Some Like It Hopeless (A Temporary Engagement)

In love with her gay best friend since forever, Cassandra Spencer has accepted that not everyone can have the fairy tale. Not everyone can have marriage and children and the same last name. But she has Shane, and she loves him and he loves her... Until he falls in love with someone else. Someone nothing like Cassandra; someone she can never accept.

Brady Roberts destroyed his whole world, and there will be no forgiveness. No end to his guilt and pain. He exists day to day until he tangles with a woman who just won’t let him. A woman who believes that life is meant to be lived, no matter how hard it is. No matter how much it hurts. No matter how hopeless. Because sometimes, hopeless doesn’t have to mean alone. And sometimes, hopeless isn’t the end.

For Vicki-
You were a good and true friend
when a friend was needed most.
If there weren’t peppermint patties and
homemade Baileys in heaven before,
there sure are now.

Of course Cassandra would be wearing purple when it happened. The dress making her look as wide as a house, the color making her look like a zombie bride. Or bridesmaid, really.

Because that’s what she got for being a sister. Trussed up in the ugliest dress, in the ugliest color known to man.

And she’d worn the stupid dress. And she hadn’t complained too loud. At least to her sister.

Because her best friend, the love of her life, the man she would die for, had looked at her and told her to work it.

So Cassandra had pulled up her Spanx, had mentally flipped off her sister (right, like her sister hadn’t done it on purpose), and had worked it. And it had been okay. Because Shane was right there with her. Working it, too. His dress shirt and socks matching the putrid purple of her dress, his arm linked through hers, his smile wide and manic, his whispered observations snide and catty.

And Cassandra could smile at her sister. Could tolerate her parents.

And then. . .he wasn’t right there with her. He was off having fun. Then, off getting distracted by a pretty new bird. And then, off. Gone.

Gone
.

Cassandra watched Shane forget about her, watched him leave the reception without her. The first time ever that he’d forgotten about her, hadn’t made sure that she was okay with him going off for a little bit of fun. They’d been each other’s wingmen for years and they’d always made sure the other was okay with being left alone.
Always
.

Shane wouldn’t have even asked today because he would have known that Cassandra couldn’t handle her family without him.

Except. . .there he went. With his pretty new bird, and Cassandra decided Shane’s pretty new bird wasn’t all that pretty. His pretty new bird looked boring– brown hair, brown eyes, and wearing a white shirt, black suit, and black tie. He looked like he wasn’t even sure he was gay.

Cassandra had known this day would come. She loved Shane, and he loved her. But they were a bird and a fish. In love, with nowhere to live.

She’d known that someday he would find another bird to fly with. He’d find a bird he could love
and
he could live with.

Shane would have never left Cassandra alone at her sister’s wedding, wearing this dress, unless he’d found that bird.

How fitting that on this day she looked like death warmed over. Because this day, she watched her heart walk out the door. This day, she died.

Fucking purple.

Thirty minutes later

The bartender poured her another shot. “You okay?”

Cassandra didn’t look at him, just tipped her head back and tried to kick-start her heart with another shot of liquid fire.

“It’s the dress. Purple is not my color.”

“It’s not the dress. It’s the tears sliding down your cheek.”

Cassandra blinked, focusing on him for an instant before taking the little square napkin he was offering.

She patted her cheek and decided that alcohol wasn’t working fast enough. She wondered if a different sort of distraction would work better than alcohol.

But not with this bartender. He looked young and fresh, like tragedy had never touched him, and Cassandra wanted to reach across the bar and choke him to death.

She turned away from him, scanning the room of the swanky hotel on the outskirts of L.A. Everyone was happy; it was a wedding. Cassandra wouldn’t find what she needed here.

She crumpled the napkin in her hand and stood, making her way to the door. She’d go home, get out of this dress, and. . .

Do something. Maybe do nothing. Maybe do nothing for a really long time.

She left without telling her family, gave her ticket to the valet, and waited. And waited.

A deep voice behind her said, “I’ve called you a cab.”

“What?”

Cassandra turned, nearly taking a step back when she got a look at him.

Tall, big. He wore a well-fitted suit over his bulked-up body. Black suit, black shirt, black tie. An ugly scar snaked down his cheek.

His dark brown eyes looked nearly black. His expression empty except for the loathing radiating from him. And Cassandra knew, this man had died. Just like her.

Cassandra stared at him. He stared back.

“I’ve called you a cab. No one leaves my hotel drunk and driving. Where’s your designated driver?”

Cassandra’s throat closed and she choked out, “He left.”

