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  Better as Lovers

  Book Three in the Cassidy and Cahir Series

  Jimi Gaillard-Jefferson

  Copyright © 2020 by Jimi Gaillard-Jefferson

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  To our futures. May they be bright and full of friends

  Get to Know Guy

  Spend more time with the most beloved character in the New Money Girls universe- Guy. It was love at first sight when he saw O’Shea. She…felt a little different.

  This is a FREE novel. The link is in the back of the book. Happy reading!

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Also by Jimi Gaillard-Jefferson

  Prologue

  Cassidy (Before Cahir)

  “What did it smell like?” He laid over me, weight heavy and familiar and pressing into me in a way that made it hard to breathe and perfectly okay.

  I smiled at him. “What do you think?”

  “I don’t think with you. You don’t know that by now?”

  I traced circles and smeared the sweat on his back. There was something about Kevin that made me forget about the things-hygiene. Who was I to have a man’s sweat heavy on my fingertips? To wipe it into my own body? To call it a keepsake and avoid the shower? Roll around in the bed and spread him. Call it sharing him.

  Kevin always smelled like whatever I’d done to him. That was new to me. To have a man smell like the way I’d swallowed him. That smell was always softer. Deeper. Nails down his back smelled like dried red chili flakes. Riding him smelled like honeysuckle and newly lit charcoal. Charred lemon when he wrapped his tongue around my clit.

  It smelled like deviled eggs when I saw him with his wife. Mayonnaise and paprika and pickles and dill. The pickles were all wrong. Too much. They made the entire thing smell wrong. Too strong. An immediate reason to step away. But I didn’t. Idiot that I was. I stayed and I watched. I watched him kiss her and hold her hand. I watched the smile bloom over her face. He hadn’t said anything besides hello. But that was all she needed. To see him there, to know he was still hers and she was still his only.

  I thought about going over there and breaking that up. I was in his clothes. I could have sat at the table and let that be enough. She would see and she would smell. Maybe she would smell what we’d done. Charred lemons that day.

  It was all in my mind. I knew that. The smells weren’t real. They were another trick I played on myself to make it seem like we were more than we were. To help me forget that there was always something not quite right with every moment we spent together. To make those moments better.

  Even when he was gone the smells remained. They chased me in my dreams. They chased me away from sleep. I would press my nose into my sheets. Those smelled like me. And that made it hurt a little more. Gone.

  I dreamed of his children. I smelled the toilet that night. The rancid, stark, acidity of vomit.

  Because forever had a smell too. A combination of the two of us. Basil and rosemary and cashmere and raw silk. Decadence and newly turned earth and moments after a quick spring rain. It was a new smell and became my favorite even as I tried to deny it.

  I felt it come up my throat with the bile. The shame. The ridicule.

  Of course I denied the smell. Hadn’t I known deep down? Hadn’t I known for months that he wasn’t mine and never would be? Hadn’t I known subconsciously he was married? Hadn’t I known I was breaking the rules? I did it anyways. Put my hand in his and ran through the night and thought that I would get what I wanted.

  So the universe took it away. So it showed me what I wasn’t worthy of having. Because I broke the rules. Because I helped another break a vow. And maybe the universe would get him too. Maybe he would get his karma.

  I didn’t worry too much about that. I was too afraid, too consumed with figuring out how else I would be punished.

  Chapter One

  Cahir

  Her hand shook before she put it in mine. She wasn’t touching me, but I felt it. Probably because I shook at the exact same time.

  I should have shut the fuck up. I should have put my hand to the small of her back and propelled her down the hall, to the elevator, to the car. I should have sat beside her while she put on her seatbelt. She might have picked music. She might not. She might have smiled back when I smiled at her.

  But I didn’t. Because I saw how much deeper, how stark, her freckles were when the color drained from her face. How she stood lost in her own closet, pants half on, when she realized she didn’t have on panties. Sneakers without socks. My sneakers. Belt on backwards. Hair pulled back too tight from her face. She wasn’t supposed to pull her hair back.

  I’d never seen her pull her hair back.

  So I asked her. Question couched in a statement of fact: you don’t have to do this. Her shoulders dropped when she heard my words.

  I could hear everything. I heard the air leave our lungs. I heard our heartbeats. Discordant. And then she put her hand in mine and I didn’t hear anything.

  “We should get to the hospital,” she said.

  Then I did put my hand on the small of her back. I did guide her through a place that she’d walked before. She didn’t smile when I smiled at her. She was too busy chewing a hole into her lower lip. But she was with me. I repeated that in my head like a mantra.

  Cash is here.

  We’re together.

  We’re going to do this.

  We want to do this.

  Family. We’re already a family.

  Cash is here. She’s not leaving.

  Her hand slid into mine. I smiled again. Realer. And I settled.

  “I don’t think I should be in the delivery room.”

