Chapter 51
The venue felt like a living thing, heartbeat-strong and bright, breathing me in and out.
Backstage, people moved in practiced lines: a handler with a tablet, a stagehand coiling cable, a tech whispering “check, check” into a headset.
Through the curtain, the buzz from the audience made its way to me. Biggest crowd yet. The kind that might have swallowed me once.
Marin stood in front of me with her producer face on, sleek, unflappable. She handed me my notes, then immediately took them back, because that’s our dance. “You won’t use these,” she said, mouth quirking. “But seeing you holding them will make the handler stop hovering.”
The handler hovered anyway. “We’re at five,” he said, and held up a hand like maybe I needed the visual representation...
The audio tech clipped the tiny transmitter at the back of my waistband and slid the wire under the collar of my dress, movements impersonal and careful. “We’re live to the control room once I flip you,” he warned, fingers at the pack. “We’ll hear you.”
“Thank you,” I replied.
The tech tucked the last bit of cable, pressed a button, and my own breath came back to me in my ear, intimate and strange.
Marin left to take a phone call, while the host vamped into the microphone, warming up the crowd, selling my story and the table of merchandise as if they were the same thing.
I could hear my countdown now. Three. Two. ..
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath.
“Cassidy.”
My body recognized it before my brain did; a muscle memory I wished I didn’t have.
I turned.
Andrew.
Not gaunt. Not ruined. Not the ragged spectre I’d let myself imagine, torn up by consequence and night terrors, craving what he’d lost. He looked…
fine. Better than fine. Fresh shave, clean collared shirt, expensive jacket that fit like a second skin.
The kind of crisp that comes from a good life lived without interruption.
For one suspended beat, the world tilted, the past laying itself like tracing paper over the present. Then the sheet slid off. I stood still.
Shock was quickly replaced with anger. Who the fuck does he think he is?
“You have some nerve showing up here, Andrew.” I snarled.
He smiled, that practiced, gentle version I’d once mistaken for kindness. He stepped forward like we were old friends catching up. “It is so good to see you,” he said. “I have missed you.”
The mic at my collar was heavier than before. In my ear, a light crackle, a voice I didn’t know yet: Control to Cassidy, we’ve got you.
“Cass.” He softened his voice. “Aren't you going to hug me? Maybe a Kiss? I put in a lot of effort to try and catch you alone.”
“I’m not going anywhere near you.” I kept my tone even. But I was vibrating with rage.
I wasn't sure how I would react if I ever came face-to-face with him. I honestly assumed fear, pain, loss... so many emotions that I went through during my time spent healing.
In my ear: Security on route, Cassidy, you are not alone. Keep him talking.
I didn’t take my eyes off him.
"Don't be a brat, Cassidy. Is this about needing my attention? You have it. I can be yours now."
“I don't want you, and you can’t be here,” I said. “There’s a bench warrant for you, Andrew. What are you thinking coming here like this?”
One corner of his mouth lifted, amused. “That’s a little dramatic, even for you.
However, we can clarify that with the judge when you inform them that you lied and wish to drop the case.
” He took another step, casual, stopping just a breath shy of my space.
I could smell his usual cologne, a scent that used to warm me and now made me sick.
“Congratulations, by the way,” he said. “All of this. It’s cute. ”
Cute. Like a trick a dog learns.
“You are delusional,” I said, repeating. “You can’t be here.”
“Don't try to pretend to be in control of what we have, Cassidy. We both know who owns this relationship,” He laughed low, “I wanted to see you, so I am. I want all this to go away and for you to come with me... So you will!”
My scalp prickled. I clenched my fists, my nails biting into my palms.
“You know, I got a little jealous when you wore the yellow dress that I love for him,” he went on. “You looked good on Canada Day.”
I knew it. It wasn't just my fear making me jumpy.
The mic hummed. In my ear: Team confirming visual. Two out. Thirty seconds. A different voice, lower: Don’t engage physically. Keep him talking. Police have been dispatched.
“You’ve been watching me, stalking me?” My voice threatened to crack, but I pushed past it.
“I’ve been paying attention to you. For us.” He gestured vaguely toward the stage, then back to me. “I read the interviews. I see how they try to make you into something that you aren't.” He leaned closer, lowering his voice like he was telling me a secret. “I wanted to remind you who we are.”
