74 - Revelations

“You wanna tell me what the fuck’s going on?” he quietly demanded from the edge of the patio. 

From where Cassidy stood beside the chair he favored, there was a distance of about eight feet between them, but it might as well have been the distance between here and New Jersey.  That’s how far removed she felt from the man who had come to mean as much to her as anyone in this world. 

Standing there with his feet planted wide, a flattened mouth and crossed arms that made his biceps bulge, he was the epitome of aloofness.  It almost brought a chill to the spring breeze that swirled through the clearing and enticed errant strands from her ponytail to skitter across her face. 

Pushing them aside, she blandly noted, “If I wanted to do that, I woulda done it in the first place.”

“Jesus Christ.”  His sigh reeked of disgust as he stripped off his sunglasses and jammed them into the neckline of his shirt.  It gave her the full impact of his eyes and definitively proved that he wasn’t cold or aloof.  “Can we cut the crap already?”

It was a funny thing that happened just then.  Up until this very second, she would’ve sworn those sunglasses were shielding her from his anger but, as soon as his eyes touched upon her, Cassidy realized they had been concealing something entirely different.

Reality.

While the man standing before her was dressed in the same manner and fashion as they day they met, reality was that a lifetime had happened since that day.   He wasn’t a famous stranger sitting across from her at Tully’s bar and reluctantly agreeing to expose his legendary baby blues.  He was Jon.

Jon, who physically and emotionally touched her more deeply than anyone before him.  Jon, who would softly giggle every time she kissed that ticklish spot just under his jaw.  Jon, who would get so lost in his songwriting that he didn’t even realize he was singing out loud. 

He was the man she loved.

Their relationship wasn’t conventional, nor was it moral, but it was based on the unvarnished truth.  Hadn’t she recently told David that she’d rather be told the painful truth than try and distinguish the difference between fact and fiction?  The man in front of her would want nothing less, and she respected him enough to honor that.

“I don’t wanna tell ya, but since it turns out I can’t look you in the face and give you anything but the God’s honest truth... guess I am.”  She sighed and shook her head in resignation while relocating the shovel from his usual chair to the fire pit.  “Would you like to sit down?”

“No.”  With the prowess of a large cat, he had silently and stealthily crept up behind her and now tugged at her elbow until she faced him.  The intensity of those legendary eyes was tangible at close range and Cassidy couldn’t suppress the shiver that trickled up her spine.  “I wanna get something straight first.  In the interest of there being no misunderstanding.”

Tipping her chin, she met his intensity with forthrightness, because now that she was going to tell him about Dorothea, she had nothing to hide.  “Alright.”

“Did you mean anything in that goddamn note of yours?” Jon grilled.

 “Most of the individual facts are true, but I blended ‘em together to create an illusion of something that wasn’t.”

He interpreted that to mean she used the truth to fabricate bullshit.  That didn’t please him, nor was it the unequivocal “no” he’d been looking for, but he would take it for now. 

“Do you have any idea how much I dislike being deceived?  Because it’s a whole fucking bunch.  And I can’t even describe how much I hate being deceived by someone who supposedly loves me.”

To her credit, she didn’t flinch or shrink away.  Cassidy held her head high and looked him in the eye with a nod.  “I could tell you it doesn’t hardly count since I wasn’t able to carry it out to the end, but I s’pose that doesn’t change the action.  Neither does the fact that I was doing it because I love you.  All I can say is I’m sorry and hope my explanation will ease the sting.”

“You can also say you’ll never fucking do it again.”

This was a deal-breaker.  Their relationship necessitated a higher level of trust than most, due to the sheer nature of it, and if she couldn’t convince him this was some kind of freak anomaly, he wouldn’t be able to move forward with her. 

“I’ll never fucking do it again,” she recited verbatim.  He was a little surprised at that considering her aversion to the f-bomb, but pleased.  If she was willing to state it that bluntly, she was taking this seriously.

“And, in the future, any discussion about our relationship takes place face-to-face.  Understand?”

“Yes.”

Good.  He was tired of being tense and irritated.  Everything else could wait just a damn minute.

Jon stepped in and hooked her by the neck with one arm, snugging the other under her shoulder blades to pull her close, and she instantly completed the embrace with a tight squeeze.  Releasing a breath that it felt like he’d been holding for two days, he rested a cheek atop her head and let his anger be replaced with a warmth that was more soothing than the afternoon sunlight in the Tennessee woods.

“I’m sorry,” came the gentle murmur against his chest.  “I just felt like my hands were tied.”

