25. Epilogue

Epilogue

Normal (adjective)

n?r-m?l

Conforming to a type, standard, or regular pattern. Characterized by that which is considered usual, typical, or routine.

N ormal.

Normal.

I had said the word—both in my mind and aloud—so many times that it had begun to lose all meaning. Normal now sounded merely like a strange conglomeration of letters. It was mush. A moving of lips that may as well have been incoherent babbling in the distance.

Hence why I had taken the time to Google search the word and find the literal definition within a collegiate-approved dictionary. I now knew it verbatim as I was attempting to settle the confusion in my brain, but it did no good. It was still just…noise.

That being said, I knew what my normal could look like.

The morning that I was to return to work, she was there. Flitting around my kitchen in a tiny pair of cotton shorts and one of my t-shirts, I had smiled as I watched her pour my coffee into a travel mug. Because she knew that my tastes varied from day to day, she had asked how I wanted it. I told her that it was fine as is, for I was recently enjoying the bitter tannins just as she did. Cassie searched for my lunch in the fridge, and I reminded her that I had already retrieved it. I patted the space where I had safely secured it in my work bag slung across my shoulder, and she nodded in response, promptly beginning to search for anything else I needed.

I told her, "I've got it all, Darlin'. I have to go."

Cassie blew a rough breath through her nose. "You sure? "

Stepping forward to stand before her, I gently joked, "You're too young to get worry wrinkles," as I traced the space between her brows that looked wrought with concern.

She pouted out her lower lip, and I traced my touch downward to brush my thumb against it.

"One more day?" she pleaded.

The way she said it made me want to throw all knowledge of the necessity of having a job out the window.

"You're very good at puppy-dog eyes," I murmured, "but I've gotta get back to normal at some point—you know that."

Her arms wound around my lower back. "You could be late?"

I chuckled, pulling her in for a single kiss, and just as she hummed against me, I mockingly whispered, "Succubus."

"Does that mean yes?" she cooed.

"You're trying to fool me into you fucking me all day?"

"Mhm."

Her giggle was quieted with my mouth, and it took all the power I had in me to note, "Unfortunately, I don't get paid to be in bed with you."

Cassie groaned loudly. Her frown returned, and I nipped at her lip.

"You'll call me?" she asked .

"Yes."

"Right when you get in the car?"

Her palpable nervousness squeezed at my chest, and I touched my forehead to hers. "Right when I get in the car."

"Okay."

Our lips brushed together one last time, and I muttered, "Love you."

She sighed. "Love you, too."

I released her, happily grabbing my coffee from the counter, and called over my shoulder to her, "Enjoy being willfully unemployed while you can!"

Cassie gave me a hefty eye roll and a playful, "Uh huh," and I strolled out the door.

The last time I had been in my vehicle was when I went to retrieve it from the side of the highway the day before. Doing so had made my all-too-usual nervousness flare in my chest, and it was easily equated to someone staring over my shoulder. Or, perhaps, the feeling of being a child and running from a nonexistent monster—one that only lurked in the darkness after a light switch was flipped off, and you sprinted toward any remaining illumination.

Now was no different, but I pushed through, and there was no monster waiting to snatch me. I secured myself in the driver's seat, pulled out onto the road, and called Cassie as she had requested .

We spoke of her job options—of which, I heavily favored the salacious suggestion that she could be my own private, live-in dancer, though we both knew that option was one made in jest. She didn't care for the thought of returning to Gas Lamp or any other club, and neither did I—and I swear that wasn't due to my jealous tendencies. As much as it seemed that the threat in Salem and the surrounding area might end with Officer Dowler's arrest, we truly didn't know that for certain…so Cassie felt it too nerve-wracking to go back to dancing, no matter the location.

She read off job listings for accountants nearby, discouraged from the pay rate or necessity to gain further education in order to receive a decent salary. By the time I arrived in the parking lot at work, we were debating her monthly mortgage payment, the reality of how long her savings would last her during a job search, and whether or not she should expand her education. The mention of upcoming change had laced excitement in her voice, and as I walked into the office, the upturn of my lips remained until I reached my desk and Shawn nearly screeched:

"What the fuck?!"

The volume of his voice made me jump in place. Just having reached for my glasses in my work bag, I fumbled them by the stems, and they fell to the floor .

I clutched at my chest. "Jesus, Shawn!"

"Brooks!" Larry, who sat just two cubicles down from us and was approximately twenty years our senior, snapped from his seat, "Language!"

Picking up my glasses from the carpet, I began to polish the lenses with a pinch of the fabric on my shirt while Shawn stammered, "I—um—sorry, Larry."

