Chapter 7: McAllister House
The silence between them became a third presence in the house, thick and watchful. Cass moved through the next few days like she was navigating a room full of tripwires, hyper-aware of Wade’s footfalls overhead, the timbre of his voice talking to her father outside, the way he would look right through her if they passed in the hallway. It was a brutal, silent game of chicken. He’d said don’t, and she was obeying, but the unspoken thing in the hayloft had grown teeth and claws in the dark.
Her mother broke the stalemate on Friday morning. She came into Cass’s room holding a folded bundle of fabric. “The Hendersons are having their annual barbecue this afternoon. Everyone’s going.”
Cass looked up from the battered notebook where she’d been scribbling nothing of value. “I’m not.”
“You are. Your father already said we would.” Her mother’s voice left no room for debate. She laid the clothes on the bed. “Wear this. It’s still hot out.”
After her mother left, Cass unfolded the outfit. It was a relic from high school: a pair of denim shorts, faded and fraying, and a pale yellow crop top. The fabric felt thin, almost brittle in her hands. She held the top against herself. The Cass who’d left for New York had been all sharp angles and hollows. The Cass who’d come back had curves earned from regular meals she’d paid for herself. She changed, the shorts straining across her hips, the hem of the top landing a good two inches above her waistband, exposing a strip of pale skin that felt obscenely bare. She found an old flannel shirt in the back of her closet and tied it loosely around her waist, a futile shield.
Downstairs, her father gave her a slow, appraising look. “That’s what you’re wearin’?”
“It’s what Mom laid out.”
He grunted, turning away. “Wade’s riding with us. His truck’s actin’ up.”
Great. Just perfect.
Wade came out of the barn as they walked to her father’s pickup. He’d clearly showered, his dark hair still damp, wearing a clean black t-shirt and jeans. His eyes swept over her—the shorts, the sliver of midriff the flannel couldn’t hide—and his expression didn’t change, but a muscle flickered in his jaw. He touched the brim of his hat in a silent nod to her parents and climbed into the narrow back seat of the crew cab.
Cass took the passenger seat, acutely conscious of him directly behind her. The twenty-minute drive was a study in contrast: her mother’s chatter about who would be there, her father’s monosyllabic replies, and the potent, silent radiation of Wade’s presence. She could smell the faint, clean scent of his soap.
The Henderson farm was a picture of rural prosperity. Pickups and old sedans lined the long driveway. A cloud of hickory smoke hung over the back field where a whole hog was roasting. A cluster of men stood by a keg, and children shrieked, chasing each other through the dust. It was a scene from her past, perfectly preserved.
As soon as they parked, her parents melted into the crowd. Cass stood awkwardly by the truck’s bumper, feeling like a museum exhibit. “City Cass, back on the shelf.”
“Try not to look so miserable. It’s a party.” Wade’s voice was low, just for her, as he passed by on his way to the keg. He didn’t stop.
“Cassidy McAllister? Holy shit, is that you?”
She turned. Shelby Jenkins and Megan Price, crowned queens of their senior year, descended on her like beautifully dressed vultures. They looked exactly the same, just with harder highlights and tighter jeans.
“Hey, Shelby. Megan.”
They air-kissed near her cheeks, their eyes performing a rapid inventory—her hair, her clothes, the lack of a wedding band. “We heard you were back,” Shelby said, her smile bright and empty. “How’s New York? You writing for, like, The New York Times or something?”
“Or something,” Cass said. “It didn’t really work out.”
“Aww, that’s too bad.” Megan’s sympathy was as thin as cheap syrup. “But you look good! You filled out.” Her gaze flicked over Cass’s body. “City living must agree with you.”
A cold beer appeared in her hand. Wade, threading back through the crowd with two cups, had simply handed it to her without breaking stride or making eye contact. She took it, grateful for the intervention and furious at the need for it.
“Is that Wade Collins?” Shelby whispered, watching his retreating back. “Lord, he just gets better looking with age, doesn’t he? Still quiet as a tomb, though.”
“And still living with your folks?” Megan asked, sipping her wine cooler. “That’s… dedicated.”
Cass took a long pull of the beer. It was cheap and bitter. “He works for us.”
