Chapter 16
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After the best sex of my goddamned life—transcendent, I would call it, if I had to choose a word—we got dressed and headed back to the golf cart.
But outside the shed, I stopped Cassandra. “Wait.”
She was locking up and paused to turn around. For a moment, I forgot what I was going to say. I just saw her face before me, her perfect pink lips that had spent so much time on me, her eyes going almost hazy as she looked back. Her rumpled clothes. Her wild, gorgeous hair.
I bent down and kissed Cassandra Kelly, softly. Tenderly. As if it was our last time.
I didn’t want it to be the last time. So I slid my hands up under her skirt. “I want these,” I said, hooking my thumbs onto the waistband of her panties.
“Hey, we have work to do!” She laughed.
But I saw the way her pupils dilated as I kept my eyes on hers.
“We’ll get to it. I think it’ll go better if I know you’re walking around commando.”
She flushed. “Fine. But you drive this time. I want your hands occupied.”
Cassandra handed me the keys, then stepped out of the thin undergarment and handed that to me, too. I pocketed both, then kissed her once more.
Leaving Cassandra Kelly was going to be hell. Because that’s what I was going to be doing in only a couple of weeks.
Remembering that landed on me like a brick.
But Cassandra didn’t seem to notice. She strode to the cart, looking gorgeous and happy. “This road goes all the way to the east side of the property,” she said.
It was where we were supposed to have been going.
I hadn’t planned on doing anything else—she was right, we had work to do. But sitting next to Cassandra, knowing she was exposed under the stretch of her skirt, was too much. A breeze flipped her skirt back just an inch, and my cock got hard again almost immediately.
She saw it and lazily slipped her hand over my pants.
I pulled the cart over. “Nope.”
“What?” she asked, innocently.
“We’re not finished.” I killed the motor, unbuckling my pants once more and sliding them down just enough to take my cock out. Then I pulled Cassandra onto my lap. I gripped her thighs while she straddled me.
She placed her hands on my shoulders. “I’m sorry,” she said innocently. “Did you want this?” She pulled her skirt up, revealing her glistening pussy.
“Good God, Cassandra.” I slid my hands up to her bare hips, guiding her where I wanted, then slid her down onto my waiting shaft.
The feeling of her engulfing me—squeezing me with her hot, wet pussy—was nothing short of goddamned ecstasy.
I groaned, my fingers tightening on her hips, working her on me.
Up, down, harder, faster. Her ass clapped against my thighs.
“Cass,” I said as I slid my thumb onto her swollen clit. “I’ve never felt like this. I can’t take it.”
I don’t know how long it was—a few seconds or minutes. It just felt so fucking good.
But then Cassandra cried out, clenching on my cock, and I felt the brink coming fast. I bounced her on me, thrusting hard even though I knew this would only take me right there.
“Cass,” I grunted, barely getting the words out. “I can’t—I have to pull out.”
“It’s okay,” she said, panting. She was still gasping for air. “It’s safe.”
That was all it took.
I shuddered with a sharper, more intense release than before, my whole body succumbing; my mind too. I gripped her, holding her hard against me, needing to anchor myself to her until the waves ran out.
Finally, I relaxed. I leaned my forehead on her chest, letting out a long breath, whispering, “You’re everything, Cass. Fucking everything.”
Then I looked up into her eyes.
“I couldn’t stop.”
“It’s fine,” she said, her head tipped onto mine now. “I’m on birth control and checked everything after…”
She looked down. I knew she was talking about her ex.
“Me too,” I said fast, wanting her never to think of that fucker again. “The checked everything part, anyway.”
She smiled, and I kissed her neck. “But we still shouldn’t have done that.”
She laughed. “Understatement of the century.”
Then we both laughed, hard and long, clinging to each other because it was all we could do.
Finally, she sighed and climbed off me. We cleaned ourselves up as best we could, adjusting our clothes in silence.
I thought that would be the moment—the one where we’d look at each other and acknowledge what had just happened. Agree it could never happen again.
But when Cassandra looked out at the world around us again, she let out a gasp.
Overhead, the clouds had miraculously parted, though a light rain still fell. She jumped out of the cart, holding her hands out in the glowing droplets, turning to face me. She was like a dream—a beautiful, perfect dream.
