CODING ━ grey's anatomy

chapter thirty five

"I'm on Derek's service today," she blurted. "Sorry."

"Oh, no, that's fine," he shrugged, masking his disappointment. "Another time."

Cassie nodded as a goodbye, spinning on her heel to go convince Derek to let her on his case.

Addison, who watched the whole interaction, raised a suspicious brow at Mark's upset expression when Cassie walked away.

☆

"Are you sure?"

Cassie gave her therapist a deadpan look, her arms crossed over her chest and her fuzzy socks tucked under her knees.

"Am I sure that Mark is not my boyfriend?"

Rain nodded. "Yes."

"I think I would know if I were dating my best friend, Rain. Which, I would like to strongly emphasize, that I am not."

"But you want to," Rain stated as if it were a commonly known fact.

"What?" Cassie laughed, starting to think her therapist had the wrong patient. "No, I don't. Why would you even think that?"

"Well, you're sleeping with him, right?"

"I don't see how that's any of your business, but yeah, we hook up sometimes. That doesn't mean there's any feelings involved. In my mind, sex and love are two very different things."

"But, you do love him, don't you?" Rain raised a brow in challenge, trying to get her patient to see what she so clearly did. "You say he's only a friend, but you sleep with him. You say you love him, but not like that, which sounds to me like a lie you tell yourself to protect your feelings."

Cassie scoffed, moving to stand up. "You know, I'm just going to leave. I mean, this isn't even why I'm here, so I don't get why—"

"You need to heal, Cassie."

"Yeah, which is why I'm being forced to see a mandatory shrink before I can go back to work," she agreed. "A shrink, who sucks at her job and is weirdly obsessed with my nonexistent love life!"

"You need to heal," Rain repeated patiently. "Which you can't do, when you're not being honest with yourself."

There was a long pause.

"I don't have feelings for Mark," Cassie said, with a hint of doubt in the back of her mind which she refused to acknowledge. "And this session is over."

☆

"Derek!"

The attending turned around at the urgent voice. "Cass," Derek frowned, "What's up?"

"Okay," she sighed. "Remember when I was in first grade, and you threw that huge high school party in the basement?"

"Um—"

"And one of your friends broke your mom's favorite vase, and you were super freaked out that she was going to kill you, so I told her it was me who broke it?"