“Right, right.” Shelby leaned in. “You know, it’s so brave of your dad to keep him on. After everything.”
The bait dangled. Cass knew she shouldn’t bite. The beer was cold in her hand. “After what?”
Megan’s eyes widened with faux-hesitation. “You don’t know? I guess you were gone when it all happened. Well, you know he was in prison, right? Up at Stone Mountain. Did a couple years for aggravated assault.”
The words landed like stones in mud. Cass kept her face still. “I didn’t know that.”
“Oh yeah,” Shelby took over, thrilled to be the bearer of dark news. “Got in a huge fight at a bar over in Cartersville. Nearly killed some guy, from what I heard. Something about the guy messing with his girlfriend.” She paused for dramatic effect. “Lianne Mitchell.”
The name was a faint bell from high school. A year or two above her, a quiet girl who played clarinet.
“They were like, it for a while after he got out,” Megan continued. “She stood by him, everyone said it was so romantic. He worked construction, they were gonna get a place. Then she just… left. Moved to Atlanta last year. Never said why. He moved into your attic not long after.” She shrugged, as if the sequence was obvious. “Guess he needed a soft place to land.”
The narrative assembled itself with brutal efficiency: the violent past, the abandoned lover, the charity of her parents. Saint Wade, the redeemed convict. Another box for him to be placed in. But the man who’d kissed her in the hayloft didn’t fit in any of them.
Another beer found its way into her hand. She didn’t see who delivered it. The afternoon sun beat down, the laughter around her grew louder, the buzz in her ears deepened. Shelby and Megan prattled on about husbands, babies, the thrilling renovation of the Piggly Wiggly. Their lives were small, neat dioramas. Cass felt like a shattered pane of glass beside them.
“You just seem so different, Cass,” Shelby said, a sharp edge finally showing through the gloss. “All that time up north. You probably think we’re all a bunch of hicks now.”
The third beer was half gone. The filter between her brain and her mouth dissolved. “I think,” Cass said slowly, her words slightly slurry, “that I had to sell parts of myself in New York just to afford a room the size of your linen closet. So no, I don’t think you’re hicks. I think you’re lucky.”
A fascinated silence fell over the two women. Megan’s eyes were wide. “Sell parts? What does that mean?”
The heat, the alcohol, the weight of the secrets—Wade’s, her father’s, her own—pressed down. These women, with their safe, gossiped-about lives, would never understand the gray, grimy struggle. A perverse need to shock them, to prove her world was bigger and darker than their comprehension, overtook her.
“It means,” Cass said, her voice dropping, “that my fancy writing degree didn’t pay the rent. It means I answered an ad. I let men take me to nice dinners. Sometimes to hotels. I let them think they were charming a young writer, and I let them pay my bills for it.” She took a swig. “They call it ‘sugar dating’ up there. It’s just escorting with better vocabulary.”
The shock on their faces was a physical thing, a recoil. It was sickening and satisfying all at once. She had taken their petty judgment and blown it apart with a truth so ugly it left them speechless.
“Cassidy,” Megan finally breathed, not with sympathy, but with horrified delight. “You didn’t.”
“I did what I had to do.” The bravado was fading, leaving a cold, sick hollow in her gut. She saw Wade then, across the yard, leaning against a fence post and talking to old Mr. Henderson. He was looking right at her. His expression was unreadable from this distance, but his posture was rigid. How long had he been watching?
Shelbie recovered first, her voice a venomous whisper. “Well. I guess some people will do anything to get out of a town they think is beneath them.”
They excused themselves, a flurry of hurried smiles, and fled to disseminate the freshest, most scandalous gossip the Henderson barbecue had ever seen.
Cass stood alone, the empty cup crumpling in her hand. The sun seemed suddenly too bright, the laughter too loud. She felt stripped bare, more exposed than she’d ever been in any hotel room. She had weaponized her shame, and now it was loose in the wild, ready to circle back and destroy what was left of her here.
She turned, seeking the shadow of the barn, any place to hide, and almost collided with Wade.
He was right there. His eyes, up close, were not angry. They were deep, complex pools of something that looked dangerously like understanding. He took the crushed cup from her hand.
“You’re drunk,” he said, his voice quiet.
“I’m something,” she mumbled.
