“Right, Danika?”
Shaking my head, I looked at Cassie, completely flustered and embarrassed. “I’m sorry, what?”
She laughed. “I said the girls should be fine, walking around campus right now, don’t you think?”
“Oh yeah. It’s still light out. I’d just make sure they came back here before it got dark.”
“That’s what I was thinking too,” she said before leaning over me and giving Jacey instructions and demands.
The three teenagers stood up and practically skipped away, and Melissa jumped down and took Jacey’s seat.
“Do you want to switch with me?” I asked, assuming that she’d want to be next to Cassie.
“No, you’re fine. I’ll have to move once Jacey gets back anyway. Heaven forbid she be far away from her brother,” Melissa said.
I looked at Cassie. “Is that true? I feel like she doesn’t want to be here.”
“She doesn’t,” Cassie said. “But when she is here, she has to be closest to him. I don’t know why. It’s just her thing. She’s always been that way.”
“That’s kinda sweet.”
“I heard that you and my nephew broke up. What happened?” Melissa asked, and I was a little taken aback.
“Melissa! Don’t listen to her, Danika. She’s nosy,” Cassie pretended to chastise her.
Melissa threw her hands up. “What? I can’t ask her what happened, but I can ask you? That doesn’t seem fair.” I opened my mouth to respond, but Melissa stopped me. “I already know anyway. Sorry. But I didn’t know you two had worked it out. Are you happy?”
I nodded. “Yes. Very. I think we’ll be okay,” I said as I blew out a small breath.
She threw her arm around me and pulled me close. “I think you will be too. I like you for him. And I don’t like anyone for my nephew.”
“That means a lot. Thank you,” I said, and I hoped she knew how genuinely I meant it.
Melissa grinned, her eyes practically closing. “Oh, you have so much fun stuff to look forward to.” Her words were positive, but the way she’d said them were disconcerting.
“Don’t scare her off,” Cassie said quickly, and I got a little nervous. “We just got her back.”
The crowd erupted once more, and we all looked toward the field just in time to see the ball fly over the center field fence. Mac had hit a home run, and all the guys were running toward home plate, waiting for him to get there. I watched as Mac pulled off his helmet once his foot touched home and high-fived his teammates with it before sprinting back into the dugout. Chance looked so excited, and I watched him slap Mac on the back and then the ass before picking him up in a back-breaking hug. Boys were really adorable sometimes.
“Can I ask you something?” I addressed the question toward Cassie, but I made sure Melissa heard me as well.
“Of course. You can ask me anything,” Cassie said as she waited for what I might say next.
“How did you get through it with Jack? I mean, was it hard for you when he played professional baseball, or was it easy?” I figured that I might as well ask so that I was more prepared for what my potential future entailed.
“It definitely had its challenges,” she said, her face twisting for a moment, “but it’s nothing you can’t get through. As long as you guys are honest with each other and communicate about everything.”
I nodded in understanding because everyone always said that the key to a healthy relationship was communication. “It’s so easy to let things spin out of control if you don’t talk about them,” I said, realizing just how sideways Chance and I could have become these past few months if one of us hadn’t pushed the other to stop running and talk it out.
“It’s extremely easy to keep things to yourself. To assume that your partner should just know when you’re upset and about what. But that isn’t fair,” she started to explain, and I found myself hanging on to each and every word. I wanted her advice. “None of us are mind readers. We have to talk. It usually fixes everything anyway.”
“Eventually,” Melissa added, and they both laughed while I felt a little left out, not knowing exactly what they were referring to.
“It’s not always easy to talk about the hard things. But you have to. If you’re starting to feel resentful. Or angry. Or like you aren’t getting enough time and support for you,” Cassie explained, “you have to tell him. He won’t know anything’s wrong unless you let him know.”
That was a good point. I knew that, in the past, I’d expected Jared to sense that I was upset about things and instinctively know how to fix them. Not only did he not fix the things that bothered me, but he also carried on like everything was fine. Because in his mind, it was. And that had only made me angrier and more annoyed.
“She’s right. Guys are pretty simple. They will want to fix what’s wrong. But they have to know what it is first,” Melissa said.
I was grateful to have the two of them to talk to. They filled a void I’d tried to pretend I wasn’t living without.
My brain reeled as it fought with itself about the next question I wanted to ask. I knew it was none of my damn business, but a part of me wanted to know how Cassie had done it. It seemed so impossible from the outside.
“I read some stuff about you online. I didn’t mean to, but I was researching, and it came up.”
“What kind of stuff? We went through a lot,” Cassie said with an awkward laugh.
“That’s putting it mildly.” Melissa made a silly face.
“The cheating?” I whispered before looking around. I didn’t want anyone to overhear our conversation and start judging or eavesdropping. I felt protective over Cassie and Jack for whatever reason.
“Ooh,” Melissa made a sound like she’d been sucker-punched. “Straight for the jugular.”
“I’m sorry. It’s not my place. I shouldn’t have even brought it up,” I said, feeling awful for instigating such a touchy topic and what was most likely still a sore subject.
“Don’t listen to Fun Size over there.” She thumbed toward Melissa, and I started grinning at the nickname. “That was a long time ago. A lifetime. What did you want to know?” Cassie seemed completely unfazed by my asking, almost like she had expected the question.
“How did you forgive him?” I couldn’t imagine.
Her smile softened. “It wasn’t easy. Forgiveness for something that devastating is really hard. It eats you up day in and day out if you let it. And people said a lot of horrible things about me online. They called me a doormat. They said I was weak,” she admitted with sadness, but I still heard the strength in her voice. I knew all the things she had accomplished in her life, and Cassie Carter was the opposite of weak. “The thing is, it’s really easy to judge a relationship from the outside when you’re not the one in it.”
I nodded in agreement because that was exactly what I had done when I first read about it online. I judged. I made assumptions. I’d put myself in her position and convinced myself that I’d never be able to forgive that kind of indiscretion. I assumed that once a guy did something like that, he could never fix things. Once trust had been obliterated, it would never rebuild the same way. I had no idea how someone could forgive a cheater, but here I was, looking at a woman I completely respected, unable to imagine her married to anyone else.