash of my dad doing the same thing when I’d been a kid, carrying a platter of turkey while my mom stood nervously behind him, laughing and telling him not to drop it.
And so it went.
The house in Kedrovsk seemed a million miles away, but it had been less than two weeks since we’d returned from Russia with Rain Adakai, shaken and in shock.
We’d taken her straight to the hospital and had waited until her mom and sister came to stay with her. Their reunion had been emotional enough to make me sob into Hawk’s chest, and we’d left them alone to heal.
Last I’d heard Rain was working with the FBI to help identify some of the men who’d trafficked her.
I thought about her every day, hoped we’d meet again under other circumstances.
And not just her. I thought about Jasmine and Nia and all the other girls who hadn’t been found too. They were out there somewhere, and it was hard to go back to our normal lives, to trust that the FBI would keep looking for them.
That they wouldn’t be forgotten.
But I’d done all I could, had taken the story as far as I knew how to take it. I’d followed every lead left by my parents.
Now it was time to live my own life.
And this time, I wasn’t alone.
I smiled as a cheer went up from the living room. Vigo was on his feet with Hawk, Remy, and Poe, high-fiving and slapping each other on the back while Ray panted at their feet, eager to be let in on the fun.
Bram set the turkey down on the table and called everyone over, and Jagger and I helped Maeve carry the side dishes.
Then we were all sitting around the same table, not fighting, but laughing.
Loving.
We’d come through the other side together, our own version of family, and I thought of my parents, wondered if they could see us.
Wondered if they were happy. If they were proud.
We’d taken everything they’d left us and built something new. Now I was going to hold onto it with both hands.
Because when something was taken from you — suddenly, violently — it was only natural to try to hang on to the good things, and as Hawk took one of my hands under the table, Jagger the other one, I looked across the table at Vigo and knew I had good things in spades.
Not in spite of what had happened to my parents.
Because of it.
I didn’t pretend to understand how it all worked. How something terrible could be transmuted into something beautiful.
But I knew it was possible because I was looking at the evidence of it with my own eyes.
And I was going to hang on.
Forever.
Thanks so much for reading Out for Blood and the entire Blackwell Hawks series!