Chapter 24
T
he letters sent her down a rabbit hole of research.
The trial was public record, so she accessed everything.
The crime scene photos, the statements that had been acquired by the police, even the witness transcripts for both attorneys.
When she was younger, she had wanted Cassidy to be innocent.
She had prayed every night for the jury to free him.
As a grown woman, she realized that innocence was irrelevant.
She wanted him to be justified. It took Sloan four days to read all the letters.
She carried them everywhere with her. To work, to the grocery store, to the hair salon.
It was all she could think of. She asked Ellie questions, but she quickly realized that Ellie didn’t have the answers herself.
Ellie trusted her instincts and rode with Cassidy no matter what.
The details were in these letters, and the only person who could complete the picture for her was Cassidy.
She hadn’t heard from him, and she knew he was being respectful and giving her space, but it was time that she faced him.
When she finished the final letter, she felt like she had witnessed love in its purest form.
She had flipped through envelopes, drowning in a sea of handwritten emotion.
Now that she was done, it felt odd. It felt incomplete, and she knew why.
She had heard his mother’s reactions. She needed his transparency, his accountability.
She picked up her phone. She knew it was rude to call him this late. She still dialed his number.
“Yeah.” His baritone bombarded her ear. She could tell he had been asleep. She was sure he hadn’t even looked at the phone before answering. She was silent, unsure of how or where to begin.
“Yo, who is this?” he asked. A beat of silence. She knew he checked the screen this time because her name followed. “Sloan?”
“I finished the letters.”
She heard motion. If he had been asleep before, he was wide awake now.
“You were defending your mom. She never said what he did. Please tell me your side,” she whispered. “I have to know the full story.”
It was his turn to be silent. She feared he would tell her no.
“I’m no longer judging. I just want to know you,” she pleaded.
“I took my mama to the grocery store every Saturday afternoon so she could get her groceries for Sunday dinner…”
Sloan sighed in relief as she settled in.
“I can remember what was on her menu like it was yesterday. Meatloaf, mashed potatoes and gravy, cabbage, and homemade sweet rolls. It was the last meal I ate before I got locked up.”
Sloan’s forehead bent in concern at the road he was going down. Mrs. Whitlock had been the cornerstone of their family. She had been so loved. Sloan had adored her, and she remembered those Sunday meals well. She was a guest at that table more times than she could count.
“I remember we went to the store. She always took E because she wanted her to know how to put a meal together. Said a little girl that didn’t know-”
“How to make groceries might as well be a little nappy-headed boy…”
Sloan finished his sentence with a soft laugh.
“I remember.” They both fell silent as their memories of her manifested in their spirit.
“What happened at the store that day, Cass? Her letters are full of sorrow about what occurred, but she never mentioned what happened,” Sloan said, urgently.
“Her side is like one side of a puzzle. I need your side to complete the picture. Please, help me understand this.”
“I feel like I’m dishonoring her, Sloan. Telling you this goes against her wishes. She kept this secret her entire life. She was embarrassed by it, ashamed. She was afraid to speak life to it,” Cassidy said. “She trusted me with it.”
What a burden for a first-born son. Sloan’s empathy knew no bounds for this family. The Whitlocks, her second home, where her dearest friend lived, and her soulmate was torn from.
“I understand if it’s too much for you to say. I can tell it’s heavy on you. When you’re ready for help carrying it, know I’m here,” Sloan whispered.
She heard him sniff away emotions.
“Can I hit you back?”
He needed to get off the phone, and she understood.
“Okay.”
He hung up, and Sloan climbed out of bed, rushing, a bit frantic as she stepped into leggings and a slouchy sweater.
She dressed as quickly as she could and grabbed her bag and her keys.
She was arousing his demons, and his past was picking at a wound she hadn’t healed.
She just wanted to see him. She called Ellie.
“Bitch, it’s two o’clock in the morning, you better be dying,” Ellie groaned sleepily in the phone.
“Text me Cass’s address,” Sloan said.
“Is everything okay?” Ellie asked, more alert.
“I finished the letters, Ellie. Please, just send it,” Sloan pleaded.
“Do you even have a plan? Did you change your mind about him? Bitch, clue me in!” Ellie asked in excitement.
“I don’t know, but I just need to see him. Thanks, sis,” Sloan said, hanging up. Sloan drove 40 minutes to get to him. It was the middle of the night and freezing outside. She was sure she was unwelcome. She had done nothing but make him feel unworthy of her. She was making him face her anyway.
She pulled up to Cassidy’s townhome and gripped the steering wheel as anxiety filled her.
“Fuck it.” She climbed out and walked to the front door. She pressed on that doorbell repeatedly until he snatched open the door.
“Your mom trusted you with her truth. Trust me with yours, Cassidy,” she said, eyes shining desperately.
He stepped aside to let her inside and then closed the door, turning the lock. She didn’t know why that lock felt final, like, he was never letting her leave.
“I’m really trying to respect your boundaries, Sloan, but you keep coming around.
What you want me to do? Earn you? I’ll do that.
I ain’t afraid of that; but if you really don’t want this, you got to respect your own boundaries and keep from around a nigga because it’s only so much resisting I can do,” Cassidy said.
“You being here at three o’clock in the morning is begging me to do something. You ain’t here to talk.”
She was like a deer in headlights. He was right.
Her heart was pounding, and her body craved connection.
She was wound so tightly with anxiety and aching that could only be healed one way, by one man.
This man was damaged. He was hurting. He had been for so long over a sacrifice he had made for his mother.
A boy protecting his mother, when the roles were supposed to be naturally reversed.
Sloan couldn’t imagine what had pushed his back to the wall, but she knew it was unspeakable.
She didn’t need to know the full story to know that it weighed on him because even his half-truth was like a boulder tied to her ankle in a river of confusion.
She was trying to tread water as best she could but only he could save her.
“We can talk in the morning,” she heaved.
Why couldn’t she catch her breath? Cassidy advanced on her, picking her up and placing her on the kitchen island.
So much tension had built up between them, it was like relief as he kissed her.
She panted, squeezing her eyes shut as he stripped her of her coat and everything else underneath.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered between kisses.
He pulled off his shirt, and the definition of his body took her breath away.
“For everything I said, everything I assumed.” He leaned into her, forehead to forehead as their noses touched.
The strain between them wasn’t just physical.
It was psychological and emotional. It was all-consuming.
Allowing themselves to have something once was like a hit of heroin.
They couldn’t just stop. They couldn’t will themselves to quit.
Sloan had become this man’s medicine, and he would either be consumed to her detriment or her healing.
She was trying to discern between the two.
Her body didn’t care. It rioted for him. His every breath she inhaled.
“I’d never hurt you, Sloan. Ever. Know that. Know me.”
She nodded. “I know you,” she confirmed. “I’ve always known you.”
She wrapped her arms around his neck and her legs around his waist, and he carried her up the stairs to his bedroom.
He descended over her as he placed her in his bed. “I love you so much,” she admitted.
He looked at her with a sincerity that made her eyes water, but his silence set off a panic she hadn’t felt before.
He didn’t believe her, and she reached for him, pulling him down on top of her.
?°You don?ˉt love me anymore?” Her worry was so viable that it drained out her eyes, sliding down the side of her head until it hit his pillow.
“You know better,” he replied. “Don’t you?”