Dread soars through me. “I hope so.” I take small steps to the bathroom and knock on the door. “Grace?”

Sniffles come from the other side of the door, but no response from her.

My hand is trembling when I knock again. “Are you okay?”

Again, silence and sniffles.

“Just go in,” Lincoln whispers, motioning toward the door.

I nod, hoping she doesn’t see this as an invasion of privacy. Lincoln stands to the side, out of view of the bathroom, so they can’t see each other. I play with the door handle, tinkering it from side to side to see if she’ll tell me to stop, but nothing. Slowly, I open it, sliding between the crack, and shut it, my back pressing against the door.

Grace is crouched down on the floor, back to the tub, tears in her eyes, and … a pregnancy test in her hand.

“I’m pregnant,” she croaks out, her hands shaking.

Oh my God.

Chapter Thirty-Five

Lincoln

Three Weeks Later

“I’m going to miss working with you,” I tell Cassidy.

“Oh, stop.” She swats at my arm. “I’ll still be there on the weekends, and don’t think I won’t be sitting at the end of the bar, studying it up while you’re working.”

“You promise?”

“I absolutely promise.”

I chuckle. “Nothing like studying for law school in a bar.”

“Studying for the bar while in a bar,” she singsongs. “If I ever write an autobiography when I’m some famous attorney, I shall make that the title.”

Cass is going back to school. It’s online for now until she figures out where she wants to go or even if she wants to attend somewhere where she’d have to live on campus. She’s made it clear to her mother that she’s not going back to her old college because there are too many Quinton memories.

“I don’t want the old typical college life,” she told her mom.

I was worried she didn’t want to go because of me, because we now lived together, because she thought we couldn’t make it if she was gone. I didn’t want her to give up on her future. She swore up and down that wasn’t the case.

She’s even changed the route of what kind of law she wants to practice. Before everything with Quinton went down, her plan was to go into law and become a defense attorney because that was where the money was.

Now? She wants to become a prosecutor to take down people like Quinton.

I’m so damn proud of her.

Before she was expelled, she was a few years back from earning her bachelor’s degree, so law school is still far down the road, but she can do it. She’s a fighter, and when she has her mind set on something, it gets done.