“Sun shower,” she cried. “My mom always said these were good luck.”
My chest squeezed. She was so good, Cassandra. Too good. “You’re good luck,” I said, too quiet for her to hear.
As Cassandra walked along the path, I turned the cart back on, following her slowly, laughing as she ran in the rain like a little kid. If I never had another moment with her—if everything turned to dust—I’d still have this one. This precious, perfect moment.
But like the flip side of a coin, my mind flashed back to another time. Another sun shower, another little kid.
A cool dread slipped over me. I knew this memory.
It was me, at one of my little league games.
My dad, who never came to any of my games, had decided to show up for this one.
Something about a meeting being canceled.
He stood up on the bleachers when I went up to bat, his hands on his hips.
I’d been nervous, my hand slippery on the bat, but my little heart floating like a balloon. He came.
The first time I swung and missed, he shook his head. My stomach dropped. I swung and missed the next pitch and the next. He sat down and I knew his face looked the way it did when Mom made a dinner he didn’t like.
The next time I was up to bat, he cheered for the other team.
“You’re not good enough to cheer for,” he said on the drive home.
I wasn’t na?ve enough to think he’d be like my mom, who got up and yelled my name anytime I so much as appeared on the field or took a step in the direction of the ball.
But I didn’t expect him to actively cheer against me, either.
“Maybe if you didn’t half-ass it, I’d be on your side.”
“He was nervous,” Mom said, trying to intervene, but Dad shut her down. “I know what I’m doing, Delilah. Goddammit, don’t undermine me.”
I stared at the ball in my lap, turning it over and over, running my thumbs over the stitches with my throat burning.
I wouldn’t cry. That was the only thing I had left.
And I didn’t. I didn’t tell Dad about my games after that.
I didn’t tell him I kicked ass at the next game.
I knew it wouldn’t be good enough for him.
So I just promised myself I’d be the best and only the best. That failure was not an option.
I didn’t know it then, but that was the genesis of my business.
I’d not only not be a failure, I’d stop others from being one too.
I was failing now with Cassandra. I could picture my fucking dad on the sidelines, jeering at me as Cassandra spun around under the golden rain.
And that’s when I knew. I couldn’t stay here even if I wanted to. Even if Lila was out of the equation.
If I didn’t see Harrington Consulting’s goals through, I’d have failed, and my father would have won.
Then what would all this have been for?
“You okay?” Cass asked, slipping back into the cart.
I wanted to come back to her, but I couldn’t help the darkness that stretched over my heart, the anger at my father for tainting this memory, too.
I looked out at the rain, still falling. “You know, my dad, he always said I didn’t have what it took to make it in business.”
“What?”
“He still says that. He sends me these texts. I’m pretty sure he thinks they’re helpful, like he’s keeping me on my toes. But they’re just reminders—amplifiers—of everything I’ve ever done wrong.”
I glanced over at her. “Aren’t you going to ask why I let him do it? Why I don’t just tell him to fuck off?”
“Why would I say that?”
“It’s what I would say.”
She smiled, but her eyes were so sad. “Sometimes people are scared of where you’d be without them. So they try to bring you down. To hold you down, so deep you feel like you can’t breathe.”
I gripped her hand, working hard not to hold on too tight. I didn’t want to be the one dragging her down, too. “We should go.”
She nodded, and I turned the cart on. I felt as if lead were running through my veins, coursing around my heart.
We rumbled through the trees in silence for a moment. Then Cass said, “You know Dad says there’s a part of these woods that’s haunted too.”
“What?”
The comment was bizarre enough to distract me from the weight on my chest.
Cassandra looked into the forest. “Eleanor—the ‘ghost’ my dad is obsessed with—he thinks she used to meet her lover out here.”
I looked out into the trees. “Sounds familiar,” I said. I squeezed her hand, hoping I could bring back just a flash of our time together; just the tiniest bit, so I wouldn’t have to feel anything but good.
“He wasn’t always this way, you know,” she said. “He didn’t use to go on about ghosts and not call for weeks at a time.”
“What was he like?” I asked. Suddenly, I was desperate to hear about a good father. One who cheered for his children, who told them they were winners, even when they failed.
“He was a good dad. The best, honestly. He used to take me and Eli fishing…”