Turning to place a kiss on the top of her head, Jon then eased back to run a palm from her cheek to jaw.  “I’m not going to be around as much as I want, Dixie.  My marriage aside, it’s just the nature of what I do, but if you run into some kind of problem, text me.  I’ll call the first chance I get and we’ll deal with it.  Okay?” 

“I suppose.”

Again, not an unequivocal answer, but he’d take it for now.

“C’mon.”  Jon took her by the fingers and guided her to the patio chairs.  “Let’s get this over with.”

“You’re not gonna like how it ends,” Cassidy warned as she perched her bottom on the edge of one seat and left him to take the other. 

“I didn’t fucking like how it started, either.  Just tell me and we’ll work through it.”

“Alright.  You want the long version or the short?”

There was a little bit of a headache starting to form right between his eyes and he rubbed absently at the spot.  Figuring she could always go back and add in more details he advised, “Start with the short.”

Cassidy reached across the little table positioned between the chairs to pick up his free hand in both of hers and stroke the knuckles with her thumb.  “If I keep seein’ you, your wife is gonna make sure you don’t get the Titans.   That was the message she sent along with the sheriff after tellin’ him where to find me.”

Of all the things he had considered she might say, that wasn’t in the top six thousand.  A diagnosed brain tumor, leaving her with only months to live?  Maybe.  Her dead grandmother visiting her in a dream to preach morality?  Sure.  She really couldn’t stand the thought of hiding from the media all day every day?  He could totally see – and relate to – that. 

But Dorothea?  Never.  Not in a million years could he have seen that coming.  Then again, prior to this morning, he couldn’t have ever guessed she’d be determined to accompany him on a business trip either.  The timing of his departure just happened to coincide with her trip into the city, or she may have further pushed that conversation.  As it was, he expected to hear about it soon.

And how in the hell did she know where Cassidy was?

“Are you absolutely sure about all this?”

Slight shoulders lifted under the concert t-shirt as Cassidy offered what consideration she could.  “I didn’t speak to her directly so I can only go by what the sheriff said, and that was it.”

Jesus.  Every time he thought things couldn’t get any more complicated, somebody just had to go and prove him wrong.  His wife was threatening to jeopardize something she knew that was on his bucket list.  And doing it through his mistress. 

That slight headache was shaping up to be a full-blown skull splitter.

“Baby doll, I can’t pretend to know how you feel right now, but listen to me for just a minute.” Her ponytail shook along with her head when she expelled a soft breath.  “You probably don’t wanna hear this, but I see a lost little boy in you at times and I’m drawn to him like nothin’ else in this world.  At first, it was enough for me to entice you outta your sunglasses and make you smile.  Then it was enough to give you my body so that you could reconnect with the creative piece of your soul.  After that, I needed to be the one to drive away all your ghosts.”

She was right.  He didn’t want to hear it.  What self-respecting man want to hear that a woman is drawn to his neediness?  That she thinks him anything less than fully self-sufficient?  As shitty and inadequate as that made him feel, he couldn’t deny that he was lost when they met – and that he probably still would be it weren’t for her. 

“I didn’t realize how I was gonna thrive on nurturin’ you,” she admitted as she continued, not knowing where his thoughts lie.  “But when I’d hear you laugh out loud or see the stars dancin’ in your eyes, it was like a little slice of heaven for me.  Then the way you came to life over that dinner with Clay…  That was all it took for me to know you need the Titans.  That’s why I was willin’ to walk away and, if you ask me to, I’ll still do it.”

Although Cassidy wasn’t smiling now, when she did it was potent enough to reach across a room and physically touch him.  Her lightly accented “baby doll” wrapped around him with loving comfort.  The stroke of her hand carried the warmth of a caress from the summer sun.  And if all that wasn’t enough, she’d once again shown more care and interest for what made Jon happy than his wife of twenty-six years had. 

The long and short of it was that his world was better a place since she’d come along. Admittedly, it was a more fucked up place, too, but even as his life spiraled into cluster-fucked uncertainty, Cassidy still felt like his sanity. 

 Jon wasn’t ready to give her up.

“C’mere,” he coaxed, holding out a hand and closing his fingers around the one she laid in it.  Using that gentle grip, he tugged in a silent request for her to rise and guided her to stand in front of him.  One hand came to rest on each of her hips, and Jon solemnly regarded her from beneath the bill of his cap.  “I don’t want you to walk away.”

“Me either,” was her simple murmur as her hands framed his face.  “But what are you gonna do?”

That was a damn good question, and one he was asking himself at that very moment.  Too bad the one thing that came to mind wasn’t a long-term solution. 

Gotta get through the short-term before you make it to the long-term.

“I’m gonna make love with you and hope for inspiration in the aftermath.”