He looked past her to where Shelby and Megan were already whispering to a new cluster of people, their eyes darting back towards Cass. “You just gave them a loaded gun.”
“They already had one. They were just using yours.”
A flicker in his gaze acknowledged the hit. He didn’t deny it. “Get in the truck,” he said.
“Your truck’s broken.”
“Not mine. Your dad’s. Keys are in it. Go sit. I’ll tell your folks you’re not feeling well and I’m taking you home.”
She didn’t argue. She walked on unsteady legs to her father’s pickup, climbed in, and closed the door, sealing herself in a bubble of quiet. Through the windshield, she watched Wade approach her parents. He spoke, her father glanced over at the truck with a frown, her mother looked concerned. Wade just nodded, his demeanor calm and capable. The saint. The steady hand.
He walked back, opened the driver’s side door, and slid in. The cab felt instantly smaller, filled with the scent of him and the day’s heat. He started the engine and pulled onto the quiet country road, leaving the noise of the party behind.
They drove in silence for a full mile, the only sound the tires on gravel, then asphalt.
“Is it true?” she finally asked, her voice small. “About prison? About Lianne?”
His hands tightened on the wheel. “Which part?”
“All of it.”
He stared straight ahead. “I did twenty-two months for breaking a man’s jaw and three ribs. He had his hands on Lianne. He wouldn’t take them off. I told him twice.” He said it flatly, a simple recitation of facts. “And she left. Yeah. People do that.”
The raw pain in those last four words hung in the air. It wasn’t just about Lianne. It was about everyone. It was a pain she recognized.
“Why did you stay?” she asked. “At our place?”
He was quiet for so long she thought he wouldn’t answer. “Your old man,” he said, “was the only one who looked at my record and saw a man who needed work, not a convict. He didn’t ask questions. He just pointed me at a job.” He glanced at her, then back at the road. “Loyalty’s a rare thing. Even if the reasons for it get… complicated.”
She knew he wasn’t just talking about her father anymore. He was talking about the hayloft. The unspoken rule. The loyalty to the family that now warred with whatever was sparking between them.
“I shouldn’t have said what I said,” she whispered, leaning her head against the cool glass of the window. “To them.”
“Why not?” His tone was curious, not judging. “It’s the truth, isn’t it?”
She closed her eyes. “It’s my truth. They don’t get to have it. They’ll just use it.”
“They’ll use anything,” he said. “You know that by now.”
He turned down the long driveway to the house. The empty, silent house. He parked but didn’t kill the engine. “They’re gonna talk,” he said. “About me. About you now. It’ll get back to your folks.”
“I know.”
He finally turned to look at her, his gaze sweeping over her face, the vulnerable strip of her waist. “That outfit,” he said, his voice dropping, rough at the edges. “Was a fuckin’ cruel thing for your mother to do.”
The acknowledgment was a kindness so unexpected it made her throat tighten. She just nodded.
He looked away, out at the barn. “Go on inside. I’ll wait out here till they get home.”
She got out, the world tilting slightly. As she walked to the porch, she heard his door open and close behind her. She turned. He hadn’t followed her. He was just leaning against the side of the truck, pulling a worn pack of cigarettes from his pocket. He lit one, the flame briefly illuminating the hard planes of his face in the gathering dusk. He didn’t watch her go. He just stared out at the darkening fields, a solitary sentry guarding a truth they now, irrevocably, shared.
He just stared out at the darkening fields, a solitary sentry guarding a truth they now, irrevocably, shared. The image of him leaning against the truck, the cigarette’s glow, burned into the back of her eyelids as she moved through the dark, silent house. She showered, the water scalding, trying to wash off the feel of Shelby’s eyes and the ghost of Wade’s understanding. She put on an old pair of pajama pants and was wrestling with a spaghetti strap tank top when the headlights finally carved arcs across her bedroom wall.
The engine cut. Doors slammed. Muffled voices, her father’s a low rumble, carried through the floorboards. Normal sounds. She let out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding, pulling the tank top down. Maybe the gossip hadn’t traveled that fast. Maybe Megan and Shelby had, for once, found a shred of discretion.
Then the front door crashed open against the wall.
“Cassidy McAllister!”
