Chapter 10

TEN

CASSIE STARED at two boys. One was a pretty average-looking teenager. The other was a skinny kid with thick glasses and acne and a truly awful haircut that made him look like he was sixty instead of sixteen.

“This is you?”

He nodded.

“Are you blind without your glasses?”

“I was. Had surgery a few years ago. Now? Perfect vision.”

She looked from the photo to the man sitting two feet away. Then she looked back at the photo. “Um...” She was truly at a loss. He’d shocked her into a land of confusion and curiosity. “I’m guessing you discovered the gym at some point after this photo was taken.”

Donovan smiled, and the smile finally convinced her that the boy in the photo and the man beside her were the same person. “You guessed correctly.”

Cassie was intrigued, but Donovan’s glow-up wasn’t an excuse, or an explanation, for the end of their relationship. The boy in the photo stood before a large home. And while the clothes weren’t to her taste, they screamed expensive. “You told me that you come from a well-off family who didn’t approve of your career choices and that you don’t have much to do with them.”

“All true. When I told my parents I wanted to be a police officer instead of a doctor, my mother told me that it was noble to want to help people, but that I would regret it if I, and I quote, ‘failed to live up to my potential’ and ‘turned my back on the hard work of the generations that came before me’ by choosing a profession that was both dangerous and, in my family’s view, menial. And then my mother cried. A lot.”

Donovan took a drink. “I still don’t know if I was weak-minded, or if they were just that good at manipulating me. Either way, I went to college and got my degree in biochemistry. Was accepted to med school.”

His hand clenched the can, and Cassie reached out and pried it from his fingers. Then she leaned toward him and took his hands in hers. “What happened?”

He nodded toward the photo that still glowed from his phone on the coffee table. “That kid in the photo. His name was Chris. We were best friends. Did everything together. Neither of us wanted to be doctors, but we knew we’d be letting everyone down if we didn’t pursue medicine. Our senior year of college, Chris started acting strange. I couldn’t figure out what was going on, and I was busy with school. I missed it.”

Cassie braced herself for what was coming.

“I found him the night before graduation. He’d overdosed. I found his journals. He’d been miserable since he was in junior high. He wanted to pursue music. He was a talented cellist, but his family told him he couldn’t make a living that way. At least, not the kind of living he was supposed to make. In his case, they’d played the family card in a different way. Told him that as an only child, it was his responsibility to have a career that would make it possible for him to take care of his parents.”

Cassie squeezed his hands. “I’m so sorry.”

He gave her a humorless smile. “I joined the Marines the next day. I didn’t tell anyone. I packed up my apartment and made my plans. I knew my parents would be angry, but I thought they would come around. I was going to be an officer. I expected them to roll with it. Instead, my father contacted our congressman and spent two years trying to get me out.”

Cassie couldn’t wrap her mind around parents like that.

“I tried to keep the door to them open. Tried to find a way to bridge the gap between what they wanted me to do and what I needed to do. When I got out of the Marines, I joined the police force in Chicago. I thought if I moved up the ranks and worked in a big city, maybe it would give my profession some validity in their eyes.” He stared at the floor. “Turns out that even though all I’ve ever wanted to do was to be a police officer, some of what I experienced in Afghanistan messed me up enough that the level of violence and corruption in Chicago brought me to a breaking point. My therapist told me I had two choices: find a different profession or find a way to practice my profession in a safer place.”

“That’s why you came here.”

“Yeah. I knew Gray from the Marines. Reached out. He had a place for me, and I’ve never regretted it. I feel so fulfilled here. Like this is what God put me on this earth to do. I can help protect this town and the people here. I won’t ever be rich or famous. But I’m completely okay with that.”

“And your family?”

“I talk to my mom a couple of times a year. Never talk to my dad. He says he’ll talk to me when I come to my senses. But the relationship is shattered. It took me a long time to see it, but it’s all about control. I wouldn’t do what they wanted so they won’t have anything to do with me. They claim if I loved them, if I was a good, respectful son, if I was a good Christian, I would bow to their wishes.”

DONOVAN WAS emotionally drained from the retelling, but the fury on Cassie’s face was worth it.

She jumped to her feet and paced away. “What is wrong with them? How could they not see that trying to force you to conform to their idea of what you should do would destroy you? How could they try to make you feel like you had to do that to show them you loved them?”

“I grew up with them, and it surprised me too.” He stood and walked until he was standing in front of her. He reached for her hands, and she didn’t pull away. “What I do know is that I swore I would never ask someone to change their dreams for me. Love isn’t making someone do what you want them to do. Love is setting them free to do what makes their soul sing.”

A knowing settled over Cassie’s features. “No.” She pulled her hands away.

Donovan waited.

“Please tell me you didn’t decide something like this without talking to me first.”

