Four Of A Kind

Cassidy grabbed my wrist and pulled me down the hallway before Harlow could finish her taxonomy of mythological household servants. Harlow called after us that she would save Isaiah more waffles, that she had a new anime to show Iris, and that someone should tell Vivienne to stop googling rock-paper-scissors strategies because it was over and paper had won.

Cassidy didn’t stop pulling until we’d turned two corners and ended up in a small alcove near the library entrance that I recognized from previous experience as one of the manor’s many pockets of dead space. Places where hallways met at odd angles and created little nooks that served no purpose except giving the impression that the architect had been paid by the square foot and was determined to earn every cent.

She released my wrist and crossed her arms.

This close, without the chaos of the breakfast table and the group dynamic and the constant interruptions, I could see the details. The dark circles under her eyes that she’d tried to cover with concealer, unsuccessfully. The chipped black nail polish on her index finger. The way her jaw kept tightening and releasing like she was chewing on words she hadn’t spit out yet.

“You’re staring,” she said.

“You pulled me into a corner and haven’t said anything.”

“I’m working up to it.”

“Take your time. I’ve got nowhere to be until Sabrina invents a reason to materialize behind me.”

Cassidy’s mouth did something complicated. Not a smile. Not a frown. Something in between that looked like it physically hurt her to maintain. She uncrossed her arms and then crossed them again, as though her body couldn’t decide what posture communicated the right level of hostility versus vulnerability.

“About last night,” she started.

“Which part of last night.”

“All of it. The car. The confession. The part where I basically told you I’d rather fail a math test and become your pet for a day than pretend I don’t want to climb you like a tree.”

My face heated. I kept my expression neutral through sheer force of will and three years of bartending experience at the Velvet Room, where women twice Cassidy’s age said things four times worse and I had to smile and pour them another martini.

“I remember that conversation, yes.”

“Good. Because I need you to know that I meant it and I’m not taking it back and if you bring it up as leverage I will actually kill you.”

“That’s a lot of contradictions in one sentence.”

“Welcome to my personality.” She stepped closer. The hallway behind her was empty, morning light from a window I couldn’t see throwing long gold rectangles across the carpet. Her purple eyes were the kind of vivid that shouldn’t exist in nature, the color of late twilight or expensive ink, and they pinned me against the wall without her laying a single finger on me.

“The bet still stands,” she said.

“Cassidy.”

“I failed the test. Sixty-two percent. Which means for twenty-four hours, I do whatever you say. Whenever you say. However you say.”

The air in the alcove had gotten warmer. Or maybe the alcove had gotten smaller. Hard to tell. Cassidy’s tank top had a rip near the collar that exposed her collarbone, which was the kind of detail I absolutely did not need to be cataloging at nine fifteen on a Saturday morning.

“We haven’t set a date for it,” I said carefully.

“I know we haven’t. I’m setting it now. Two weeks from today. The Saturday after the festival.”

“That would be during Sabrina’s rotation.”

Cassidy’s lip curled. “The bet existed before the rotation. It’s grandfathered in.”

“I don’t think relationship law works like that.”

“It does now. I’m establishing precedent.”

I looked at her for a long moment. Cassidy Valentine, standing in an alcove of her dead father’s mansion, wearing yesterday’s clothes and too much attitude and a smudge of Harlow’s strawberry cream on her lower lip that she clearly hadn’t noticed.

“You’ve got something on your mouth,” I said.

Her hand flew to her face. “Where?”

“Right side. Lower lip.”

She wiped at it with the back of her hand, leaving a faint pink smear across her skin that made her look approximately nineteen percent less intimidating and approximately forty percent more human. The vulnerability that flickered through her expression lasted maybe half a second before she buried it under several tons of trademark Cassidy aggression.

“Don’t change the subject.”

“I didn’t change anything. You had cream on your face.”

“The bet.” She jabbed her finger against my chest. Her nail polish was chipped and her cuticles were ragged from where she’d been picking at them, a nervous habit that Harlow had mentioned once and that Cassidy would absolutely murder me for noticing. “Twenty-four hours. You. Me. No Vivienne scheduling it into a spreadsheet. No Sabrina turning it into a psychological experiment. No Harlow trying to film it for her Instagram story.”

“Film what, exactly.”

The pink that climbed Cassidy’s neck could not have been more obvious if she’d hired a skywriter. “I haven’t decided yet.”

“You’re blushing.”

“I am not. I’m flushed from cardiovascular activity. I ran this morning.”

“You ran this morning and then came straight to the breakfast table without showering?”

“Shut up.” She pressed her finger harder against my sternum. “Say yes.”

“Yes to what.”

“To the bet. To twenty-four hours. To whatever happens during those twenty-four hours that neither of us can predict because you’re an idiot who keeps trying to control everything and I’m an idiot who keeps breaking things and somehow those two kinds of stupid might cancel each other out.”

I could feel her heartbeat through her fingertip. Rapid. Uneven. The same rhythm I’d felt when she tackled me in the library after scoring ninety percent on her quiz, the same rhythm that had pulsed against my chest in her bedroom when she’d sat on my lap and told me she liked me. Cassidy’s heart never lied even when her mouth was running interference.

“Yes.”

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