57. Cassandra Walker
Iwasn’t sure whether it was the talisman or just the mere fact of finally sharing the burden of her secret with someone, but Theo noticeably improved over the next few weeks.
Her bruises faded, and so did the darkness in her eyes.
After her mandated two-week rest ended, she resumed training with Jerry, informing me that she needed to be on top of her game to fight some woman she referred to as the Russian.
When I’d expressed my concerns that this was just another form of self-sabotage, she’d assured me that wasn’t the case.
She’d been working toward this specific fight for years, and as much as I hated it, I didn’t really have a right to tell her to quit weeks before her big headliner.
Getting her into a more legit league was on my list of things to work toward with her, but I knew I didn’t have a chance at that until she’d completed this fight. It seemed to be a big deal in her world, so I begrudgingly allowed her to resume training without much pushback.
As long as she wasn’t drinking, I could stomach it.
While Theo didn’t seem interested in bringing up her trauma with me again, she did surprise me by asking me about starting therapy.
The absolute pride I’d felt had almost been enough to quell the deep, low, simmering pot of rage that had been bubbling in my gut since I’d learned someone had hurt her.
Almost.
Maybe I would have been able to calm down eventually if I hadn’t been forced to defend the kind of man who would have hurt little Theo if he’d had the chance.
But as it was, every day at work, I was confronted with exactly the type of evil that had broken the woman I’d been steadily falling in love with.
Theo never said anything to me about defending such a man, but I saw the way her shoulders tensed whenever the case popped up on the news.
I’d stopped putting the TV on in the condo altogether, unless it was to play Smash Bros with Theo after we’d shared one of her home-cooked vegan meals.
It wasn’t worth disrupting the peaceful domestic bliss we were so easily slipping back into. Theo didn’t want to hear about the case, and frankly, neither did I.
Outside of how amazing my home life was beginning to feel, work was getting harder and harder for me to endure.
More girls came forward as the weeks went on, and with each new accusation, my ability to turn my back on my own morals waned.
It was getting to the point where I was seriously considering walking away from the firm entirely… partnership be damned… but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that would only be a temporary solution to my dilemma.
If I left Sinclair and Morrissy, I would just end up at another firm as a senior defense attorney, stuck at the whim of new partners chasing billables without any consideration for the moral fiber of the clientele I would be forced to represent.
If I wanted to keep my career and manage to do so with some level of respect for myself and the work I did, I would need to be smart about it.
Happily, I was both smart and petty… So it didn’t take long for me to come up with a plan that would get the reverend out of my life for good, without painting me in a bad light with the partners.
I would still get my promotion, and my first order of business once my name was on the wall would be to implement a pro bono defense program specifically for CSA survivors.
It was an ambitious plan, and one that I would unfortunately need help with, which is why, for once, I was the one ignoring Nolan’s executive assistant’s protests as I let myself into his office unannounced.
Nolan’s office was a more cliched replica of mine. He’d gone with more traditionally masculine furniture, and I found him sitting on one of his luxury brown leather sofas with his laptop and case papers spread out on the heavy mahogany coffee table that acted as the centerpiece of the space.
He didn’t seem to be interested in any of the work he had spread out before him, and whatever I’d been about to bark at him died on my lips when I realized he was engrossed in a small, brightly colored book instead.
He was so engrossed, in fact, that he didn’t seem to notice that I’d blown into his office without warning.
“What’s this?” I asked, plucking the small book out of his hand before he could register that I’d snuck up on him.
He let out an undignified squawk.
“Hey!” he protested, reaching reflexively for the book I’d stolen, and I grinned at how red his face was getting. “Give that back!”
I danced out of reach and glanced down at the rainbow cover, feeling my eyebrows raise in surprise when I realized what it was he’d been spending his afternoon reading.
“You’re reading ‘This Book is Gay,’ by Juno Dawson?
” I asked in disbelief, and when I glanced back at Nolan, I found him staring at me with a very un-Nolan look on his face.
His cheeks were beet red, and he was literally fidgeting like a little kid who had just been busted with his hand in a cookie jar.
“Uhm… yeah…”
I returned my attention to the unassuming paperback and flipped through it, only to feel even more surprised as I realized he hadn’t just been reading it. He’d underlined passages and left himself little notes to refer back to later.
