41. Tor #3
During those fireworks, she told me that Cassie wasn’t the only girl in Holbrook. Maybe now she realizes she’s the only one who matters to me.
I don’t know why I attached to Cassie the way I did all those years ago. Maybe I’m not even being honest with myself about when I first felt it, because even before I realized I liked Cassie, I have memories of her.
We’ve gone to the same schools our entire lives, so we’ve always orbited each other.
She was the prettiest girl in kindergarten, so Tim and I used to battle it out over who got to play house with her during center time.
I stole her library book in first grade and got her in trouble with the school librarian.
It was the first time I’d ever seen her shoot anyone a dirty look, and even though I was the recipient of her baby wrath, I felt uncomfortable when her big eyes filled with tears after the librarian got done scolding her for something that was my fault.
In second grade, I slipped a valentine into her backpack but didn’t sign it because, frankly, she was still holding a grudge about the library book theft from the previous year.
But then in third grade, she sat next to me when she saw me sitting alone at the back of the bus on the way to the field trip.
Not because I was a Walters or even because she had a soft spot for me, but because it’s who she is.
She would have sat down next to any lonely-looking kid, even the one that had been a jerk to her.
She had a crush on Ian Campbell in fourth grade, so I got in my first fistfight with him.
We weren’t in the same class when she left school in fifth grade, but I remember the strange way my stomach dropped when I overheard that she didn’t go to our school anymore.
And I remember in middle school, spotting her at recess in a denim skirt and a pink shirt with daisies on it and feeling relief that she was back.
Maybe it’s as simple as being able to see that she was exactly what I wanted.
Her capacity for love and warmth, even forgiveness and understanding.
She feels more than I do for most people in this world, but I enjoy being near her warmth even if I don’t feel it myself.
Cassie brings the coziness of an inferno to someone whose inner world has always felt much cooler.
It’s probably no coincidence that she’s the only person capable of throwing me off my game. She’s the only one who has ever made me feel so much.
I don’t know if it’s because of who she is as a person. Because she feels so much so deeply, and we’re so connected that her sensitivity somehow rubs off on me.
My darkness touches her, too. Like a vampire obsessed with turning an unwilling partner, I injected it straight into her veins last summer.
She wasn’t meant for darkness, so she struggled with it at first. She drowned in it without me, transforming alone into something she didn’t want to be.
Now that I’m with her, helping her dispel what she doesn’t need and harness what serves her, I think we’ve twisted the poison and the scar tissue into something beautiful.
Something that no longer dulls her light, something she can shine through.
Cassie thinks I’m romantic, but the truth is, I’m only that way for her. Being alone doesn’t bother me. I’ve never dated just to date. I only tie myself to someone I want to be tied to, and I’ve known I wanted to be tied to her since I was old enough to understand attraction.
I’m not sensitive to much else in this world, but since the first time Cassie sat down next to me in seventh grade art class and I caught a whiff of her peach-flavored lip gloss, I’ve felt her.
Cassie is my person, and she’s the only one I want or need. I loved my brother, but felt no hesitation in burying him to save her. I love my parents, but even after a lifetime of being taught it was the ultimate sin, I was willing to betray them to give her the life she wanted.
And I would do it all again—for her.
I don’t regret anything I’ve done to make Cassie mine, though I do wish I could have spared her the pain of going through it alone.
I’ll never let her face anything alone again.
I was programmed for family loyalty, but what my father never anticipated was that I would consider someone else my family.
They were the family I was born into, but I had no say in that. I want a family I get to build myself—and she’s the only person I want to create it with.
Most people I can live with or without, but Cassie is irreplaceable to me.
So I’ll do what I have to do to ensure I don’t lose her, even if that means rewriting this chapter of our history. Even if it means I never get to tell her the truth about this one thing.
“Fix your top,” I tell Nina as she squeezes water out of her hair back into the lake.
“I’m going to tell you all the details you need to include when you talk to Cassie, so make sure you’re paying close attention.
” I say it with enough menace to draw her gaze—now wary—back to mine.
“It’s very important that you get this right. ”