Page 81 of Shattered Veil

Everyone nodded, and there was a semblance of relief that surrounded us. Unbeknownst to everyone else, though, there was very little of the emotion for me and Cassie…and the time to address that was now.

“Cassie.”

I spoke to her with a heaping amount of compassion. She looked at me for the briefest of moments, recognized the purpose of my call of her name, and closed her eyes tightly as if she were biting a metaphorical bullet.

Cassie twisted on her sit bones rapidly to speak to Colton.

“I knew Delaney.”

The short sentence fell out of her mouth as if the words were resting on the tip of her tongue, ripe and ready to tumble from her lips.

Quiet, somber mutterings were shared around the table, all blending together as Liam’s voice rose above them with a more pointed:

“Delaney? Delaney who?”

Zoey whispered to him, “Delaney stripper with no next of kin from the article she found earlier, Delaney.”

Liam sadly murmured, “Oh.”

Cassie paid her brother’s comments no mind. She was simply waiting for Colton to respond.

His surprise at the admission quickly gone, Colton was investigating her expression as if he could read it—as if the picture of her life’s story were painted on her cheeks. He nodded slowly, and then asked:

“Knew her from where?”

Cassie timidly returned, “My work.”

For Zoey, the realization was immediate. Though I wasn’t looking at her, I felt her shoulders sag with her exhaled, “Oh, fuck.” Her elbows hit the table with a thud as she rested her head in her hands, and Liam voiced:

“She worked at your accounting firm and a strip club?”

I pressed my lips together tightly at his immediate assumption, and no one answered him, for Colton was now leaning forward with his forearms on his thighs, questioning Cassie:

“Gas Lamp?”

Cassie’s pitch raised to an uncharacteristic squeak. “Yuh huh.”

Under his breath so quietly that I wondered who was able to hear it, Colton uttered, “Knew I recognized you from somewhere.”

Luke and Claire simultaneously groaned, and Zoey muttered to me, “Is that why you’ve been so fucking weird lately?”

It was obvious that comprehension had dawned on all of them. The fact that I had gone to Gas Lamp. The fact that I was, as Zoey had phrased, fucking weird about it. The fact that Cassie had just admitted to her means of work. It was all clear for them. That side of the puzzle was built—Cassie was, very obviously, the dancer that I had alluded to. The other side, however—the one where Cassie and I were romantically involved—was yet to be assembled. I was grateful for the lack of additional drama in the moment, but at the notion that we could still maintain a granule of finesse while easing our relationship into the group, I attempted to halt any potential questioning with a hiss of a reply to Zoey:

“Is now the time for this?”

“I don’t—I don’t understand.” Liam shook his head, face twisted in confusion as he finally looked at me and assumed, “Oh…oh, shit—Jay, did you see this Delaney chick when you went to Gas Lamp?”

I let out a quiet, uncomfortable noise, pinching the area between my eyes as Liam’s lack of understanding yanked at my insides.

Zoey sympathetically muttered, “Oh, Lee.”

He murmured an altogether innocent, “What?”

There was a moment of silence in which we all looked at him. Cassie slowly turned in her chair to peek at her brother, and his head bobbled as he attempted to take us all in at once.

Colton bluntly said, “Your sister’s a stripper, dude.”

Claire yelled, “Colton!”

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