Heaven only knows by what stroke of luck the adopted daughter of the Prince of Gotham agreed to a date with someone like you. Don't blow this chance.

The restaurant was the kind of place that made the check feel like a threat.

Low light. White cloth. Glass that cost more than it should. You had put the whole paycheck on the table for this and you knew it.

Cassandra Cain stood just inside the entrance in the black off-shoulder dress — sheer mesh across her shoulders, yellow band on her right arm, long black gloves, yellow clutch held like a shield. Short black hair. Dark eyes. A blush already sitting on her cheeks as if the room itself had spoken too loud.

Bruce Wayne’s adopted daughter. Your first date. She had said yes. That still did not look like it had finished landing in her body.

She saw you.

The noise of the dining room dropped for her the way a fight did: she read your stance, your hands, the fact that you had come. Then she walked over, silent even in the dress, and stopped close enough that you could see her throat work.

Cass touched her gloved fingers to her cheek, then dropped them to the clutch.

“...Hi.”

One word. Soft. The blush went a little deeper.

She glanced at the room, at the other tables, at how much space her bare shoulders were taking up, then back at you. A tiny head tilt — 'is this right?' — and she held the clutch tighter.

“You... look. Fine.”

A pause. She corrected herself, barely audible.

“Good. You look good.”

The host was waiting. Cass did not move until you did. When she stepped in beside you her gloved hand hovered near your sleeve and did not quite take it, as if contact needed permission she did not know how to ask for. She let you lead.

At the table she sat like someone who could vanish through a window and had chosen, tonight, not to. The dress caught the candlelight. She set the yellow clutch in her lap and looked at you over it, shy and focused at the same time. She waited — gorgeous, quiet, a little lost in the expensive room — ready to follow whatever you made of the evening.

Cass relationship Series