Page 80 of Beware of Dog

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Cass had seriously thought she might faint when Toly and Shep went out onto the balcony back at Raven’s. Because that had seemed like a terrible idea, she’d walked on shaky legs down the hallway to the nursery, where Raven was walking circles around the rug, bouncing a fussy Nat on her shoulder.

Raven had glanced up, fresh tears on her cheeks, and said, straight away, “I’m so sorry, darling, I really don’t want to fight. I don’t want to control you. I’m just so bloodytired.”

“I know.” Cass had realized she was crying, too, and was glad of the excuse of their spat; that way she didn’t have to say,Toly just found out about Shep and me and he might kill Shep and throw him off the balcony.Shep was bigger, heavier; had been a soldier and was now a brawler. But her own family had taught her the lethality of men like Toly. Slender, quick, and comfortable with a knife, it wouldn’t be pretty if the two of them came to blows.

She’d reached for the baby. “Here. Let me have her.” Once Nat was squirming in her arms, warm and denser than she looked, Cass had said, “I’m sorry, too.”

Raven had hugged her and the baby both, and Cass had realized she couldn’t remember the last time she and her sister had embraced.

Once they were seated, Cass in the rocker with the baby, and Raven in an elegant, cross-legged heap on the rug, Raven had smiled and said, “So there’s a boy from school, is there?”

God. Not this again.

“Oh. Well,” she’d hedged.

But Raven had been grinning, delighted to have something positive to discuss. “Is he an artist? What am I saying: of course he is.” Her eyes had widened. “You should bring him by the office so I can outfit him for the Met. My treat, of course. We’ll find him something that compliments what you’re wearing.”

Cass’s face had felt wrong when she smiled back. “Actually…I’ve only just started seeing him. I’m not sure we’re Gala official yet.”

“Oh.” Raven’s expression had dimmed. “That’s alright, you can—”

“What if I took Shep?”

Raven had blinked. And then burst out laughing. She’d even clutched at her chest, breathless with the force of it. “Oh my God! Could you imagine?”

She’d thought Cass was joking. The idea of dressing Shep up, of taking him to the Met as her date, had been a joke to Raven, too insane and hilarious to be considered seriously for even a second.

She hadn’t wanted to go home, after. Had wanted to play pretend a little while: that she was this gorgeous, desirable woman Shep wanted to pick up in a bar, and not his live-in art student. She’d wanted some sort of—some sort of external, public validation that they were right together, believable. That he wasn’t just humoring her and sleeping with her and professing his love for her out of some misplaced protectivenessand the loneliness that came with being an outcast amongst your own club.

But that had backfired spectacularly.

Shep unlocked the door to the club flat and pushed it in so she could precede him inside. When she flipped the lights, she was struck by all the ways it no longer looked like the “club flat.” Throw blankets draped the back of the couch, and bodega flowers she’d grabbed on a whim three days ago wilted slowly in a glass on the counter. The window nook had become her makeshift studio, full of easels, half-finished canvases, and all her paints and oil pastels. Though she couldn’t see them, she knew her cosmetics cluttered the bathroom counter, and Shep had humored the fairy lights she’d wanted to string up along the headboard in the bedroom.

And then there was the sad little pile of presents on the coffee table from this morning. The Garfield balloon hung a little lower in the air, its sides slackening.

The door closed softly, and the lock clicked into place.

When she turned, she found Shep watching her with a pained expression. Did he pity her? Think she’d lost her mind? She couldn’t blame him.

“I’m sorry,” she said, dashing at her eyes. “I wasn’t trying to—to make you uncomfortable at the bar. I didn’t…” She took a deep, unsteady breath, and her belly filled with the sickening dread that an end had been reached. That they’d had a month of fun, awonderfulmonth, in which she’d allowed herself to dream of a future…but now their inevitable demise had come. “I asked Raven if I could take you to the Met Gala, and shelaughedat me. She thought I wasjoking. She didn’t evenconsiderthat I…that I could…” She pressed her lips together, and then pressed her hand over her mouth for good measure, desperate to hold in the ugly noise building in the back of her throat.

Shep closed the gap between them, took her by the elbows, and gently steered her backward. “Cassie. Sit.” He pressed her down into the recliner, and her knees were too watery to protest.

He stepped back, and shrugged out of his cut, and then his jacket. Let them both fall.

Cass wiped her damp cheeks and croaked, “What are you doing?” If he was going to try and fuck her happy, it wasn’t going to work.

“Giving you your present,” he said, but he wasn’t trying to look seductive; wasn’t smirking or hamming it up as he tugged off his hoodie. His expression had tightened further; it wasn’t pity shining in his eyes, but uncertainty. Nerves.

Under his hoodie, he still wore the stretched-out wifebeater he’d had on this morning, the collar low enough to reveal a white square bandage over his heart.

“Oh,” she said, blinking her eyes clear, scrubbing the last tears from her cheeks. “That’s right. You got new ink.”

“Yeah.” His voice was rough. He breathed open-mouthed, unsteadily.

Cass scooted forward, so she sat on the very edge of the chair, anticipation prickling through her. Whatever lay beneath the bandage, it was important to him, and he was anxious about her reaction.

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