“I didn’t want to pressure you. I tried for so long to do what other people wanted me to do. People who loved me. People I loved. And in the end, it made me bitter and ruined our relationship. I couldn’t do that to you.”

Cassie practically vibrated with rage. “I’m sorry to say this about your family, but that wasn’t love. Love is always looking out for someone else. Love doesn’t seek its own.”

“Exactly. Love doesn’t seek its own. I couldn’t ask you to stay here for me. I thought you needed a bigger city. The possibility to grow. Maybe even leave the country. I’m eight years older than you are, and I spent a good part of my twenties figuring out what I need and where I belong. If I thought there was any way that I could follow you all over the country, I would do it. But if I tried, it would destroy me. And it would destroy our relationship. I’m going to be a small-town cop for the rest of my life. And I’m great with that. I love what I do, and I’m happy here. Honestly, the only thing that could make me happier would be if you were with me. But I didn’t see any way for us to stay together and live out the lives God has for us. Walking away nearly killed me, but it seemed like the best solution.”

Cassie walked around the coffee table and picked up her sweater from the sofa. “Let me get this straight. You broke up with me because you were afraid that at some point in the future, either I would resent you or you would resent me . Do I have that right?”

Donovan had no good answer. “Well, obviously, when you put it that way, it doesn’t sound great.”

She was edging closer to the door. “You chose the nuclear option over the possibility of future pain. You left me wounded and wondering what I’d done wrong, when I hadn’t done anything wrong at all.” Cassie put her sweater on.

“Cassie, please.”

“I need to think. And I think I need to think somewhere other than here.”

Donovan’s phone rang, but he ignored it. “Think here. Don’t leave. Don’t do what I did. Don’t make decisions without talking them through. Please. I’m sorry.”

Cassie’s face crumpled. “So am I, Donovan. So am I.”

She opened the door and ran down his porch steps. His phone rang again. He glanced at it and saw the number of the fire station. He accepted the call. “Bledsoe.”

“Hey. This is Stu. Hope I didn’t wake you up, but I thought you’d want to know.”

“What?”

“That deer in the road? It wasn’t hit by a car. It was shot.”

Donovan didn’t hesitate. He sprinted after Cassie and stepped in front of her Jeep. “Cassie. Stop!”

She froze and the car shook as she slammed on the brakes. She rolled down her window and yelled at him. “What is wrong with you? I could have hit you.”

“I need you to come back inside.”

“I’m not coming back in tonight.”

“Fine. Then I’m following you home.”

“You’d better not.”

“Cassie, someone shot that deer.”

All the fight went out of her as the implications sank in. She put the Jeep in Park and dropped her head to the steering wheel. “Why me?”

“I don’t know, baby. Come back inside. Please. Just until I can figure out what’s going on. I’ll call whoever you want and you can go home with them.”

Cassie unbuckled her seat belt, and Donovan opened her door. She took the hand he offered, and when she was on her feet, she didn’t let go. “This doesn’t make any sense.” She dropped her head against his arm as she walked beside him.

He paused to let Cassie walk through his open door. He followed and took a look at the phone he still clutched in his hand. The screen told him the call was active. He hit the speaker button and spoke. “You there, Stu?”

“What was that, man?”

“I’ll explain later. For now, tell me what you found.”

“That’s what I was trying to do when you disappeared.”

“Well, I’m back now.”

“Fine.” It was clear Stu was wondering what had happened and was annoyed that Donovan wasn’t sharing. “We went out there like you asked, expecting to find a deer versus car situation. Needless to say, we were a bit surprised to find a deer that had been shot. And she wasn’t shot on the road. She’d been moved.”

“How sure are you?”

“You do much deer hunting?” Stu’s question held more than a hint of condescension.

“Not much.” While Donovan had gone on a few hunts that had been held with the specific purpose of thinning the local deer population, he found no enjoyment in the activity. He preferred fly-fishing.

“I’ve been hunting in these parts since I was old enough to climb a tree stand. That deer was shot somewhere and dumped on the road. I shouldn’t say dumped. She was placed. Carefully. And given that Cassie was the first one to report it, I’d be willing to bet she was put there just a few minutes before Cassie drove up on her. There’s no way she could have been there for any length of time without someone slamming into her.”

Cassie sat in the same chair she’d been in earlier as Stu continued.

“I took pictures of the scene. We did a little video so you can see how close it was coming out of the curve. Even knowing she was there, we almost hit her.” Stu chuckled. “You given Cassie a speeding ticket lately?”

“What does that have to do with anything?” Donovan hadn’t, but he knew she’d gotten one in Asheville a few weeks earlier.

“Please.” Stu scoffed. “Everyone knows Cassie Quinn has a lead foot. If she’d been flying through there the way she usually does, she’d never have had time to stop. If she’d slammed into it at her normal speed, she could have flipped that Jeep. She’s lucky she’s in one piece.”