“Oh,” Raven said, straightening.
“What?” Cass asked.
Curran smiled, small and grim. “How old are you?”
“Twenty.”
“Old enough,” Raven said, “to make her own informed decision. Thank you, Ms. Curran. I believe we’ll go and take your hint.”
~*~
“Spousal privilege,” Melissa explained in the lobby ten minutes later, to which Raven nodded. She rubbed at the place between her brows and shook her head. “No attorney or judge on earth can force a wife to testify against her husband.”
“Oh,” Cass said, and then itreallyhit her. “Oh.”
“Fuck,” Melissa muttered, and paced away from them, eyes shut like she was fighting off a headache.
Raven, however, didn’t look anguished. “It will of course need to be a mutual decision on both your parts, and not one taken lightly. There’s time before the trial: we can have a proper wedding. Invite all the boys. I would think Maverick would let us have it upstate.” She looked between them, expectant.
Meanwhile, Cass’s brain was imploding.
In a breathless, giddy, thrilled way, tempered only by her worry that Shep might not feel the same. They’d been playing house for almost two months now, and Raven knowing about it had only heightened the pleasure of sharing a home, a bed, a daily routine, alifewith Shep. It was all so easy, and maybe she should have mistrusted that, should have been waiting for the other shoe to drop, but shelovedthe current shape of her days. Even the little things: washing dishes, and taking the elevatordown to do laundry in the basement, and running out of hot water when they showered together and got too carried away.
Forget going back to the dorms; she didn’t want to go back to living without him, period.
How much different could marriage be?
She turned to him, and found his gaze frozen in the middle distance, face slack and unreadable. His throat jerked as he swallowed. “Get married?” he asked, and his voice was strained.
Oh no. Oh, please don’t let him be rethinking it all.
“Yes. Thatwouldbe the point of a wedding, Shep,” Raven said.
He blinked, and then turned toward Cass…
And grinned.
~*~
“I’ll handle things,” Raven said, already pulling out her phone when they hit the sidewalk.
“Do we not get any say?” Cass asked. “It’s our wedding.”
“You can have a say,” Raven said, absent and insincere, as she climbed in the back of the Rover. She waved before she shut the door. “I’ll come by in the morning. Ta, darling.”
The driver closed the door, sealing her behind bulletproof steel and smoked glass.
Cass took Shep’s hand as they watched the Range Rover pull out into traffic and disappear in a sea of cars. “Are you okay?” she asked, softly. Because he’d smiled at her in that rare, boyish way he only ever did at home when it was just the two of them, but then he’d fallen quiet and been introspective, brow furrowed.
He squeezed her hand and then lifted it up and kissed the back of it. “Yeah, baby, I’m good.” He towed her down the sidewalk. “You’re gonna be late to class if we don’t hurry.”
“Wait, wait.” She dug in her heels, and he swung back around, still holding her hand. “Are you sure?”
His cheeks were flushed, and his eyes bright. He looked hectic. High, maybe. “What?”
“Are you sure you’re okay? You seem…”
His gaze darted out toward the street, and then back toward the building. “Yeah, I’m good.” He gave her hand a light tug. “It’s Friday. Isn’t that when that one bitch-ass professor takes attendance?”