I paused on the page about lesbians and how the word dyke was not okay to use unless you were a lesbian reclaiming the word.
He’d highlighted most of that page.
A strange feeling caught in my throat, and I was overcome with an unexpectedly strong feeling of… affection.
He was… trying to educate himself?
Nolan watched me awkwardly as I continued to flip through his notes, and I couldn’t help the smile that was beginning to spread across my face as I took in his very detailed annotations on ‘Chapter 9: The Ins and Outs of Gay Sex.’
I smirked at him.
“Interested in learning about the male prostate, Nolan? There’s a lot of exclamation points on this page…”
I didn’t think it was possible, but his face turned even redder.
“Give me that,” he snapped, swiping the book out of my hands and shuffling over to shove it in his Gucci messenger bag.
I laughed, allowing him to take his book back this time, and the glare he gave me just amused me even more.
“Why are you reading about gay sex, Nolan?” I asked, genuinely curious.
He rolled his eyes in a clear attempt to downplay whatever was happening here, but it was obvious he was still feeling awkward and vulnerable, which caused me to soften slightly.
“I wasn’t reading about gay sex,” he muttered, and I quirked an eyebrow at him.
“You were quite literally reading about the ‘Ins and Outs’ of it, Nolan,” I chirped, intentionally drawing attention to the hilarious double entendre Dawson had used for the title of chapter nine.
“Ugh. You’re the fucking worst, Cass,” he groaned, dropping his head back and pinching his nose in frustration. I snickered.
“That’s already been established. Cuntzilla, remember?”
He glanced at me, and I faltered slightly when I realized my teasing was not getting me the desired effect.
I frowned, reaching out to gently touch his arm.
“Hey… I’m just teasing you, I think it’s great that you’re trying to read more diversely… I’m sure this is quite the diversion from your usual sports highlights and legal bullshit. I’m just surprised is all. What inspired you to pick this up?”
He peeked at me, looking like he wasn’t sure if he wanted to answer that, but I gave him a genuine smile, doing my best to show him that I wasn’t trying to ridicule him for being interested in LGBTQ+ literature. Quite the opposite. I was actually extremely impressed.
“Well… I keep saying the wrong things to you and unintentionally pissing you off… The other day I made that joke, and you told me I was… fetishizing you or something, and I… I didn’t mean to do that at all.”
I blinked at him in surprise, but he wasn’t finished. In fact, now that he’d started, he didn’t seem to be able to stop.
The words came out in a rush, and that warm, affectionate feeling in my chest only grew as he bumbled through trying to explain to me that he’d been a fucking idiot lately and he was clearly sorry about it.
“... Then there was that whole thing at Chez when I said that shit about your wife… You were so mad at me. I honestly didn’t think the ‘D’ word was that bad when I said it…
Like, obviously my intention at the time wasn’t to be nice per se, but I had no idea there was this whole historical background to that word and just how fucking disrespectful it was for me to say something like that… ”
He frowned and scratched the side of his head awkwardly before continuing.
“Anyway, I’ve been learning a lot reading that book. Apparently, sexuality is way more fluid than I realized… and I… I just… I don’t know…”
His brow was furrowed, and he wasn’t even directly looking at me anymore.
He seemed to be desperately trying to organize his thoughts into something coherent, and it was strangely endearing to see him like this.
Usually, he was so confident and well spoken.
This vulnerable, unsure side of him was making me see him in a completely different light.
It was taking everything in me not to interrupt him as he continued, but I stayed quiet, wanting him to get out whatever it was he was trying to say.
“With all the stuff that’s been going on lately, it made me realize I don’t know shit about the LGBTQ+ community.
I don’t know what is and isn’t okay to say to someone who is a part of it, so I figured, you know, I should probably try to learn so I don’t say anymore offside shit to you…
or anyone else for that matter. I don’t want to make people uncomfortable or make them feel like I have a problem with them, just because I’m clearly uneducated on the topic…
There’s so much shit I didn’t even know – Like…
How did I not know I have a whole G-spot in my butt?
! Why aren’t more people talking about that? !”
My monster chuckled softly in my chest, and I bit my lip to keep myself from laughing out loud.