“Andrew, there isn't a us,” I said.
He smiled like I was adorable. “Cassidy, come on. Don’t do the pity-script. The push and pull. I know you. You don’t like that small-town boy, what’s his name? Brady?”
“Brody.”
“Sure.” He waved a hand. “He’s the kind of guy you try on.
Not the kind you keep. You like men who can change a room just by walking into it.
Men who make the world tilt in your direction.
You like a certain kind of heat, a certain pace.
.. Fuck, the way your cries sounded when you’d beg me to choose you, and all I had to do was bend you over and tell you I loved you with my cock buried deep for you to be mine all over again. ”
How had I ever thought what we had was love?
“No,” I said. Calm. “You don’t know anything about me, or what I want or need.”
Andrew’s eyes softened in feigned pity. “He’s not enough for you,” he said. “You know that. You look ridiculous pretending that camping in a fucking field is what you want. You used to want…more.”
It felt like my heart was in my throat. “I still do,” I said. “You just aren’t it.”
The sound that came out of him was animalistic.
In my ear: Ten seconds. Then, softer, Marin’s voice threading through the channel she’d grabbed from the control room: I am here with you. You’ve got this.
“You still don't understand,” Andrew said. “You don't get a say in this; you are mine. You threw gasoline on our lives and called it truth. You made me a villain to sell a story.”
“I told a story to save me after what you did,” I said. “That’s the part you always forget. That I matter. My choices matter.”
He smiled again, but it didn’t reach his eyes.
“You always were easy to play.” He shifted, a little closer, dropping his voice until I could feel it more than hear it.
“You fell for everything. The first apology. The second one. You liked it when I hurt you. It made you feel alive.” He tilted his head, confiding.
“And then you had the audacity to think you could end it.
That you could move away from me. That you could tell me no, to stop.
You are MINE, your body is MINE. Your Pussy is MINE.
And I don't care if you say no! I will always take what is mine.”
It should have shattered me. Once, it would have. But the only thing breaking now was the illusion that he still had any power left. So, I let the words pass through me, his acknowledgment that he heard me beg him to stop, and he didn't care. “You just admitted to the assault out loud,” I told him.
He blinked. Confusion flickered, then smoothed. “I said it to you,” he corrected, like we were in the bubble he loved. “This is private.”
“Is it?” I asked, and tilted my head, letting the tiny mic at my collar catch the light as my hair shifted. His gaze flicked to it quickly. Through the earpiece, a whisper of movement reached me, a shift in the air as two bodies closed in from either side.
Andrew recovered, smile back in place. “You liked it,” he repeated, slower, as if rehearsal could make a lie true. “You always did. The rough. The way I made decisions so you didn’t have to.”
“No,” I said. “I didn't want or ask for what you did to me. What you tried to take from me.”
He rolled his eyes, then gunned the engine of his charm again, bright and blinding.
“We don’t have to fight,” he said, hands up.
“Come with me. We’ll go upstairs, order a bottle of something no one else can afford, and laugh about this mess you've made. You’ll remember.
You’ll remember the way we fit. You’ll remember what you sound like when you’re honest about what you want. ”
A laugh escaped me, small and disbelieving. “Honest?”
He leaned in, eyes glittering. “I always told you the truth,” he said.
“You were the one who lied to yourself, to everyone. All this…this show?” He gestured again to the stage.
“You’re selling an edited version. The unedited you was mine.
Mine.” He softened his voice again, intimacy as a blade. “Say you miss me.”
“No,” I repeated. “I don’t.”
Something in Andrew shifted. The smile cracked.
There, under the polish, the aggression that had always been waiting.
He stepped forward, and I matched his step back.
“You’re not hearing me,” he snapped, volume spiking.
“You’re embarrassing me. You wrote me wrong.
You made me small. You made me into some…
hack job of a man, some cartoon, and I won’t let you do this to me. ”
“Andrew,” I said, and the way I said his name made him blink.
“Listen carefully.” I kept my voice low, even, aware of the tinny echo I could hear in my ear, my voice going places beyond this back room.
“You don’t get to decide how my story ends.
You don’t get to twist this into love when it was a need to possess.
