A tear escaped; she let it fall unheeded. She understood the desire to be numb. She’d been living the majority of the past two years not wanting to feel the pain, not wanting to feel anything.
“But no attachments, Day.” His hard, dark eyes sought her out. “Not telling you this for pity ’cause I don’t want it. I’m trying to explain. I hurt people.”
She frowned. “I’m not asking for what you think I am. But, Mac, we all hurt one another at some point.”
“Nah, Ihurtpeople,” he emphasized. “My… nightmares can be violent. Why I didn’t want to sleep next to you. Why I can’t do it again.” He looked down at Fred. “Day helps; I don’t have nightmares in the daylight. Some insurance with Fred in the room, too, that he’d get between us if I hurt you; enough to wake me.”
Chills broke out over her as she realized what he was saying. A few puzzle pieces fell into place from what Jason had told her and Mac’s repeated warnings: lock her doors. Why he’d locked her in his room; they weren’t overreacting, being cautious. Somethinghadhappened. Hehadhurt someone.
But, “Then why did you?” she asked, her tone accusatory. “Why do you walk away, tell me ‘no attachments… nothing’s changed for me’ but you… you don’tactthat way?”
He considered her with a wary side-eye.
“You know it. I haven’t asked anything from you; I haven’t,” she pointed out. “But I will take anything you give because, yes, it feels good, and you’ve weirdly known what I’ve needed even when I didn’t. But you don’t get to do these things for me—to me—then tell me not to have expectations or to have feelings. You definitely don’t get to tell me ‘not me, Cassidy, but not him, either.’”
Mac’s eyes narrowed. “He’s not right for you.”
Cassidy frowned. “My point! You don’t get to put me in the same category as Darlene and every other woman and then tell me who I can be with. You confuse the hell out of me! I don’t know where I stand with you until I’m punished for crossing a line I didn’t know was there because youaredifferent with me.” A jolt of paranoia coursed through her, and she followed it up with, “Aren’t you?”
Mac reverted his attention to Fred again, playing with one of his ears. His avoidance made Cassidy’s stomach lurch.
Because, of course, shedidn’tknow if he and Darlene had more in-depth conversations when she wasn’t around. He had Dar’s cell phone number—how was she to know they didn’t chat or text? Darlene could be pretty good with advice, and she didn’t let her emotions get in the way, which was what Mac claimed he wanted.
And Mac was so very good with women: maybe Cassidy had misread all of it. What had Darlene told her? He gives what he needs to get what he wants. Holy shit, had she been proving Mac right all along that she wasdesignedto read more into his actions, and therefore everything he did for hermeantsomething?
All of a sudden, she felt monumentally foolish.
Still looking at Fred, Mac interrupted her spiraling thoughts with quiet words: “Yeah. Yeah, you’re different, Day.”
She wasn’t sure she believed him or even trusted him at this point. Her heart was thundering in her chest and ears; this space became too confining, and she wasn’t claustrophobic.
“Didn’t want you to be,” he admitted. “But you are.”
Again, she waited, trying not to feel optimistic that this meant something.
Damn it, why was she so eager for it to mean anything? To have a connection with Mac? Eighty percent of the time, she couldn’t stand him. And she was still grieving her husband and child. Right?
Always; she always would.
His narrowed gaze returned to her. “You aren’t the same. But you can’t be more; it won’t be more.”
Her brows furrowed. “I don’t know what that means.”
“Means I like fucking you; you like fucking me. I like your dog. I like hanging out with you. But it doesn’t become athing, Cassidy. Don’t get confused aboutthat.Wedon’t become anything.”
Cassidy could only stare. This was a shift fromknow how to walk away. He was setting new parameters: don’t fall in love, don’t have expectations; it wasn’t a relationship. But, in a sense, it was. It was an uncommitted one, what they’d been doing already: neighbors who had sex, free agents who found their way back to one another.
Before she met Elijah, Cassidy knew all about these kinds of relationships. She had grown up with parameters around her expectations when it came to someone loving her back. She was used to it; the idea that relationships came with conditions and restrictions. Why was this so hard?
She tilted her chin and made clear, “You don’t get a say in who I spend my time with. I don’t censure you.”
“Nothing to censure. I am not going to keep these women around permanently. So yeah, I’m going to state my opinion. I’m still your neighbor. I going to have a say about the asshole who might be moving in,especiallyif you’re short-sighted enough to settle on a pretty boy who doesn’t deserve you.”
Cassidy raised a brow at him. “IfIfall in love with Roman, I imagine we’ll buy you out and build a massive lake house. Being rich and all.”
“Not enough fucking money on the planet would move me off that land if he takes up residency,” he declared passionately, the look in his eye turning possessive at her suggestion.
She blinked. It was statements like those that would leave her in purgatory as to where they stood. But, she knew when not to press an issue. He’d given up something she was surprised he’d confess: a piece of his history. And he’d redrawn their boundaries, silently acknowledging their relationship was more than casual, although he wanted to place that stamp on it firmly.