15. Cassie
CASSIE
I’m standing in a kitchen that I’ve been in before—several times—but I don’t know how I got here. It’s Dylan’s house. Russell and Dylan must be…
An unpleasant feeling begins to churn in my gut. I glance out the sliding glass doors that lead to the back porch, but I already know I won’t open them. It’s the most direct way out back, but the guys will see me as soon as I open the door.
I go out the front door instead. The weather’s warm.
I can’t feel it, but I know from memory it was a warm night, so the party is spread out all over the place.
I pass two people sitting on the front porch steps as I make my way down to the cooler set up in front of the house.
There are cold beers inside, but I root around for a bottle of icy cold water.
As I uncap the bottle, I walk around the side of the house. It’s dark outside, and shadows scare me more now than they used to. Everything scares me now more than it used to. I used to feel safe.
I don’t want to think about that right now, so I shake it off and take a drink of my water. I screw the cap back on as I near the back of the house, where the deck is. Where the guys are sitting in lawn chairs, talking about whatever guys talk about when their girlfriends aren’t around.
I know I’m in a memory, so I know what I should see when I peek around the corner. It’s the night I lost feelings for Russell. When I heard him and his friends talking, and I didn’t like what I heard.
Only he isn’t sitting there with them now.
I frown because that’s not right. This feels like a dream I know by heart, but the script seems to have changed, or an actor didn’t show up to read their lines, and the whole production is off without them.
Where is Russell?
Suddenly, I become very aware of the dark.
The whole mood shifts, dread sneaking up on me.
I no longer feel safe out here, so I turn around and head back up front, but when I get there, it’s not Dylan’s front porch anymore. It’s mine.
Another familiar sight, but this one much more recent.
It’s the night Tor brought me home, and Russell was waiting for me.
My chest tightens, and it gets a little harder to breathe.
My heart beats faster as I walk toward the shadowy front porch, and even though I know when this originally happened, I didn’t like what I saw there either, I want to see him now.
I want Russell to be hiding in the shadows on my front porch. I want that so much.
Emotion overwhelms me, and in my dream state, I can’t figure out why. I don’t push too hard, though. Maybe deep down, I know I don’t want to know why.
“Russell?” I call out gingerly, stopping in front of the stairs.
He steps out of the shadows, and my heart sinks. He’s wearing dark jeans and a black hoodie with the hood pulled up, casting most of his face in shadows. I know it’s him, though. I recognize his mouth.
“Russell?” I say again.
“Run,” he says.
My eyes widen, and I look over my shoulder.
Tor is striding toward me, and dread explodes inside my chest at the realization.
For a moment that stretches on too long, I’m torn between the instinct to run away from him and the knowledge that if I do, he’ll know I’m onto him. If I run, I had better be faster, because if he catches me…
In the background of my mind is a quiet voice that sounds delusional, telling me no, Tor wouldn’t do anything terrible to me. Tor cares for me. He’s on my side.
But my instincts don’t believe that.
Run.
I’m running out of time to make a decision, and Russell’s voice echoes in my mind.
I take off up the front porch, pushing the door open and throwing myself inside. Wanting to put a barrier in front of him, I reach back to close the door, but when I do, I see him gaining on me with a cold, murderous look on his face.
Oh god.
I leave the door and run, reaching ahead for something, anything to grab onto. Anything to get me away from him faster.
I grasp the handrail of the staircase, realizing as I do that’s not right. There shouldn’t be a staircase here.
I realize this isn’t my house anymore.
It’s the lake house.
Helplessness claws at me. For a moment, I’m tempted to give up. I can’t get away, so what’s the point?
But no, I have to try. I’ve already jumped in—I can’t just stop swimming because it’s hard. I’ll drown if I do.
I see Tor’s family standing across the room, watching me. Myra’s wearing the same dress she wore in court on the day the verdict was read. “Why are you running away from him? He won’t hurt you.”
Lies. They’re liars.
He’s inside the house now, right on my heels.
I start crying, knowing he’s about to kill me, but I can’t move any faster. “Please,” I cry, my voice pitiful to my own ears. “Please leave me alone.”
With tears blurring my vision, I climb the stairs even though I know it’s the last thing I’ll do.
I make it to the top and glance back. He’s right behind me.
I round the corner and sprint down the hall. I can feel him closing the distance before I can put more between us.
I knew this would happen. I knew he was faster, but I had to run. I had to try to save myself.
