“What does it mean, Grady?”
“Was he talking toyou?”
She let out a breath. “Yes.”
“In what context?” Grady pressed, but his tone said he was pretty sure he already knew.
“You’re putting me in an awkward position,” she said honestly.
“Me?” he asked incredulously.
At a disadvantage, she relented. “Don’t tell Jason. He will have a fit. For some reason, he is completely opposed to Mac and me—not that thereisa Mac and me—we aren’t together. It only happened a few times.”
There was a long pause, then, “Do you knowwhyJason doesn’t want Mac and you together?”
“No. I assume it’s an overprotective older brother vibe. I mean, I’m not naïve. I know what Mac is like with women.”
Grady answered, “No, it has nothing to do with that. It has everything to do with Josie.”
“Josie? What do Mac and Josie have to do with one another?”
There was stunned silence from the other end before he answered, “Jesus, Jason never told you? Cassidy… Josie was Mac’s fiancée.”
After that bombshell, nothing else Grady said registered.
Her legs collapsed from beneath her. She hit the kitchen floor, stunned. Every time Jason had talked to her—thefirst timehe told her the story about Josie—he had left out a tremendous, significant detail: her neighbor was responsible for the woman’s condition. Every update, every time he had mentioned the fiancé who was fighting to keep the woman on life support—the man who was like family to them all—she should have pieced it together; the fiancé’s trauma… Mac’s trauma.
But there was more than one soldier out there with PTSD. How the hell was she supposed to know?
Now Jason’s words came back to her, and it infuriated her. If he had been worried, he should have been honest with her.Lock your doors, Cassie… He’d never intentionally hurt you.Well put, Jason:intentionally.Worry about Macright now. Right now:not in the past, where he’d attacked and put the woman he’d been engaged to into a vegetative state.
She wondered how Josie would feel about that. Did it matter that he hadn’tmeant it?
And Mac, locking her in a room and not sleeping in the same bed with her. Using extreme caution, but not telling her why. Not telling her he’d choked the woman he’d loved near to death.
My bullshit.
But it wasn’t bullshit—it was something she should have known. Either he or Jason should have told her.
It had all been right there in front of her.
She never found out what the Spanish translation had been, the words slipping out of her consciousness in light of Grady’s revelation.
She was upset and hurt. She couldn’t even confront Jason about it. So she didn’t. She ignored his texts and calls, which coincidentally (or not) began shortly after she’d hung up from Grady. She eventually ignored Grady, too. Blaming Grady might not have been fair, but he was part ofthe brotherhood, so he got to take the blame with them.
The brotherhood: the trio of men who entered her life at the beginning of the season only to upend it. She wasfinished.
Two days later, Cassidy sat blankly reading a book, turning pages even though the words hadn’t made an impression on her. Her mind was fighting not to wonder about her neighbor, about how he was doing, if he was coping. She didn’t care. Screw him.
She’d resorted to blocking Jason, so peace had reigned for hours. Now, it was nearing midnight. So when her phone started to ping, her brows drew together in irritation. The paranoid side of her brain suspected he’d bought a second phone to annoy her.
Reaching for her phone, she flipped it to read the screen. She let out a disgusted sound and rejected the call, tossing the phone back on the cushions. “Darlene.” Too late to deal with her.
The phone started buzzing again immediately.
Cassidy was determined to ignore it. The buzzes ended, followed by a ding indicating a message. Then the buzzing started all over again. She looked at the phone. “Seriously?”
Darlene wasn’t usually one to pester, especially this late.