Frames on my face, I glanced over to see his vibrant eyes wide as they trailed over my cuts and bruises. Not long enough to have begun to fade from the nasty purple to a more acceptable green, they remained marring my skin—dark and obvious—and Shawn looked no less than aghast. Stood at his full height in the entrance to his cubicle, his sweater-clad arms hung loose at his sides while he looked at me expectantly.

I sighed heavily. "Hi."

"Hi?" Shawn had begun to raise his voice in incredulity, but he managed to stop himself, glancing up and down the hallway of cubicles between us before he bustled over to mine. Hands on his hips as he stopped no further than a foot in front of me, he challenged with his decibel at a low murmur, "What happened?!"

"Mugged," I succinctly told the lie that I had been planning to. "I was mugged. Not exactly proud of it. "

"God…I—how—you're not exactly a small guy, Jay, how does that even happen?"

"People have their means," I remarked, "I don't exactly want to do a play-by-play here."

Shawn clenched his jaw and released it. "Are you good?"

"Look at my face, man—"

He grumbled, "Kinda hard not to—"

"I'm as good as I can be," I assured him. "I've just…I've had a hell of a week, or—or less than that, I don't—I've lost track of time at this point. I don't wanna talk about it. Okay?"

His green gaze bored into me for two long, time-sucking breaths, and though he didn't seem to want to cease his questioning, he replied, "Okay. Fine."

"How about you tell me about what's going on with you," I offered.

"You think I have anything to say about my life?" Shawn finally broke into a weak laugh. "You've been gone. I thrive off your gossip, James, and I've been severely deficient in that. My life is…" He hesitated before he joked, "Pretty damn boring unless I'm going to strip clubs with you."

His mention of Cassie without even saying her name brought a smile to my lips.

And to give him the shred of gossip he desired, I said, "She quit, y'know."

Shawn squinted at me. "Don't tell me that was your doing. It's her job, Jay—"

I cut him off, "Different circumstances, damn—I'm not that toxic."

His eyes shot to the ceiling. "I doubt that you actually are. Just sayin' in this particular instance, you seemed a little blinded."

"Yeah, yeah—"

"By the glow-in-the-dark lights."

I groaned, "Shawn."

"Brooks," he insisted, as he always does. "And, in fact, those lights were so blinding that you broke. A. Man's," he whispered the last word, "Fingers."

"Which he deserved," I countered quietly. "Don't act like you don't agree—"

"I do, I do," he relented.

"And I'm assuming that he still fuckin' works here," I sneered. Shawn nodded while I muttered, "Point— my point…not that I was wanting to in the first place, but strip club trips are not in the cards for me in the future, 'kay?"

He chuckled, "I figured that already, man."

"And," I admitted in a somber tone, for I knew it would bring a frown to his face, "I don't want to talk about my last week 'cause it's been a lot —including anything with Cassie."

My assumption about his inevitable expression was correct.

"Jay, please!" he whined.

"We're good, we're together," I succinctly spoke. "'Kay?"

Shawn griped, "That's not enough.

"Beer, though?" I offered. "In Salem?"

As if his saddened expression had never existed, he smiled wide.

"Yeah?"

And I returned it. "Yeah."

Cassie and I arrived at Henry's together, the atmosphere pleasantly quiet with only a handful of other patrons sitting at the counter. She gave Garrett a friendly wave. He stopped his motions from behind the bar, buzzed blond head lifting as he saw her greeting in his periphery. He happily waved back…and I tried my damnedest not to bark to defend my territory.

Not that she was my territory.

She was her own territory.

She was.

But she was mine .

Cassie glanced at me with playfully narrowed eyes as if she had read my every thought, and I immediately thanked my good graces that I hadn't spoken anything along those lines aloud. Throwing Garrett a begrudging waggle of my fingers in greeting, he returned it with a megawatt smile that made me chew on my tongue, and without skipping a beat, he turned to grab my usual whiskey. He held up the bottle in question with a raised brow. I nodded, and he went to work.

At the table that we used whenever Luke and Claire were off the clock, we sat in our usual seats, her on my left and I on her right. Already having arrived and received their own drinks, Luke and Claire spoke a simultaneous:

"Hey."

We returned it—me with an uptick of my head and Cassie with a chipper, "Hi," and once again, they talked at the same time.

"You still staying at Jay's, Cas?" had come from Claire's mouth, while Luke had merely asked how my day went as he had known that it was my first shift back at work.

Luke tipped his head to the side as he looked to her with a disbelieving smile.

"Claire," he laughed her name.

She hummed back, "Mhm?"

"Didn't we talk about this? "

"Whatever do you mean?" she coyly replied. "It's a simple question. They've never shown up somewhere together… so I'm asking."