You don’t get to turn my fear and pain into a lie. ”
His mouth thinned, eyes bright with the kind of rage that thinks it’s righteous. “You were nothing before me,” he hissed. “You are nothing without me.”
Behind him, a security guard appeared at the edge of the curtain, the second one ghosted the other side.
He pushed on, jaw tight, heat spitting sparks, “You loved being watched. You loved being followed to see if he was better than me, to see if anyone could be. You post where you go. You practically beg people to look. You wanted me to come. You wanted a scene. You wanted me to prove I still...”
“Still what?” I asked.
“...own you,” he finished, triumphant, like he’d solved the equation.
“That’s the thing,” I said, and felt my voice steady in a way that made something warm flicker under my ribs. I straightened, steeling my spine. “You never did.”
He stepped further into my space, cologne and heat and the memory of a grip that used to bruise. “You’ll regret this,” he hissed. “I will make you regret this. And tell your farm boy he isn’t safe. None of them are. You’re easy to get to.”
“Sir.” The guard on his right spoke, placid and professional. The other came into view on his left, wide as a door. “This area is restricted.”
He tried one last face, crooked, pleading, the one that used to unspool me. “Cass. Baby. Don’t do this. You know me. We’re good when it’s just us. Say you want me. Say it and we will make this all go away.”
“I don’t want you,” I said. “And nothing you could ever say makes what you did go away.”
They took his arms with practiced gentleness. He yanked once, quick and mean, and threw his last shard over his shoulder. “This isn’t over.”
In my ear: Units on site. He will be arrested as soon as we clear the doors.
“It is,” I said.
They turned him toward the service hall. He lifted his chin like a man walking out by choice. The door swung. I released a big breath I didn't know I was holding.
For a beat, everything was quiet. And then the voices beyond the curtains grew louder and louder.
In my ear: Your call, Cassidy. We can skip the reading.
My hands were steady. “We’re not skipping anything,” I said. “Open the curtain.”
Marin appeared at the curtain, “I'm with you,” she murmured, eyes bright.
I’d spent so long thinking closure meant forgiveness. It didn’t. It meant walking away with nothing of him left to carry. So, I let the pain and the fear... everything I had held onto that involved Andrew leave with him.
And I stepped into the lights.
The applause rose with the crowd.
“Hi,” I said, and my voice came back honey warm. “I’m Cassidy Morgan. Thank you for being here.”
We did the night as planned, the Q&A and the signing. People didn't know what to do with what they had heard. But they had heard it all, recorded it and shared it with the world. Phones buzzed in pockets, alerts, shares, and clips of the backstage conversation.
Back in the greenroom, the door shut, and the noise thinned to a hum. Marin sat on the arm of the couch, studying me.
Her phone started buzzing again, "I already reassured him you are ok, but I don't think he will stop calling until he hears your voice."
Brody.
She handed me her phone with a soft smile on her face.
"Cassidy?" His voice sounded hoarse.
“Hi,” I said, and the relief in that syllable almost undid me.
“Oh my god, I was so scared.” His voice was gravel and air, the way it gets when he’s trying not to cry. “Are you okay?”
A laugh shook out of me, light and real. “I’m okay,” I said. “I handled it.”
He exhaled so hard I could feel it against my ear.
“I saw, or I guess heard,” he said softly.
“Half the town has sent me the clip. Your mom has been fielding calls all evening.
Chase has already called the police, asking what happens next.
And Mr. Novak just left after he assured your dad that Andrew was locked up and can't get to you again.” His voice went rougher.
“I’ve never been so scared that I wasn't there to protect you, but also so, so proud of you.”
“I’m proud of me, too,” I said, and heard the truth in it as it left my mouth.
“Do you want me to come?” he asked. “I can be there by morning.”
I looked at Marin. She was watching me like she wasn't sure what I would do next. “No,” I said, gently. “I want to finish. On my terms.”
A beat. Then a smile in his voice. “I’ll be here waiting for you.”
“I know.”
We breathed together for a moment, the kind of quiet that says everything. “I love you,” he said.
“I love you too.”
We hung up. Marin cleared her throat, business reassembled. “We can cancel tomorrow.”
“We don’t need to,” I said. “I’m finishing this.”
She nodded once. “Ok. But you can change your mind. I will back up whatever you choose Cassidy.”