Page 63 of Falling For You

He didn't say anything for a moment. "What?"

"My real name is Cassandra."

His thumb stopped moving on my shoulder. I could feel his heartbeat under my cheek, steady, waiting.

"Cassandra." He brushed his thumb across my cheek. "Why don't you go by Cassandra?"

I leaned into his hand. Closed my eyes for a second.

"When I was a teenager, there were these girls at school. Liz, Jen, and Sanaiya." I traced a line along his collarbone. "They used to say my name like it was a punch line. A pretty name on a girl with dirt on her knees."

"Kids are cruel."

"They were right, though. I didn't know how to carry it. I grew up with my dad. Just him. No mom. No one to show me how to be a woman. He taught me how to shoot and change a tire and read a case file. He was everything a father should be. But he couldn't teach me what he didn't know."

Wyatt's thumb brushed the back of my neck.

"After he died, I started figuring it out on my own. Little things. Spending too long in aisles I used to walk past. Buying things I never thought I was allowed to want." I smiled even though it hurt. "It felt like finding a room in my own house I didn't know was there. And I thought dating Elliot was part of it."

I stopped smiling.

"Then he told me I wasn't that kind of girl. That I dress like a man and think like a man. That some days he thought I was more of a man than he was."

Wyatt reached down, took my hand, and raised it. His hand was broad, rough, twice the size of mine. My fingers looked small and dainty next to his.

"A guy who looks at you and feels less like a man? That's not about you, Andy. That's about him."

He laced his fingers through mine.

"You want to know what I see? I see you at a scene and you've got this look, this focus, and nobody in their right mind would mess with you. And then you're on my kitchen floor braiding Birdie's hair and you're humming and you don't even know you're doing it." He shook his head. "Those two things. The same woman. I can't get over it."

I laughed and kissed him.

"Only my mom and dad ever called me Cass. And now you."

His hand came up and tucked my hair behind my ear.

"Cass," he said. "I like it."

He kissed me. Slow. Like he understood exactly what I'd just handed him.

CHAPTER 25

Lillian's Sweater

WYATT

I thought I had Andy Walsh figured out the night she beat Travis at darts. Turns out I didn't know the half of it.

The first time she came home from a long shift and walked straight into me, it caught me off guard. She didn't say anything. She just dropped her bag by the door, crossed the kitchen, and pressed her face into my chest. I put my arms around her and felt the tension leave her shoulders one breath at a time. I thought it was a one-time thing. A bad day. It wasn't. She did it every time. After a double, after a hard call, after a Wednesday that was just long, she walked through my door and folded herself into me.

She hugged me from behind while I was cooking. She leaned into me on the couch until her weight settled against my ribs and stayed there. I'd spent months watching Andy Walsh hold the entire world at arm's length, and now she couldn't sit next to me without touching me.

She picked the movie one night. It was something with a wedding at the end and a lot of rain. I wasn't paying attention because Andy's head was on my shoulder and that was better than anything on the screen. About an hour in, her breathing changed. I looked down and her eyes were wet. She blinked hard and told me she was fine, and when I smiled she told me to shut up. By the credits she was crying and pretending she wasn't. I pulled her closer and kept my mouth shut. Some things you don't ruin by pointing them out.

She learned every flower in Daphne's shop and what they meant. On Saturdays, she and Birdie stood at the window choosing the week's bouquet together. She painted Birdie's fingernails on the bathroom floor with tiny bottles of polish from the drugstore while Birdie painted Andy's toes. The color was always glitter. Always Birdie's choice. Andy kept her fingernails clean for work, but nobody at the precinct had any idea what was under her boots.

She learned to make Birdie's favorite chocolate chip cookies from scratch. My kitchen smelled like burned sugar for a week. I brought every batch to the firehouse. The burned ones, the flat ones, the ones she finally called done. Not one of them tasted like a failure to me, and the guys couldn't tell which were which either.