"Not prying," he stated as if it were a reminder. "We're not prying—weren't you the one to say that we shouldn't be prying?" Luke feigned, waiting for Claire to reply. She opened her mouth to do so, and he mockingly cut her off, "I distinctly remember—"

"Yes, I'm still at Jay's," Cassie admitted, matter of fact.

Claire high-beamed on her. "Is that right?"

"A lot happened to make me bunk there for a bit, no?" she responded with a single, high eyebrow. "I'll get back to my place soon."

"No rush," I told her, and she shot me a crooked grin.

My drink was set before me, and we all looked to Garrett as he remarked, "Cas, I have to go grab another bottle of Jack from the back, so give me a sec—"

Without hesitation, she reached for my glass, took a hefty sip, smiled as if her insides were immune to fire, and took it as her own.

"That's okay, Garrett—Jay's gonna have another."

Garrett murmured an understanding, "Right," as he turned to move to the bar. "Be back."

"I'll buy your next one?"

Cassie was looking at me with a glint in her warm eyes that challenged me as she always did, and as I had done in the past, I imagined tucking the stray strands of hair behind her ear, pulling her to me, and kissing her so deeply that I could taste my whiskey.

Only this time, there was no need to sit back and imagine. My gaze wandered down to her mouth, her teeth bit at her lower lip, and I did it all—basking in every movement. Her hair was silky between my fingertips. The deep pull of whiskey she took had already seemed to bring a flush to her cheeks that I could feel on my palm. Her husky chuckle as I ushered her toward me with a curl of my hand on her neck played in my ears like soft music, and my whiskey on her lips—and oh-so-briefly on her tongue—sent me soaring.

Claire squealed, "AH!" as Luke groaned:

"Good God, Jay."

At my brother's complaint of our expressive public display of affection, I pulled away.

"Yes," I told Cassie. "You're buying my next one."

She giggled, my hand fell back to my lap, and Claire announced:

"I have been waiting for this to be official public knowledge!"

"Waiting for what to be public knowledge?" Shawn's voice came from my right, and I turned to him, surprised .

"Oh—hey."

"Hi, everyone," he greeted the table, and then fixed his gleeful gaze on me. "What, did you not hear me come in? Didn't hear that little ring of the bell above the door 'cause you were all…" He mimed embracing someone, his arms hanging in thin air as he comically moaned, closed his eyes, and licked.

Luke chortled, and as Shawn moved to sit down beside me in the third chair gathered around the head, I mumbled, "It wasn't that brazen, but something like that."

Shawn pointed at Claire. "If you're talking about Jassie—"

I grumbled, "Oh, God."

Cassie laughed— loudly.

Claire's eyebrows shot up as she questioned, "Jassie?"

"Mhm," he hummed, moving his finger to gesture toward me and Cassie. "These two. If you were talking about waiting for them to be public knowledge, ya should have been hanging with me."

She replied, "What is that supposed to mean?!"

Shawn shrugged. "Let's just say that I like to be in the inner circle of all things Jassie."

Claire squinted. "Inner circle as in…"

"As in, if ya wanted to debrief— "

"Shawn."

Without taking his eyes from Claire, he casually chastised, "Don't first-name me, Jay," and didn't skip a beat before continuing, "I've got notes. Receipts. Happenings over the last two…three weeks?"

Claire nearly yelled, "Weeks?!"

Shawn bobbled his eyebrows at her. "But the last few days or so? Zip. Zero. Nada. Sounds like you're not getting the full story from these two, either— we should compare notes."

"We're happily living in the present, thank you," I reminded him. "No need to gossip here."

"Well, go on, then!" she ushered him.

"Ah-ah," Shawn stopped her with an index finger in the air. "Not now—I'd hate to activate his grump gene."

Claire snatched her phone from the table. "Give me your number, Shawn."

"Brooks," he corrected her quickly and began to rattle off his cell number. He then asked Luke in an all-too-playful coo, "You wanna join in on the fun?"

Beer half-lifted to his mouth, Luke snorted, took his time taking his sip, set his glass down with a clunk, and upon realizing that Shawn was expectantly awaiting a response, he responded:

"Oh, you were serious. Ah—no. No." Seeing the side-eye that Claire shot his way, he gently added, "No, thank you. "

"Suit yourself," Shawn told him with a shrug. "Now—more importantly— this."

He waved a hand so close to my face that he almost struck me, and I flinched out of his way.

"I told you," I chastised him. "I was mugged."

"Yes, you said so," he remarked with skeptical eyes. "But where? When? How? Weren't you sick? Someone mugged a poor, sick guy?"

