Chapter 42
Quinn
C assie’s eyes widen when I say her name, and I can see the tears shimmering in the corners. I touch her arm with my fingertips.
She pulls away, backing herself into the corner of the room .
I want to force her to hear me out. I want to lock her in this room until she knows the truth. But I’m afraid of her reaction. I’m terrified of what she’s going to say when she finds out.
“I don’t understand,” she eventually says, puncturing the silence. “Please tell me it’s all just a coincidence.” She looks at me with earnest eyes. “Tell me you have nothing to do with…with the letter.”
I slip my jacket off, hanging it on the back of the chair. My head is already killing me, and the pain only intensifies with the mention of Jeremy’s letter.
My letter.
“Come here…” I hold out my hand.
“No.”
“Cassie, please just—”
She slaps my hand away, and she might as well have just slapped me straight across the face for the stabbing ache her rejection causes me.
My head pounds even harder.
Fuck . What have I done?
“Tell me you have nothing to do with this,” she repeats, and the look on her face wrecks me.
It.
Wrecks.
Me.
“I can’t.”
She gasps. “What?”
“It was me,” I say softly. I exhale, and the air seeps from my body in a weak puff. “I wrote the letter.”
Cassie stares at me, unblinking for a long time. She’s falling down a tunnel of disbelief, and I know I’m losing her. I just don’t know what it will take to repair the damage I’ve caused. I don’t know the right words to say to fix any of this.
“Is this some sick game you’ve been playing the whole time?”
“Jesus Christ, Cassie, of course not.”
“We’ve talked about Jeremy a dozen times, and you never said a word.”
“I know. I should have told you. ”
“Told me what? You say you wrote the letter, but…how is that even possible?”
I hang my head, knowing it isn’t possible. It’s an impossibility. And yet it is possible because it happened. “Will you please sit down? Getting all worked up like this can’t be good for the baby.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” she shouts, swiping her arm across the bench, sending a Chinese food container hurtling across the room. Vegetables and sauce splatters everywhere, over the benches, dripping onto the floor. “Don’t you dare use the baby as a way to manipulate me. Start talking. And I want real answers, not some pre-rehearsed bullshit that you think’s going to mollify me.”
I nod. “Okay.”
The printer finally stops spitting out pages, and the silence feels like it’s swallowing me up whole.
I search for the right words, but they’re not coming to me. I hate myself for what I did, but at the time, I thought it was the only thing I could do.
“I thought I could make it better.”
“Make what better?” she demands.
She blinks, and a fat tear rolls down her cheek. I can’t bring myself to look into her blue eyes any longer. But I also can’t keep the truth from her any longer either, and I know Cassie sees the guilt that passes through my expression.
“I tattooed your name over Jeremy’s heart.”