These were the things I was thinking about when she and Jagger got home from the coffee shop. That and the fact that it was bad news to feel this way about Cassie, because of all the girls in Blackwell Falls, Cassie was the one girl we would never be allowed to keep. Not if Bram had anything to say about it.
And Bram had something to say about everything that happened here.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Hawk said from the other end of the sofa.
“What?” I looked at the screen and saw that he’d been killed in the video game, probably because I’d spaced out and left his flank exposed. “Sorry.”
“Where’s your head at?”
“Nowhere. I mean, I was thinking about Cass, but who isn’t?”
“You need to pull your head out of your ass,” he said. “She’s not here to stay.”
“She could stay if she wanted to.” It was a trial balloon but sometimes you just had to say fuck it.
“She won’t want to,” Hawk said, tossing his controller aside. “We’re just dicks on a stick for her and the sooner you get that through your head the better.”
“I don’t mind being a dick on a stick for Cassie, but I don’t think that’s all it is.”
For her or for us.But I knew better than to say that part out loud.
“Then you’re delusional,” Hawk said. “Just enjoy the fucking. Forget the rest.”
“‘The lady doth protest too much, methinks.’”
“Shakespeare isn’t going to make your fairy tale come true.”
The front door opened and I set my controller aside. Hawk was done anyway.
I picked up the little rubber ball I used to keep myself from going crazy when we had to wait for a game to update and started throwing it against the wall.
A few seconds later, Jagger and Cassie came into view and my heart did that weird little thing it always did when I looked at her.
It shouldn’t have come as a surprise. She didn’t know it but she was a fucking bombshell, her long hair like a fiery halo around her delicate features, her green eyes wide, like she was always seeing the world for the first time. She wore a long skirt and a tank top that showed off her perfect tits, and I ran my tongue stud over my lower lip as I thought about licking her collarbone.
“How’d it go?” Hawk asked.
“We found something,” Cassie said, her eyes bright with excitement.
“What did you find?”
“It looks like my parents were investigating some private bank with a Russian connection that was transferring money to Aventine.”
“The college?” I asked.
“Not that unusual, actually,” Hawk said. “Those kids have ties to all kinds of shit.”
He wasn’t wrong. Aventine was where all the organized crime kids went, not just the ones from America but kids of the Italian and Russian mafias, cartel kids, shit like that.
Cassie’s shoulders slumped. “I didn’t think about that.”
“It’s still worth looking into,” Jagger said. “Kensington is?— ”
“Kensington?” Hawk interrupted.
“Kensington Trust is a private bank. No one would work that hard to hide a transfer for their kid’s college tuition, even at Aventine. The whole point of setting up an actual college for the kids of criminals is to make it legit.”
Cassie chewed her lower lip. “I hope you’re right.”