"You didn't hear?" Garrett piped up as he set my new whiskey down before me, and Shawn's focus whipped to him. "In an alley in downtown Roanoke. Few days ago, right?"

"Thank you," I mumbled, clarifying the story that I knew Luke and Claire had planted for me, "Yeah. Few days."

Shawn's attention stayed on Garrett for a beat, as if his presence had momentarily rendered him a deer in the headlights, and he shook his head rapidly before pressing, "So…you weren't sick?"

Garrett questioned with a cock of his head, "You were sick?"

"No—"

"Wait, no," Shawn backtracked, "if you got mugged when you started taking off work, your bruises wouldn't be so fresh."

"Was." I rapidly clarified the lie, "Was sick. Took off work. Wasn't sick anymore. Got beat up in a goddamn alley for my credit card and a spare twenty." Turning to Cassie, I simpered, "I forgot, I can't buy that first round…still waiting for my card's replacement. You wanna get my drinks for me, Darlin'?"

She smiled wide. "Chivalry is genderless, I suppose."

Claire threw her head back, incredulously murmuring, "Darlin'?" to the ceiling.

"What are we talking about?" Zoey's dainty voice chimed in as she and Liam arrived and slid into their seats.

"Pet names?" Liam guessed with a smirk that seemed extra lopsided.

"Wait, do you know?" Claire asked Liam.

Luke muttered, "How could he not?"

"Know what?" Liam returned.

"Is the bell above the front door broken?" I griped, not answering their ponderings as I grabbed my glass. "I mean, shit."

"You're distracted," Cassie quipped quietly.

Garrett pointed at Cassie first, stating the past events in chronological order, "Whiskey stealing," he moved to me, "tongue down throat of said whiskey stealer— "

"James!" Liam admonished me, though it held little to no weight, and he maintained his smirk throughout it. "In public?"

I thanked my lucky stars that I had already swallowed my sip, for I knew I would have choked otherwise, and my face heated alongside my throat.

"He knows," Claire monotonously deduced.

"That my sister's a gravedigger?" Liam innocently asked Claire, and Cassie shrieked:

"LIAM!"

He ignored her. "Yeah," he noted with a wide grin as Claire and Zoey tried to keep their laughter under their breath. "I know."

Garrett chuckled, inserting himself back into the conversation as he shifted his finger to Shawn, "Asking about Jay's face," and Shawn assumedly smiled at the recognition.

"Oh," Zoey told Shawn, "mugged—he was mugged."

"Yeah," he replied with a heavy eye roll, "I got that."

"And," Garrett moved his focus back to me. "Darlin'."

His alarmingly white, straight-toothed smile remained, and I was surprised to see no hint of jealousy or contention in his eyes.

Reluctantly softening toward him, I sighed, "I think ya covered it, Garrett. Thank you. "

"I'll be of service any time," he remarked. "Liam—amber. Zoey—cider?" They both nodded, and Garrett set his eyes on Shawn. "Shawn?"

"You remembered my name?" Shawn questioned him in delighted disbelief. "We met once."

"I've got a good memory." Garrett's teeth flashed us all once more. "Turn of events, drink orders, names. Y'know. All that."

"Right," he murmured. "Stout?"

"You got it, Shawn," he returned, chipper, and spun around to return to the bar.

Lighthearted conversation continued. My family around me smiled. Our night went on. In small, gentle acts of affection, Cassie occasionally brushed my thigh—or hooked her pinky through mine and gave it a tug—or reached up to move an out-of-place strand of my hair to where it belonged. My cheeks inevitably ached from overutilization of the muscles used to smile, and Cassie returned home with me.

I couldn't help but think once again how strange it is how life can toy with a person because this felt normal.

I knew what my normal was before. Although, it didn't feel as such because I had forced myself into a routine of sleep, eat, repeat to try to dull what plagued me—whether that be horrific memories or the attempt to quiet my thoughts of all things Cassie Cohen.

Going about existence as if I were simply living on a rock that flew through space did nothing to ease it all, though…and now that life had shifted for me once again, I considered my metaphorical reforging as I had done in the past. Melted down by any hard comings—any trauma in life—I believed that I was not poured into an attractive mold. Instead, I was left to dry just as I was, and I remained damaged—scarred.

That was still abundantly true…and I won't go as far as to say that my love for Cassie and her wholehearted return of it had boiled me down and rendered me a new, damage-free man.

It didn't.

I was still damaged. I mean…we all were.

But she made it easier—and God, I loved her for that. Cassie smoothed my jagged edges time and again, assisting me with feeling normal however I could.

Normal.

Somehow, the word made perfect sense now.

Thank you so much for reading Shattered Veil! I adored writing James and Cassie's story, and I thoroughly hope you enjoyed it.