Free Lion In Wait (A Paranormal Alpha Lion Romance) by Lynn Red

that’s what I was doing.”
    “Where did you sleep?” he asked.
    That’s when Cass realized that her cheeks were wet, and the only reason the tears weren’t falling off her face is that the cold wind kept drying them before they did. “Oh, pretty much anywhere. Only hit the ‘under a bridge’ depths a couple of times. I did have an old Toyota I slept in for a long time, but then I had to get rid of that.”
    “Ah. Enter Lyle. How did he find you?”
    The way Lex said you made it seem like he was reliving his own experience, if only partially.
    “It’s kinda hard to remember,” Cass said. Her voice was crackling, fragile, distant. “I said I was in a bad place, well... I mean it. The money I made over top of the food I ate – which wasn’t very much – went straight to other stuff to keep my mind off how ridiculous I was.”
    She stuffed her fists into her eyes, rubbing angrily at the tears, as though she was angry about them existing. “I can’t believe what a goddamn idiot I was. I’ve stopped beating myself up over it, but every now and then I still hate old me a little for doing this to now me. It was all some stupid rebellion, you know? An idiotic attempt to... I don’t know, prove that I couldn’t be what people wanted me to be, that I wasn’t the girl they wanted.”
    Cass took a deep breath and didn’t bother hiding the shudder, or the shaking shoulders as it rolled out of her. Lex sat up, but didn’t make a move to comfort her, which she actually appreciated. “Every time I cried with Max, I’d try to tell him all this stuff, and he’d kiss me or hug me, or he’d start talking and make me feel better for a second. Then he’d stroke my hair, we’d have sex and the world seemed right. Only...”
    “It wasn’t.” Lex’s soft voice had taken on an edge. It was still gentle, still kind – still Lex – but there was an edge of something between anger and understanding in his tone.
    Cass nodded, and then looked back up at the stars, almost feeling their warmth bathe her naked vulnerability in a shimmering shield. “Yeah, it never was. I’d try to convince myself I was just being whiny, or dumb, or whatever, but those feelings, the regret and the anger, it kept coming back.”
    Lex was watching her, his golden eyes turned a stormy, darker shade. She’d seen that look in his eyes before – albeit when he was a giant magical cat – right before they’d escaped. Slowly, he shook his head from side to side.
    “That’s when he found me. Like some, I dunno, hard luck Freddy Krueger. I was just a dumb kid, which I’ve accepted now, by the way, but he found me when I was at my weakest, my most broken. I went to the show when it went through this sorta middle-of-nowhere town in Nebraska, that’s where Max and I ended up after running out of money and being unable to con the Greyhound driver into letting us stay on anyway. We had a fight, Max took some of my clothes, sold them for enough to hop a bus to wherever-the-fuck, and took off. Never saw him again.”
    She laughed, bitterly. “To think, I still think about him sometimes and miss him. I guess that’s how bad the circus got. Anyway, yeah, I went to the circus since it was free to get in and at least look at the midway. He saw me somehow, gave me his card, saying if I ever needed anything—”
    “Help is only a phone call away,” Lex finished for her, and then smiled grimly.
    “Long story slightly shorter, I got drunk, thrown in jail. Next morning, who the hell was I going to call? And then there we are. He paid all my outstanding bills, which at the time seemed great. He offered me a job, which... shit, what else was I doing? So that seemed great too.”
    “How long did it take you to realize what happened?” Lex had stood by then, and took a step nearer where Cass was, but made no move to touch her, distract her, or anything except listen to her pain.
    She took a deep breath, her lips trembling as she let it out. “Year,