18. CASSANDRA

What the hell am I doing here?

Rule number one: I’m not supposed to significantly alter my routine during the Chase.

I’m not a hundred percent sure what that means, exactly, but I know I may be pushing it by going on a date.

Still, here I am, sitting across from Carson Drake in The Modern, in the center of the Museum of Modern Art. Carson and I are still chatting about the pre-dinner tour we took, about the masterpieces and the artists themselves. About the state of modern art today, and the future of art in the multimedia world.

And God, I haven’t felt this good in so long. Honestly, even though the last decade was nothing more than a long flirtation with adrenaline, none of it compares to this.

And this food is unbelievable. I worry that the dress I bought this afternoon is going to be busting at the seams by the time we finish the fourth course. Of twelve. Or something equally ridiculous.

“How’s your quail?” he asks.

“Heavenly. The morels add so much flavor.” Seriously, what’s happening? The life of leisure was supposed to start after Tricia and I sold the company for tens of millions.

Carson smiles. He went with the yellowfin tuna. Something about Matthias kicking his ass.

“Did I mention how gorgeous you look in that dress?” he asks.

“Several times,” I say. Part of me wants to jump him right on the table for saying so, but part of me knows he’s just avoiding what he really wants to say.

The conversation has been so easy up to this point. It’s been glorious going back to the days when we could share our thoughts like this, almost as if all the years and everything that’s happened since just melted away.

But I’d have to be insane to think it’ll stay like that for the rest of the night. Carson’s already running out of subjects to bring up. I can see he’s starting to avoid my gaze. I know he won’t be able to say goodnight without knowing the answer to what I’m sure has been a burning question for the last decade.

Namely, why did I disappear on prom night – and then never contact him again?

So if it’s a foregone conclusion, I might as well rip the Band-Aid off and get it over with. My training tells me to always press your advantage, however small. My advantage here is to control the message before he asks.

“Carson,” I say. “I’m so, so sorry.”

It’s the first time I’ve told the full truth since we met up at the shop. Hell, it might be the first completely honest thing I’ve said in years.

I can’t read the look in his eyes. Is he angry? Hurt? This is a moment I’ve been dreading since that night in high school. I couldn’t have looked him in the eye back then. I can barely do it now.

He clears his throat. It’s as close as he’s come so far to showing anything other than pure charm. He takes a breath and looks me in the eye.

“What happened, Cassie?”

Part of me wants to tell him the whole truth, but the part of me that’s under a lifetime non-disclosure agreement knows I have to walk through a minefield.

“Dad got transferred to San Francisco out of the blue,” I say. “We barely had any notice. We had to pack up and move out of base housing that afternoon.”

That’s somewhat true: my father was actually outed as a CIA operative during a Senate committee hearing on the intelligence community. It was politically motivated – Dad was a climber and someone in the agency didn’t like that, so they leaked his name – and it was hushed up immediately. But the damage was already done.

Dad made plenty of enemies in his time with the Agency, and for our own safety we had to disappear immediately. The government shipped us off to a military base in Honduras because, technically, it was considered a “temporary” base and wasn’t on anyone’s radar. We lived there for a year until the Agency cleared me for return to the US. Dad and Mom moved to Southeast Asia, where Dad became a section chief.

He always hated the fact that his new post kept him away from “the action.” I think that’s why he pushed me so hard to go into the service myself.

Of course, I can’t tell Carson any of that.

And the look on his face is telling me he’s not buying the story I’m currently selling him.

“You had my phone number,” he says.

Be careful how you answer, Cassie. Geez, now he’s even got me calling myself Cassie again.

“I felt so bad about standing you up that I just couldn’t call,” I say. God, that sounds so weak.

But the pained expression on my face is genuine enough that he should buy it.

I hope.

“What about after?”

I cried myself to sleep for a year, I want to tell him. I watched that stupid video of us at the science fair over and over and over.

“I just got so busy with school,” I plead. “You know how it is.”

That’s a total lie: I didn’t start at the Citadel until they let me back in the US when I was nineteen. Luckily I managed to finish in three years.

Carson finishes his fish and wipes his mouth with the napkin. He looks like James Bond in his tuxedo, and again I’m awash in amazement over how much he’s changed. Sure, we reconnected in the museum, but it’s impossible to avoid the fact that he’s completely transformed himself since I last saw him.

Is he still the same boy I fell in love with?

Am I still the same girl he fell in love with?

I honestly don’t know.