#TeaserTuesday: Best Friend

 

87k words and going strong! I know how it all works out, so now it's just pushing through to the end. 

Outright rejection would be crushing.

But he didn’t reject her.

His throat jerked in a painful-looking way when he swallowed. Cass could hear the bone-dry click of it across the table. His eyes went very big, and very dark, and Cass realized, with a thrill, that this was the opposite of a dismissal. “Cassie,” he rasped. “Don’t—don’t ask me for that.”

She leaned forward in her chair. “Why not?”

He looked pained for a split-second, and then wiped at his jaw, schooled his features. “Don’t ask me that either, college girl. You know all the reasons why not.”

She could guess them, at least, and none of them felt like insurmountable inevitabilities, not like they when she’d had crushes on Lean Dogs before. This wasn’t a crush. She’d cried like the child she still was when she learned Reese wanted to kiss her brother instead of her, but even then she’d known she’d simply been infatuated, that she hadn’t had any sort of connection with Reese. Same with Toly, and she hadn’t even shed a tear then. It had been more of a sigh, an “always a bridesmaid, never a bride” sense of being too young and too discounted by the adult outlaws around her.

In no way had Shep ever made her feel too young or too discounted.

She said, “Are you afraid of my family?” just to be a shit.

His head kicked back, familiar frown lines tugging at his forehead. “I’ll punch your whole goddamn family in the face.” Then his frown shifted to a more thoughtful one. “I mean…probably not the baby. But I’d pay to hit Tenny.”

Cass bit down hard on a smile.

“Shep,” she said, when she had her grin under control. “Did you know you’re my best friend?”

The stricken look on his face was funny, and a little bit heartbreaking.

“You’re my favorite person,” she continued. “Of anyone. I would always rather watch crap telly with you than spend time with anyone from school. And I like to argue with you, and steal sips out of your glass, and I like—”

He held up a hand—she stopped—and then he put his hands on the table and bowed his head. “Cassie,” he pleaded.

God, but she loved when he called her that. It made her want to hug him, and breathe his cologne off the collar of his shirt.

More quietly, losing steam, she said, “If you think I’d rather have some boy my own age, or that I’ll change my mind, I won’t.”