Her father’s voice was a whip-crack in the quiet, slurred at the edges and dripping with a tone she hadn’t heard in years. Her heart leapt into her throat, a frantic, trapped bird. Please no.
She ran. Barefoot, in just the thin tank top and loose boxer shorts, she flew down the hall toward the living room. The overhead light was blinding. Her mother stood frozen in the corner by the china cabinet, her eyes fixed on the worn floral carpet.
As soon as Cassidy cleared the doorway, the world exploded into white-hot pain.
The sting was immense, a lightning bolt across her cheekbone. The sound, a sickening wet crack, seemed to come a full second later. The force spun her, her legs buckling. She hit the floorboards shoulder-first, the impact shuddering through her teeth.
“My damn daughter is a slut!” His words were thick, propelled by whiskey and cheap beer.
Tears blurred her vision instantly. She pushed herself up on one elbow, her face throbbing. “No, Daddy…”
“I heard what they said!” he roared, spittle flying. “What you did up in New York to make money! The whole town is talking about it!” He took a step closer, his shadow engulfing her. “My damn daughter fucking rich men in hotels for money!”
The betrayal was a cold knife twisting. They hadn’t waited an hour. Her eyes darted to her mother, who merely shrunk further into the corner, a silent ghost. “It was only once,” Cassidy whispered, the lie and the truth tangling on her tongue. “The other times were just dinner… I promise, Daddy.”
“One time is enough to taint the pure!” He lunged, his hand not balling into a fist this time, but snatching.
His fingers tangled in her long caramel hair, yanking with a brutal force that brought a scream to her lips. He hauled her upright by it, holding her face close to his. She gagged on the sour mix of whiskey and beer on his breath. “You will sleep outside with the wolves tonight for this.”
“No, please—” The pleading was automatic, a child’s script from a forgotten punishment.
He didn’t listen. He dragged her, stumbling and crying, by the hair through the kitchen. Her toes scraped the threshold. With a final, grunting heave, he shoved her out onto the cold wooden planks of the back porch. The door slammed. The deadbolt turned with a solid thunk. The security chain rattled as it slid into its bracket.
Silence, except for her ragged sobs.
She collapsed, hugging her knees to her chest, shivering as the deep chill of the autumn night seeped into her bones. Her cheek pulsed in time with her heartbeat. She knew better than to try the door. Knew better than to circle to the front. The windows would be locked. This ritual had its own immutable rules.
After a while, the crying stopped. A hollow numbness took its place. She wiped her nose with the back of her hand, brushed the grit from her skinned knees, and stood. The barn loomed in the darkness, a darker shape against the star-dusted sky. Wade’s truck was a solid black lump in the driveway. Had he heard? Was he up in her attic, listening to the aftermath?
Sex with one rich man was enough to taint? The thought was bleak, ironic. It hadn’t felt like tainting then. It had felt like survival, a transaction in a rented room with silk sheets she’d never touch again.
The barn door groaned. Inside, the air was still and smelled of dry hay and gasoline. She felt her way past the silent tractor to the very back stall, where years ago she’d made a fort. An old army cot, its canvas mildewed, was still there, piled with a few faded horse blankets that smelled of dust and old sweat.
She lay down, pulling the stiff blankets over her, curling into a tight ball. The cold was penetrating. She felt her body react, her skin prickling, her nipples hardening painfully against the rough fabric of the tank top. She hugged herself, shaking.
The soft scuff of a boot on concrete.
She didn’t move. She just stared into the blackness of the stall wall. Wade’s silhouette appeared in the stall opening, blocking the faint light from the barn door he’d left ajar. He stood there for a long moment. He didn’t ask if she was okay. He didn’t say her father was a bastard.
He just walked in, sat down on the dirt floor with his back against the stall partition, about three feet from the cot. He stretched his legs out, crossing his ankles. He took off his hat, setting it beside him.
They stayed silent. The only sounds were the distant call of a night bird and the ragged, slowing rhythm of her breathing. The cold was a live thing in the stall. She knew he could see the outline of her body under the thin blankets, the peaks of her nipples against the fabric. He was staring straight ahead, at the opposite wall, his profile stern in the faint light.
His jaw was clenched so tightly a muscle jumped in his cheek.