It wasn't a decision in good fun because she couldn't see how important it was to me. It was a distinct choice. A choice to hold herself away from me and everything we'd built.
A choice where she'd always put herself before me.
Everyone always speaks of selflessness in a relationship, but I expected and respected a little selfishness. I never wanted her to be the person I made her. I just wanted her to trust me enough to know the difference between respecting me and giving herself up.
But the road she was on was dirty, and she hadn't yet uncovered the center line.
"Where'd you go just now?" Kline asked. The back of my neck felt tight under my palm.
He grabbed my shoulder and gave it a squeeze, and I knew no one knew what I was feeling better than he did. Still, I had to wonder if he would have ever chosen a life separate from Georgie if their circumstances had been the same.
Not a chance in hell, heaven, or Manhattan.
I looked up to see Wes walk in, and I knew they'd called in the cavalry. I shook my head, and Kline looked over his shoulder to find the source of my amusement.
"Jesus. Whitney too?" I asked. "You guys went all out."
Wes came to us on an easy weave through the crowd, and Kline turned to shake his hand when he arrived.
"Thanks for coming," I said. He grabbed my shoulder and squeezed. I smiled; I knew it wasn't my normal, but I tried.
"Ah, fuck," he breathed before pulling me into a hug. Not a bro-hug either, but a full-on comforting squeeze with one arm tight around my back and the other hand on the back of my neck.
My throat felt tight, and I had to force a swallow down past the imaginary lump.
"Love you, man," he whispered in my ear. It was so opposite of everything I normally had with Wes-and all the things I knew were always there.
Fast jokes and ribbing, our relationship could look petty from the outside looking in, but that was just the way we lived our day-to-day fun. This right here was all I needed to know to have that freedom-the three of us would be there for each other forever.
Granted, none of us was immortal, so there'd be a limit on the timeline of some kind, but with modern medicine, I was hoping it'd be somewhere in the 120-year range.
"Love you too, Whitney," I murmured back. He gave me one last squeeze and then shoved me out of the way.
"Great. Now get out of my way," he said with a teasing smile. "Your fucking huge body is blocking the bar."
My face accepted the notion of a genuine smile then, and I stepped aside so he could order a rum and Coke.
"Fucking lush," I teased as he flagged down the bartender with an arm in the air.
"Better a lush than a pussy," he said with a nod toward my beer.
"I don't know," Kline interjected. "Pussies are pretty nice."
"Right?" I agreed with a laugh, and Wes smiled at the sound.
My eyes felt downright misty at my friends' effort to make me feel better. Goddamn, this breakup was turning me into a premenstrual woman.
And then Wes's face turned from a smile to something else as he stared at something over my shoulder.
I told myself not to turn around, but apparently Cassie wasn't the only one who didn't listen to me.
Kline turned too, and I knew the moment he registered Cassie's eyes because his gaze shot to the ground before glancing back at Wes surreptitiously.
It didn't upset me to see her. Fuck, it was the opposite of that.
I missed her.
As I turned to set my empty beer bottle on the bar, both Kline and Wes gave me assessing looks. I nodded my assurance and then walked the short distance to where Cassie stood waiting for me.
"Thatcher."
"Crazy," I whispered, and her eyes closed tight and her chin dropped toward the ground.
I picked it up with the gentlest of touches from my index finger and waited for her eyes to meet mine.
"What are you doing here, honey?"
She shook her head and looked to the side, and I turned her face toward mine once more.
"Look me in the eye," I demanded softly.
She shrugged, helpless to her own emotion as a single tear rolled down her face. Her voice was barely audible over the din, but I heard it. "I miss you."
Florida Georgia Line's "H.O.L.Y." started to play over the speakers of the bar, a low, seductive beat thrumming through my chest with each chord, so I pulled her hand into mine and said the first thing that came to mind.
"Dance with me?"
She nodded, putting her arms around my shoulders right there without moving a step and beginning a sway to the music. Cassie closed her eyes, and her head swished back and forth until I held it steady with a hand on each side of her throat.
Fierce and feeling, her eyes jerked open and held mine in their grasp until I couldn't remember anyone or anything other than her or that moment in time.
My lips sought hers of their own accord. Flesh on flesh, all of her breath left her in a rush, and a sob bucked the entirety of her upper body. I pulled her closer, sealed my lips tighter to hers, and pushed my tongue through the seam of her lips.
She met me lick for lick, lost in each other, the feel of her tongue on mine sending shock waves through every single muscle in my body.
"It's all right, baby," I told her there, directly against her mouth. I rubbed my thumbs at the line of her throat as I kissed her again, and the tips of her long hair tickled the skin of my exposed forearms.
"I'm sorry," she apologized through a whisper, and I sighed. Relief took forty pounds directly off my chest. "I hate the way everything happened between us that day," she went on. "But I don't need anyone, you know? I'm my own woman. I can watch out for myself. I can make my own decisions."
I had to work to stop my eyes from narrowing.
"I've been telling myself I was fine. God, for a week, every day, all I've fucking done is tell myself I'm fine."
I closed my eyes and stepped back, setting her body apart from mine with my hands on her arms.
She still didn't get it.
Here I was thinking we were over this, that I had completely overreacted, and she still didn't get it.
"Thatch?"
"It's not good enough, Cass. You have no idea how much I want it to be, but it's not. I deserve better."
"What?" she asked, and then, when she thought she realized what I was saying, she started to get angry.
"You deserve better?" she asked, her voice rising. "Why the hell does a woman have to need you to be worthy? I guess I'll never fucking understand men."
I caught her wrist as she turned away and pulled her back. I wasn't letting it go like this.
"It's not that, and you know it. You think about me, you think about the way I am with you, and then tell me you still think you needing me is what this is about."
"What's it about, then? Margo? I'm not her."
"I don't want you to be!" I shouted. "Margo is so fucking far out of this equation it's not even funny. This is about you and me, and you being ready to be in a real relationship."
"I was ready!"
"No, you weren't," I disagreed. "Because someone who respected me and trusted me would know that I'm not out to fucking control you or change you. I don't want a Stepford girlfriend. I don't want to stand in front of you and keep you from things, and I certainly don't want to be pushing you from behind. All I want is someone who trusts me enough to know I never ask for anything other than respect and trust. And when you jumped that day, you robbed me of both. That's what this is about."
I stepped past her and shoved my way through the crowd on my way out, anger blinding me to every goddamn thing other than getting outside where I could breathe.
The oppressive summer night air hit my face as I shoved through the door, and it did nothing to relieve the choking, clawing feeling in my chest.
"Goddammit!" I yelled, startling a group of scantily clad women standing next to the building, smoking.
I stood there for five minutes trying to get my thoughts together. Truthfully, I guess part of me was hoping Cassie would chase me down. Tell me I was wrong. Tell me she wanted all of the same things I wanted.
But just like the times she'd fallen asleep during sex, my satisfaction never came.
It had been the week from hell. Every night I had slept in my shitty Chelsea apartment and wished I were in a California King in Midtown, enveloped in the arms of the one man I couldn't get out of my head.
But I didn't have time to sulk and mope.
I had to get my head straight for a big shoot for Cosmopolitan this evening.
It was a huge sixteen-page spread for their November issue, and I should have been excited about it. I should have been damn near brimming with energy over the idea of getting behind the lens, but thoughts of Thatch and me and us and everything that went wrong sat at the precipice of my mind, and I was having a hell of a time thinking about anything but him.
Fuck. Get it together. This is your career you're screwing with here.
Plus, you're driving a fucking sweet-ass convertible right now …