He looked at her and she knew he could see the death in her eyes as well as she could see it in his.

He said, “We make our own tragedies,” and Cassandra whispered, “Yes.”

He turned back to the hotel, holding the door open for her, and she followed. Searching for a way to stop the pain, even if it was for a little while.

Looking for a way to forget that she was a dead woman walking.

Cassandra let herself into her little bungalow the next morning. Rumpled, used, abused. Two people had come together last night, punishing themselves. Punishing each other.

It hadn’t been pretty, but it had been exactly what she needed.

She threw her phone on the counter without turning it on. She didn’t want to talk to anyone. She didn’t want to talk to a specific someone.

She didn’t want to find out that Shane hadn’t called her yet. That he still hadn’t remembered her.

She jumped at the knock on the door, whirling to face it. Telling herself that she wouldn’t cry in front of Shane, telling herself she had to open the door because he had a key.

But when she looked through the peephole, it was No Name the Giant. In a different all-black suit, looking clean and crisp. Still scarred.

She opened the door slowly, narrowing her eyes at him. “Did you follow me?”

He held out her driver’s license. “I tried to catch you before you left. You can’t drive without a license.”

Cassandra had stuffed it inside her bra yesterday along with her phone so she wouldn’t have to buy a purple clutch. It must have been lost in the scuffle of clothing removal.

“You could have mailed it to me.”

“And you would have been driving around for three days without a license.”

She said, “You’re a real stickler about driving. Do you follow every law to the letter?”

“I do now.”

She waived him inside, grabbing her license as he passed her. “I’m not going to ask.”

“Good.”

“Because last night was a one-night stand and I’m not ever going to see you again.”

He nodded, looking around her little living room. He’d taken her to the penthouse of his hotel last night, bigger than her whole house, and Cassandra had wondered if his hotel was actually
his
hotel. It could be. His suits said money, the hotel staff jumped when he so much as glanced at them.

Of course, they might have been jumping because he looked like he could crush anyone who got in his way and would enjoy doing it.

He said, “Maybe you’ll never see me again. And since you won’t ask, I guess I’ll tell you.”

“Yeah, I noticed you were a bit contrary last night.”

“I follow every letter of the law now because I’ve been to prison and I don’t want to go back.”

Cassandra eyed his body, the girth of his biceps. The dead look in his eyes.

She said, “For how long?”

“Not as long as I deserved.”

“Any tattoos?”

She’d seen his body last night but it had been dark. She might’ve missed one.

He pointed to the scar on his face. “This is enough for me.”

“Did you get that in prison?”

His hard face got harder. “No.”

Prison. Cassandra wasn’t sure how she felt about prison. About someone who’d actually been in prison.

He didn’t ever want to go back, so that might be a point in his favor.

He’d come right out and told her, and Cassandra didn’t know if that was in his favor or not.

Cassandra climbed onto a bar stool in her hideous, and now wrinkled beyond repair, bridesmaid dress. Not that she cared. She had plans for this dress and it involved a pair of scissors and then a match.

“Well, thanks for the license. And last night. Good-bye.”

He sat down on her couch, taking up all the room. He relaxed, leaning his head back and closing his eyes. “I feel like we have some leftover business from last night. I brought some rope.”

“Ick.”

“Maybe next time.”

“Maybe never.”

He opened his eyes to stare at her, obviously not believing there wasn’t going to be a next time.

She said, “I don’t think you know how a one-night stand works.”

He smiled a little, just the corners of his mouth moving up. “I know how a one-night stand works. I don’t think you know how a fling works.”

Her eyebrows hit her hairline. “You want to be upgraded to fling?”

She thought back to last night. It had been hot and fast. Cold and emotionless. She might be willing to upgrade him to fling. Might be willing to use him to warm her sheets.

He said, “Not right now. I didn’t get a lot of sleep last night.”

She’d been there, she knew.

“First, tell me why you went to prison.”

“For killing a woman and her child. For killing my woman and my child.”

Cassandra’s breath rushed out. She looked at the scar on his cheek, felt the fear dance in her belly. He probably weighed a good hundred pounds more than her and she knew that if he turned out to be some psycho, she was toast.

She scooted off her bar stool, walking around the kitchen counter and pulling a glass out of the cupboard. She filled it with water, all the while getting closer to the knives. If he tried, he would take her, but she’d make him suffer for it.

She took a long drink, watching him over the rim and finally asking, “How?”

He’d been watching her through slitted eyes, his head still leaning against the back of the couch, but at that he closed his eyes completely.