20. Cassie
CASSIE
The lights are off, and the bedroom door is closed. It’s late, and we should definitely be sleeping, but as one would at any good sleepover, we’ve stayed up half the night talking instead.
“Favorite candy?” I ask, looking up at him, my leg draped over his thigh.
“Sour Patch Kids.”
I wrinkle up my nose, mostly because that was Russell’s favorite candy.
“I like Jolly Ranchers, too,” he offers, seeing my face.
“I guess you can like Sour Patch Kids, but don’t plan on ever sharing a box of candy when you get them.”
He chuckles, and our bodies are so close, the noise rumbles through me. “It’s okay. I’m not a cheapskate. You can always have your own candy.”
“I’m just glad we’re finally getting to know the important things about each other,” I say playfully.
He shrugs, keeping his arms locked around my waist. “I like the way we did it. Body count first, favorite candy later.” He doesn’t ask what mine is. Instead, he shows off his observational skills. “Yours is Twizzlers.”
“Correct.”
“Followed by…?”
“Reese’s. Especially the eggs, but I won’t turn away the classic peanut butter cup.”
“I’ve never been a big chocolate guy.”
“That’s the craziest thing you’ve ever said.”
He smirks. “Can’t be. I’ve said a lot of crazy shit.”
My eyes widen pointedly. “Exactly. And that’s the craziest.”
“I never knew you had such a sweet tooth. I’ll have to take you to a candy store one day.”
“I’d like that.”
“What else would you like?” he asks, and I can feel the shift in his tone toward something more serious than a sugar fix.
“What do you mean?” I ask, looking up at him.
“From life. From a relationship. You obviously aren’t happy where you are—or where you’ve been, at least, for the past year. Where do you want to go from here?”
It’s a reasonable question, but it makes me sad. Tonight has been so nice overall, and I don’t want reminders of the ugly reality I’m trying to move past.
Maybe that’s the answer.
“I want to stop looking back. It’s hard because…
I spent so many years of my life in one lane, building the foundation for this perfect future I thought I could make happen for myself.
And one stupid decision to go to one stupid party just derailed everything.
” I shake my head faintly, tears welling up in my eyes.
“I know back at Holroyd’s you mentioned me being at the top of my class and all that, but the truth is, I wasn’t by the end.
The girl who used to skip recess in third grade to help the teacher grade papers barely fucking graduated.
That was my whole thing, my primary identity for most of my life.
Good girl, good daughter, good student—I worked so hard at everything, but I lost all of it. ”
A pair of tears track down my cheeks, and Tor brushes them away, but he doesn’t stop me.
“Your stupid brother… you asked me earlier what he said that night, and he said a bunch of shit, but the last thing he said… he told me I needed to get over it. And it pissed me off so much. Of all the people in the world, he had no right to tell me how or when I needed to do anything. And what pissed me off most of all is that it feels like he never saw all the damage he inflicted. It was not just sex. It wasn’t sex, because sex is what we had tonight.
Sex is… different from what he did, and it was the attack, the violation by someone I knew…
it was horrifying. And I felt so stupid.
And broken. And there’s no area of my life that wasn’t broken by it.
That’s what he doesn’t get. It wasn’t like that for him.
It didn’t poison every area of his life.
He was able to contain it somehow, like something he could put away whenever he felt like it, but I wasn’t.
” The tears are coming fully now, making my voice crack, but I take a shuddering breath and keep going.
“In school, I couldn’t concentrate anymore.
People were talking about me and staring.
I used to love school, and I didn’t even want to be there anymore.
Even at home, when I tried to study, I just couldn’t focus.
It was like I was broken. All of my grades slipped.
I had mostly Cs by the time the year ended—first time in my life I’d ever even gotten one.
I didn’t even apply to any colleges. I was so fucking defeated and depressed that I just…
it didn’t feel like I had a future anymore, so what was the point?
All of my relationships fell apart. Obviously, Russell and I broke up, but that was the least of it, honestly.
People I had thought were my friends turned their backs on me.
They joined in on the bullshit commentary about the worst moment of my life because supporting me, believing me, meant believing something terrible about your stupid fucking brother who is so beloved around here. ” My voice breaks.
“And then there’s my mother. I thought we had a pretty normal relationship before this, but it was untested, and apparently that’s the only reason we did.
As soon as it was tested, as soon as standing by me cost something, she just made me feel so terrible.
Like it was my fault, like I was overreacting and she was just being oh, so gracious to put up with my fucking theatrics.
I wanted to die, and she thought I was being dramatic.
What the fuck?” I say, looking up at him with tears in my eyes.
“What kind of mother makes her daughter feel that way? If I had a daughter and something like that happened to her, she would be my priority, not everybody else. Fuck what anyone says, what anyone thinks. Fuck the son of the richest fucking family in town and anyone who stands by him. I would be her fiercest defender, not… her biggest disappointment.” I shake my head.