  The music was too loud. That was why I heard what I did. And because I wasn’t paying attention. Cash always said I didn’t pay attention to what she said when I drove. I would work on that.

  “What?” The smile was still on my face. It hurt-the way it stretched and pushed at the muscles in my cheeks.

  “I don’t think I should be in the delivery room.”

  “Why?” You couldn’t hear my smile.

  “I don’t-It’s been hard enough for her, don’t you think?”

  “Her?” I almost choked on it. “Zion? It’s been hard enough for her? You’re thinking about-”

  Her hand was still shaking. She wrapped it around my forearm. Or tried to. The steering wheel squeaked. My knuckles were white. And I wanted, for the first time, to be anywhere Cash wasn’t. That want shot up my spine and made me wince.

  “-it’s been thrown in her face enough. Right? And this is a private moment for the two-”

  “-people that are going to be raising Olivia. Her parents. Her mother and father. What in the entire-”

  “Not at me, you won’t.” She didn’t sound like she was smiling either.

  “Then be you! Be Cash- goddamn- money for five seconds!”

  I looked at her from the corner of my eye. Hair. That was what I saw. Hair pulled back tight for the first time. And her reflection in the dark windows. I eased my foot off the
gas.

  “Not every moment is for me.”

  Sanctimonious bullshit. “Every single one of Olivia’s moments are for you. What the fuck are you doing right now?”

  “You’ll be there. You’ll bring her to me. The moment-”

  “I shouldn’t have to bring her anywhere. It should be-” I inhaled. “Fuck it. Have what you want, Cassidy. Sit in the waiting room. Like she isn’t yours.”

  I locked my jaw. Fuck it. Fuck it. Olivia was coming. Her ultrasound photos were the reason I couldn’t keep my wallet in my pocket when I sat down. The reason my backseat wasn’t a place for papers and ties and whatever other bullshit I thought was important enough to take with me when I left the office.

  She didn’t deserve it. A fight. Anger. Not the first time I met her. Not even if it wasn’t directed towards her.

  There was no hand at the small of Cassidy’s back when I walked into the hospital.

  Cahir

  I didn’t think she’d do it. I thought…

  She sat down next to her mother, reached for her hand. Shook her head when Ms. May shot her a look that said a thousand words in less than a second.

  And I stood there. Lingering in the waiting room because I couldn’t- Who was she?

  Who was I if I walked into that labor and delivery room without her?

  There was Zion’s mother, Tseday. A woman with grace. Class. Backbone like my mother’s.

  “Ma.” I held out a hand, and she came. A woman, the only woman, that was always exactly who I knew she would be and whatever else I needed her to be.

  A deep breath and we were washing our hands up to the elbow. I wanted to be clean the first time I held my baby. And it gave me another moment. A little more room.

  Into the room. Dark. Huh. Some kind of ambient light. Deep purples and blues bounced around the room and over Zion’s skin. She was on her back in that thin hospital bed. Thin like the chaise in her closet where she hid-

  It didn’t matter. Olivia did.

  I repeated her name in my head like a mantra and stepped up to Zion’s left side. Her mother on her right. We each took her hand. And that felt some kind of way but it didn’t matter either. Olivia. And Cash. I was doing it for them.

  I ignored the way her hand felt in mine. I didn’t think about the way she smelled. The way the room smelled. I didn’t let my body react to her screams that quieted down into moans. I didn’t think about the way my knees went numb before my feet did and how my left shoulder blade itched, but I couldn’t scratch it.

  I didn’t think about the sweat that beaded on my forehead. I didn’t think about where Cash would have stood if she came in with me.

  Fuck it. I thought about Cash. About the way she pinched my skin or dug her thumb into my palm the last time I saw Zion. I imagined it was her fingers gripping my hand too tight and turning it a mottled pink. I heard Zion’s screams and morphed them into Cash’s laugh. I knew I was sick in a way that required someone help me, but it didn’t matter.

  “Cahir.”

  Purple mixed in with the pale pink that was my hand. How interesting.

  “Cahir.”

  My fingers tingled at one point, but that was over. Silence. Like a burn. Like that moment after I punched the glass.

  “Cahir!”

  I looked down at Zion and heard the mirror fracture. Saw the determination on her face to make me understand. It was there that night. It was there with her again in the hospital room. I didn’t want it.

  “Don’t,” I said. “I don’t need it. I don’t want it.”

  “We’re having a baby.” I didn’t know how she pushed the words out. Her body shook the bed.

  “Zion!” Her mother whispered something fast and low in a language I didn’t understand. But I understood. I felt like the skin was flayed from my body.

  “We aren’t.” My words were quiet. Her grip on my hand wasn’t.

  And so it went for a while. Her words. My silence. Her mother’s whispers. My mother left the room.

  Until Olivia crowned. Until she was there. And then in my arms. I cut the umbilical chord, and she was back in my arms. Her little eyes screwed shut. Her legs and arms moved. A protest to her recent eviction, and I understood. I smiled down at her.

