Page 84 of Becoming

Those three little words caused a dam inside Cass to break. She had always thought that the only three words that could ever mean so much to her were “I love you.” She was wrong.

Rebecca held on tightly as Cassidy sobbed in her arms. She cooed unintelligible words, stroked her hair, and wondered what she could have said that caused such a reaction. Or what could Cassidy have done?

“Talk to me,” Rebecca whispered.

“You were right,” Cass mumbled against Rebecca’s bosom.

“Right?”

Cass sniffled and looked up. “You didn’t believe her.”

“I never said…”

“You didn’t have to, I saw it in your eyes. I couldn’t understand it at the time. But now… How did you know?”

Rebecca shook her head. “I didn’t know. That’s why I didn’t say anything.” She sighed when Cassidy looked at her expectantly. “There were a couple of things that made me doubt.”

“What were they?”

“You told me that Miranda had accused Connor of using his dominance over her to abuse her. But, honey, Connor isn’t the dominant one. Miranda is.”

Cass sat up further. “Why didn’t you tell me? And don’t say it was a privacy thing, Rebecca. This was important.”

“It wasn’t just that. I could have been wrong. I don’t know what they do in their personal lives, Cassidy. For all I know, they could have left the club and changed roles. We have.”

Cass took a moment to let that sink in. “Okay, what else?”

“There were no marks on her. When she came downstairs, nude, you turned away. But I saw her. There were no marks indicating abuse.”

Cass stared into Rebecca’s eyes. “But you thought that didn’t mean she wasn’t being abused so you kept quiet?”

“I thought I was reading into things. If I had been wrong, I would be the jealous girlfriend that prevented you from helping a friend.” She pushed Cassidy’s long bangs out of tired eyes. “What happened? Did she tell you she was lying?”

Cass twitched. “I tried getting her to open up, but she refused to talk about that. At some point, I just became too exhausted to keep trying. I wasn’t in the greatest state of mind since I wanted to be with you and you hadn’t even called me.”

“I was giving you space. The phone does work both ways, by the way.”

“Yeah, I know, but I was afraid you wouldn’t pick up. Stupid, I know.” She exhaled heavily. “Anyway, long story short, she insisted on sleeping upstairs…”

“Wait. You may want to make this the long story and explain that little tidbit.”

“I slept on the couch, baby. She made up this bullshit thing about being too scared to sleep near the front door. I’d been having this weird feeling all night that something wasn’t right with her. I kept attributing it to the trauma. When she would talk about the past, I thought she just wanted to think about simpler times.” Cass shook her head. “It wasn’t until she came back downstairs that my gut started screaming at me.”

Rebecca bit the inside of her cheek. All sorts of things were running through her imagination, and she didn’t like any of them.

“Go on.”

Cass so didn’t want to say this part. But she refused to keep anything from Rebecca. “She started saying shit like we belonged together. And that Connor wanted you, so he could have you. I think I knew she had really lost it when she brought up something from our past. But she had a totally different version of it than what really happened.”

“Does this have to do with her saying you’d already seen her naked?” Rebecca realized then that trying to talk with clenched teeth wasn’t that easy.

“Yeah.” Cass told Rebecca everything. Every detail of that night and every detail of what happened right before coming here. She also made it extremely clear that she immediately got out of the position Rand tried to trap her in.

“She certainly has no issues with nakedness, does she.” Rebecca struggled to keep that little green-eyed monster at bay. “So, you’ve never had sex with her?”

“Never. I’ve never been attracted to her like that. Despite what she wants to believe. Even if I had been, being used by her like that would have been a total turn-off.”

“I can’t believe she tried to seduce you.” Rebecca stood and started pacing. Seemed like she was doing that a lot tonight. It didn’t help her mentally, but at least it gave her something to do besides finding Miranda and kicking her ass.