“God, that feels better. Need some extra bobby pins?” She directed her question at Cash with a sly lilt to her voice. “You could use them to do a cute updo to impress any pretty girls inside.”
“It’s clear you’re lacking some southern hospitality. Where are you from?” He led us around the house and onto the back patio. Several people were sitting around but he led us to the fire pit. In the fall we’d use it more but that night it was dark and secluded enough that no one would bother us. “You’ve got a funny accent.”
We all sat on the logs positioned around the pit, Cassidy between me and Cash. She stretched her long legs out in front of her and stretched her arms overhead. “I’vegot a funny accent? That’s a joke, right?”
“Nope. You sound like you’re always a few seconds away from tossing your hair and saying ‘as if’.” Cash barely ducked the pebble she threw at him.
“I do not sound like Cher fromClueless. How do you even know that movie?” She folded her arms behind her head and kept stretching. It was painfully distracting when the dress molded to her tits and showed a perfect outline of her nipples.
Cash groaned but caught himself and turned it into a cough. “We have a little sister. She made us watch it all the time.”
“What are you doing?” West barked at her, his hands fisted on his thighs.
“Stretching. I worked out earlier and my muscles are stiff. Or maybe it was those fucking heels. Either way, I’m stretching.” She tilted her head to the side as she studied him. “You could use a good stretch, judging by the way you’re sitting. I’m majoring in sports medicine. I have a particular interest in injury recovery and plan to specialize in it.”
“I’m sitting just fucking fine.”
West’s voice was sharp enough to cut, and I saw the second his walls slammed back into place. The openness he’d shown her—what little of it there was—vanished like it had never existed.
Cassidy didn’t flinch. She didn’t apologize. She didn’t back down. She just watched him, head tilted slightly, like she was cataloging something important.
My stomach tightened. Because people didn’t push Weston Ford about his injury unless they wanted a fight. But this girl… she pushed him like she could handle whatever came next.
3
***Hayes***
Cash jumped in to keep West from blowing up and ruining our night. “I think we promised you a drink. I’ll go grab a few drinks for us. One closed bottle of beer for the princess, of course.”
“Punch is fine. If you drug me, I’ll just hunt you down and castrate you. They don’t just teach that shit down here in the south.” She made a scissor motion with her fingers and laughed when he covered his dick. “Cute.”
We settled into a relaxed conversation when Cash came back with the drinks. She was easy to talk to and every second more we spent with her the more I was convinced that she’d shown up as some sort of miracle. West wasn’t hammered out of his mind but he also wasn’t angrily barking at everyone, both of which had become his norm. Cash was looking at her like a lost puppy hoping to be taken home. And I couldn’t remember the last time I’d laughed like we were. It felt fucking good.
At some point, the conversation shifted. I don’t remember who started it, maybe Cash asked something about California, or maybe she let something slip… but suddenly she wasn’t laughing or giving us shit anymore.
"I transferred," she said, staring into her cup. "From USC. It's... it was time for a change."
The way she said it made it clear that "change" was a nice word for something that hadn't been nice at all. West surprised me by being the one to break the silence. "Running from something or toward something?"
She looked up at him, and for a second her whole face was open. Unguarded. Sad in a way that made my chest ache.
"I haven't figured that out yet."
Her thumb pressed into the rim of her cup hard enough to dent it. She didn't seem to notice. But I did — the way her throat worked around a swallow she was trying to hide, the way her smile was already loading up, ready to fire before anyone could ask a follow-up question. It was a move I knew by heart. Get the next joke out fast enough and no one makes you explain the last honest thing you said.
Then she blinked and the mask slid back into place, and she was tossing a pebble at Cash and calling him a pretty boy and the moment was over. But I couldn't stop thinking about it. About the way she'd looked when she thought no one was really paying attention. I was paying attention. I couldn't seem to stop.
There was this building tension around the fire pit that had my hair standing on end. I kept waiting for her to move closer tooneof us, for her to choose, but she didn’t. She teased each of us equally and tossed flirty looks the same way. I was ready to drop to my knees for the girl and she seemed content to keep the three of us right where we were, eating out of the palm of her hand.
Cash got us more drinks and the night continued the same way. It was our house but we ignored the rest of the party andeveryone else who’d shown up. The conversation turned just as I was starting to feel a buzz.
Cassidy caught me rubbing my knee and hiked up her dress so she could kneel in the gravel in front of me. She did it without hesitation, like the rocks digging into the tops of her bare knees didn’t even register. Her hands were warm as she gripped my calf and stretched my leg out. “You’ve talked to your coach about it still aching? Or is this special because you jumped off a second-floor balcony tonight?”
Her hands trailed up my leg and I couldn’t think. There had been women where she was before, some even in the exact spot probably, but I’d never gotten hard so fast in my life. It was like she’d short-circuited my brain.
She rubbed my thigh and looked up. Her eyes widened when they snagged on the bulge trying to escape my jeans. For the first time all night I watched her cheeks go red. She didn’t stop working her fingers into my thigh, though. She licked her lips and met my gaze. “I could get a better feel of everything if we were somewhere with a bed and better lighting. I could look at you, too, Weston.”
Cash was quick to jump in. “I have aches, too.”