  And I forgot almost all of it. Except-

  “Let’s go get Mommy.”

  Chapter Two

  Cassidy

  It followed me, and it never failed. I would go outside in the clothes my parents bought for me. Excited. Ready. There was something about just being in the world that brought a smile to my face. The possibilities perhaps. Ice cream. Lunch. Just us. A long drive and a visit to Gran. Maybe Gran would let me help in her shop. My grin would split my face.

  And then it would come. “My God! She looks just like you!”

  I had to tilt my head back to show whatever nosy adult dared to interrupt my time in the sun my displeasure. Lips curled so tight I might have been sucking on a lemon. My parents would smile at the adult. And I would know that I couldn’t say what I wanted. I would not be permitted to say that it was my face. That I was short but I should have things of my own. That my parents had their own faces. That they should mind their gosh darned business and let me finish talking whichever of my parents I was with into taking me to the library or shopping. Shopping was better. Even if it was just the grocery store.

  I wanted to belong to myself. I never felt like I did as a kid. Every time I got comfortable in my body it changed just a little. Height. Size. Skin. Voice. A little ass. Not enough tits. Attitude. A space of just nothing at all that panicked me. I filled it with nonsense things.

  I thought the away camp my parents sent me to before I started high school would help. I would find myself. Or some version of myself that would get me through high school in Baltimore. I thought I would make memories if I couldn’t make friends.

  I didn’t expect to make friends.

  I didn’t expect the pines to go on forever. I didn’t expect to be in a bed so thin in a room with so many other girls. I didn’t expect the empty space to come back. I didn’t recognize it right away as longing. Missing. After I named the space, it took another day or two for me to identify what I missed. My parents. My familiar.

  I didn’t call them though when it was my time to step up to the payphone that didn’t accept coins. No. I shoved my oversized iPod into my cut off jean shorts and called Gran.

  She was better with my questions. Took her time with them. She was silent when I spoke except for the occasional “uh-huh” or “keep going, baby” when my voice tripped over a word or my eyes fell to the lyrics I wrote in permanent marker over my shell-toe Adidas and high-top Reeboks. She hummed while she considered what I said. Hummed the songs that didn’t have words but that I knew intimately and always felt knew me back. Knew my soul.

  “Can you see yourself? You got a way to do that while you’re still on the phone with me?”

  “I’m 14, Gran.”

  She laughed when other grandmothers, other grown-ups, would have gasped at my sass. I dug my iPod out my pocket while I let that laugh wash over me and fill up a little of the empty place.

  “Look at yourself, my baby. You looking?”

  “Yes.”

  “That nose you have? My husband gave you that. You make him real to me again every time you sneeze or draw your nose up when you smell. Those lips? Those are your mother’s lips. But when you spread them in a smile you’re her mother. Through and through, I swear. Your hair, all that hair, it’s mine. Why I never let your mama mess with it, put perms in it. I saw myself as a little girl every time I parted your hair. I wondered if my mother was okay in her next life when I greased your scalp. I smelled her and smiled. I remembered the parties I went to. How I styled it for the days that mattered to me.”

  I ran my hand over my hair.

  “You see those eyes? Your father’s. You use them the way he does. To say things, funny things. To make decisions. To figure a person out. Your laugh is your mother’s fath
er’s. He used to laugh til the joke wasn’t funny and then just stop. Scared the shit out of me the first time I heard it. During a spades game. Do you understand, Cassidy?”

  “I think so.” I didn’t. But I didn’t want her to stop.

  “There’s no need to miss us. You are us and wholly yourself. You carry us with you no matter where you go. We’re there. All the way down to your bones and working our way out.”

  “That sounds a little creepy, Gran.”

  She laughed. She always knew when I was joking. And she always laughed even when it wasn’t funny. “Maybe it is. The way we pass things on like hand-me-downs. But you feel better, don’t you?”

  I looked at the face that was wholly mine and all of theirs. “Yeah.”

  “Good.” I heard her smile and steeled myself. “Make sure you washing yourself good up there. You know them people ain’t clean.”

  I’d heard and smelled a girl pee in the shower earlier that day and couldn’t stop the snort and then the full laughter that came out of me. And Gran was right. I laughed until it was done then went quiet. I never knew either of my grandfathers but it was good to have pieces of them.

  “I love you, Gran.”

  “I’ll always love you, baby.”

  From then on I was different. What did I have to be afraid of if I carried so many with me? The best parts of them too. I took the pieces I wanted and twisted them into a whole new kind of thing. If that wasn’t power, what was?

  Cassidy

  Cahir’s footsteps were soft when they came down the hallways but I heard them. And I stood. I let my feet move forward. For once I wasn’t drawn to him. It was the bundle in his arms that moved just a little. Just a little. The fussing. Low and yet somehow the loudest thing I’d ever heard. It pushed out everything.