“I can’t even stand to look her in the eyes anymore. I can’t stand her.”
I’m crying enough now to need tissues, so Tor lets go of me long enough to grab one from the box on the bedside table. Wordlessly, he hands it to me.
“Thank you,” I say softly, bunching it up and pressing it against my nose. “Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize.”
I take a minute to wipe my nose and pull myself together, and once I’ve calmed down, I can speak again.
“Anyway, it was like when a rock hits your windshield. The glass doesn’t just crack at the place of impact.
The damage spreads and weakens wherever there’s a fracture, undermining the integrity of the entire thing.
And that’s what it did to my life. It ripped away so many illusions that I thought were real.
It made new cracks and showed me cracks where I had never seen them before.
It cost me everything that ever mattered to me.
It left me with nothing, and what do you do when you have nothing left? ”
I meant it as a rhetorical question, but Tor reaches over, pulling me back into him. “You rebuild. Not the same structure as before. Something better, informed by what you learned from the one that collapsed.”
I nod, my gaze drifting past him. “Yeah. That’s what I want to do now.
When I shot your brother, I had no plans to rebuild.
I thought it was the end of my story, it was just the only ending I could live with.
But you’ve given me a second chance. I want to write a different ending.
” I focus back on his face. “I’m sorry if this whole conversation is…
weird for you. I understand why it would be. ”
He’s shaking his head before I can finish. “No, don’t apologize. This conversation needed to happen if we were ever going to really move past it. You needed to say your piece, and I needed to hear it.”
I’m so relieved he sees it that way that a weight I didn’t even realize I was carrying falls off my shoulders. I hug him. “That’s all I wanted,” I murmur against his chest.
“I know.” He kisses the top of my head. “I’m sorry it took all this for you to get it.”
I close my eyes, breathing in his smell and soaking up the feeling of finally being comforted by someone who understands what I lost.
My eyes only open when he speaks again. “Once we get past this week, I think things will get a lot easier.”
I haven’t wanted to ask about any of the arrangements for his brother, and I’ve gone out of my way to avoid seeing anything about them since I saw that flyer at the grocery store, but I feel safe enough with him to ask now. “Is the funeral this weekend?”
I feel his chest expand, hear him sigh. “It’s in two days. Then the thing at the football field. After that, it’s more or less over.”
I nod to let him know I heard him, but I don’t really have much to say about it.
He hesitates, which isn’t something I’m accustomed to from Tor, but when he finally does speak, I understand why. “I didn’t invite you to any of it for obvious reasons, but if you want to come…”
Immediately, my entire soul rejects the mere suggestion. “No.”
“Okay. I didn’t think so, but figured I should offer.”
I look up at him with an appreciative little smile.
Unfortunately, he follows it up with, “You will have to meet my family eventually.”
The smile melts, but I stay looking at him. “Yeah… I don’t know, Tor. We have so much history, and none of it’s good.”
“I know, but…” He sighs. “It’s my family, Cassie. And I’ll never take their side against you,” he adds. “I know I stood with them before, but it’s different now that we’re together.”
“They’ve been horrible to me.”
“I know,” he says, caressing my face. “I know they have. I’m not defending that.
But the source of all that is gone now. Tim isn’t in the picture anymore.
They only have one son left,” he states.
“And I promise you that I will leverage that for all it’s worth to make sure they aren’t mean to you.
All I ask is that you give them a chance.
I’m not asking you to swallow anything. They took from you, and you took from them.
What we need to do now is try to wipe the slate clean and start fresh from where we are.
You only know what it’s like when they’re against you.
Give them a chance to be on your side. If you and I work out, they’re going to be your family, too, and I would never ask you to debase yourself or betray yourself in any way.
All I’m asking is that you be open to starting a fresh chapter with them. ”
All he’s asking, as if that’s a small thing.
“My dad’s a dick, you won’t like him, but I really think you might like my mom if you met under different circumstances.
Her parenting skills may not be what you want them to be,” he admits, “but when you meet my dad, you might understand. He’s not great with boundaries, so she wouldn’t thrive living life with him if she had any.
How can she teach her kids to respect boundaries when she doesn’t have any herself?
But that’s also why I know I can get her to embrace you regardless of all that’s happened.
And if she embraces you, my dad will accept it even if he doesn’t like it, so... Can we just try?”
I sigh heavily. “I don’t have a lot of faith in it working.”
“That’s fine. Just be open to it.”
“I’ll… try. But I’m not ready yet.”
“It doesn’t have to be now. Like I said, we need to get through this week and come out on the other side. Then we can start building our life together.”
I’ve never had a boyfriend say something like that to me before, but I like it.
If someone had asked me at any point before tonight if I thought there was even a remote chance I would ever build a life with Torrance Walters, it would have been a hard no. But I can’t lie. I’m starting to like the sound of it.