Page 30 of Beware of Dog

“Shep, I’m stunned.”

“Pffft. Whatever.” He left, a two-fingered salute lifted over his head in parting.

When he was gone, Cass looked over to find Jamie watching her, goggle-eyed.

“Whowasthat?”

“Like I said. A friend.”

Nine

Two days passed uneventfully. Cass went to class, she called her sister, as instructed, though Raven had little to no time to talk and sounded exhausted besides. She tried to be there for Jamie, who woke Cass multiple times whimpering and crying in her sleep. She added layers and extra shading to her Comics project, and wondered again and again why she’d styled Frank Castle to look like Frank Shepherd.

The realization that she wanted him to kiss her plagued her, as expected. In class, walking across campus, when she was trying to study. Crushing on a Lean Dog was not a new phenomenon. When Raven took her to Baskerville Hall as a little girl, she’d been awestruck by the men, their leather, and their rings, and the smoke wreathing their heads. There’d been a prospect in London when she was eleven, young and tow-headed, who’d smiled at her, and her stomach had filled with butterflies. He’d disappeared, and when she asked Phillip about him, he’d said, simply, “He’s gone. Don’t think of him anymore.” (She now suspected that Phillip kicked him out of the club before he’d even patchedbecauseof those smiles.)

Then there was Reese. And even Toly, briefly. Warm sensations in her chest, bursts of shyness, the relentless tug of her attention. She’d wanted to study them, trace them with an artist’s eye, and then sketch them…which she’d done. Shamefully. Secrets buried in the back of an old sketchbook.

But those crushes had felt so tame. Warm, and desperate, yes, but chaste, too. She’d thought they were beautiful. Untouchable.

But when she thought of Shep, she wondered if her nails would press dents into the muscles of his back. Wonderedhow hot his breath would feel against her throat…her chest…everywhere. There was a rough realness to him that the others lacked. Fantasies of them had been just that: fantasy. Impossible dreams that left her heart aching.

Shep, by contrast, was so solid. Up close and tangible. She had the sense that if she pushed him at all, he’d snap, and eat her up, and that she’d enjoy it.

Needless to say, she didn’t get much work done in those two days.

And then Melissa arrested Sig, and all hell broke loose.

~*~

Cass didn’t have class on Friday, but Jamie did, so Cass usually spent her mornings working on her various projects on the top floor of the gallery building, where long, heavy tables were scrubbed clean by the light that poured in through four walls of windows. At nine, she was one of only a handful of students present, the lofty space filled with the quiet rustle of paper and scratch of pencil and charcoal. Cass had her project laid out before her, choosing Prisma color pencils for her original character—a young woman she refused to see as a self-portrait—when her phone vibrated across the table.

It was Melissa. “Hey,” Cass whispered when she answered, and earned dirty looks from the neighboring tables.

“This is a heads-up call,” Melissa said, all business straight away. “We’re on our way to pick up Sig.”

“Shit,” Cass breathed. It wasn’t that she’d doubted Melissa, per se, but a part of her had thought he’d never face any consequences. “Here at the school?”

“Yeah. He’s supposed to have a free period right now, and a witness says he likes to hang out on the third floor of the library.”

Cass knew the spot, its well-loved corduroy chairs, its window view of a courtyard below, the nearby study tables, and a section of Civil War tomes on the shelves that no one ever checked out, and which offered a sense of privacy.

“Wait,” she said, realization slamming into her. “You said ‘witness.’ Did someone else come forward?”

“You know I can’t tell you that.”

“Aw, boo.”

“Where are you and where is Jamie?” Melissa asked. The whir of an engine sounded in the background, and her voice was clipped, tight with readiness.

“I’m working on a project,” Cass said, pulse picking up as understanding dawned. She pinched the phone between her cheek and shoulder and started packing up. “Jamie’s in class, but I can head her way now.”

“Do,” Melissa said. “We’re going to do this as quickly and quietly as possible, but there’s a good chance Sig will make a fuss, and then we’ll have a scene on our hands.”

“Okay. Understood.”

“Cass,” Melissa said, when Cass started to hang up. “Be careful.” It was a serious warning, and not the idle advice of an adult doing her rote duty.

“Yeah. I will be.”

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