The dip surprised her, and her frown was deeper when he righted her. Maybe she didn't want to figure it out, yet. She was a freshmen, there was still lots of time and anyway, some people never knew what they wanted to do. Some people changed jobs a dozen times, changed careers, never found their calling. Cassie knew darn well what her calling was, it just wasn't all that profitable (you couldn't buy groceries with the satisfaction of punching a criminal in the face), and was also at the moment extra illegal.
When he mentioned her Dad she felt a pang somewhere in her stomach that she totally thought she was over, like she'd expected thinking about him couldn't hit her so hard anymore. It still did. "Yeah, and he deserved it," she muttered after a beat of silence, staring down at her shuffling feet. "He was smart, he had skills, he earned it." Cassie took a deep breath and met Tony's gaze and said, with the same kind of certainty she'd had when she told him she would be awesome, "I don't deserve it and I haven't earned it." Another hard thing to get off her chest, but there that was.
She launched into an explanation before he could give her the 'what are you talking about, you're really stupid, why isn't everyone smart like me?' look that he'd mastered and which he could display with a thousand different nuances. "I liked working for you a lot, but you handed it to me. There's probably a thousand college kids with experience who want to work there, like that's their dream and they'd be really great, and I was just a high school kid that you happen to know, and I got the job. That's not fair. At least if I get a degree and I come back and apply for you, then I'd kind of earn it. I'll have worked towards deserving it. It won't be a hand out."
Of course Cassie appreciated what he'd done for her, even if she didn't express it well, but she'd never liked being a charity case. Maybe she'd started up college for the wrong reasons, because she had no direction, but she thought she had the right reasons now for wanting to finish (even if she still didn't quite know what she was doing there).