I see the bedroom door at the end of the hall. I don’t want to go inside, but there’s no other option. Everywhere I turn is something horrible, something damaging, something I can’t escape.
Tears streaming down my face, I open the bedroom door.
Once I’m inside, I close it.
I’m alone now. It doesn’t feel like Tor is chasing me anymore. And I guess that makes sense because I’ve gone back in time. Russell hasn’t waited in the shadows on my front porch yet or said the wrong thing when he was out back talking to his friends.
I’m at the lake house inside the bedroom of Timothy Walters, and I’ve only been there once.
I look down at my bottle of water, but it’s not water anymore.
It’s my “girl beer” from the party that night.
Swallowing, I set it down on the nightstand beside Timothy’s bed.
I’ve only seen this bed in person one time, but I’ve imagined it many more times than that.
In my dark fantasies, the ones I wrote in my notebook, I always ended him in the same bed where he ended me. It felt poetic, I suppose.
My mind screams at me not to lie down in that bed, but I’m tired. It’s quiet up here. I’ll just lie here for a few minutes, and then I’ll leave.
My senses aren’t the same in dreams, so I don’t smell him on the pillow, but I know I did that night.
It’s the thing that tortures me on a deeper level than I ever want to acknowledge.
The little smile on my face as I breathe it in and remember him pressing that stupid can against my thigh on the boat.
I’m smiling because I smiled then, but tears well up in my eyes because the version of me now trapped in this bed knows what the girl who lay down in it a year ago did not: Timothy Walters will never be a reason that you smile.
Shame coils around me, threatening to choke the life out of me, and I want to be free of its grip, so I close my eyes and welcome the darkness.
I can breathe here, finally. In the void.
But I don’t get to be here for long.
I come to, my vision swaying a little.
There’s a weight on top of me. Pain and a foreign sensation of fullness between my spread thighs.
My eyes fly wide open. I’m so confused.
Immediately, his hand clamps down over my mouth, startling me.
Panicked, I shove at his chest, realizing it’s a man on top of me, trying to get him off me.
I don’t know what’s happening, but then his hips move, and pain lances through me.
I cry out against his hand. The pain intensifies as he shoves deeper, more insistently, as my body resists.
He’s not just on top of me. He’s inside me.
No, no, no. This can’t be happening.
I cry out, but he smothers my muffled cries, leaning into me more heavily. He thrusts into me again, and I push against him with all my strength, but he barely budges.
My fighting back is an inconvenience, though. He lets go of my mouth to grab my wrists, gripping them in one hand and pinning them over my head.
“Help me!” I shout, but his chest muffles my voice as he leans over me.
His hand quickly covers my mouth again, and my heart sinks as I meet his gaze and realize this isn’t some stranger attacking me. It’s someone I know.
His mouth curves up slightly as he registers the recognition. Then he leans in and murmurs, “Quiet, Pritchard. Someone’ll hear.”
His voice is a taunt, and my heart breaks in half as he forces himself deeper inside my body.
Tears blur my vision. I fight to pull my hands free, but I know it doesn’t really matter.
It’s too late.
___
When my eyes open, the bedroom is still dark, but I’m drenched in sweat. My skin is so hot that it feels like I’m lying on a heating pad. Logically, I know I didn’t go to sleep on top of one, but the heat scorches my back so much that I arch off the bed and feel underneath me.
But there’s no heating pad.
It’s my skin.
Blearily, I push down my blanket, then kick it off the rest of the way. My body is on fire. I feel like I woke up on a bed of coals, and as I sit up, I realize my breathing is thick and panicky.
Anger and helplessness fuse together to lash me. Tears prickle behind my swollen eyes, but they don’t fall.
I’m sick of crying. I don’t want to do it anymore.
I’m still on fire, though, so I haul myself out of bed and make my way out to the kitchen for a cold bottle of water.
I stand at the counter, reorienting myself, catching my breath.
This whole past year has been a nightmare I can’t wake up from, but being tortured by my own mind like this, forced to relive the worst night of my life…
It’s so fucked up.
I sit down at the table, my shoulders slumped, my posture atrocious. I feel weak and defenseless at this moment. Habit has me wanting to reach for my journal, but I don’t have it.
Slowly, I remind myself I don’t need it anymore.
The journal was for venting these feelings in dark fantasies of making him pay for what he did to me, but I’ve already done that.