18. Amanda #3
That’s when it hits me. The depth of Daray’s web of lies. I decide to tell her so she can release herself. So she sees who she’s with now. “I’m seventeen weeks, Cassie. How far along are you?” She needs to say it. We both need to hear the dates back-to-back.
She releases a choked sob. “I’m twenty-five weeks along.”
I nod softly, even with a tempered smile. It’s the therapist in me kicking in. A better person would comfort her. Val certainly would be able to detach herself and go into psychotherapy mode. I don’t have it in me, though. Cassie held no consideration for sisterhood, so I don’t owe her.
When her eyes meet mine, tears gather, and the cool tone they’ve taken makes it look even prettier, even now that she looks so thoroughly destroyed.
“He said you weren’t together like that anymore. He said he was done with you like that, and you just needed some time to find a different place since you’d just let go of your studio.”
I shake my head. “No, Cassie. We were like that.” I cross my arms. She won’t see how humiliated I feel, but she needs to see the depth of this shit show.
“He may have told you one thing, but you were in that apartment. You saw that bedroom. You were in my bed. You lied to yourself as much as he did.”
That’s when the floodgates open, tears falling openly but prettily.
She’s mourning the lie she let herself believe, and this person she thought she’d found.
Because that version of Daray doesn’t really exist. Now, she needs to confront both truths.
This person she loves lied to her, just like he lied to me.
You can justify the lies someone you love tells another person, but when they’re lying to you… The taste is bitter.
“You can’t tell him.” The words rush out of her mouth. “I can’t do this alone, Amanda. You have all these other people in your corner. I have no one.”
She grabs my shoulders, fingers digging into my flesh, and her eyes widen.
She doesn’t look pretty anymore. There’s fear and shame in the way her irises gleam.
I can’t feel for her when she’s asking me to keep my child away from their biological father for her benefit.
Just like she fucked him and believed his lies for her benefit.
And when I don’t respond, when I don’t comfort her or give her the reaction she’s looking for, her grip tightens.
Her nails jab into the space between my clavicle and my humerus.
“You’re really not going to say anything?” she hisses. “You’re just going to look at me like that? Like you’re so much better?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“But that’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it?” Her voice rises, raw and uneven. “You think you’re so righteous, walking around with your little support system and your baby and your smug little face—”
Her hands drop, but her body doesn’t. She steps into my space with her taller frame, crowding me while she looks down at me with eyes glistening, delicate red veins blooming against white.
“I love him,” she spits. “You think I wanted it to happen like this? For him to finally see me while he was with someone else? I thought he wasn’t sleeping with you anymore!”
“Cassie—”
Her lip curls. “You weren’t there. You had one foot out the door the whole time. Left your shit in boxes. Meanwhile, you went and what? Hung out with Eric?”
I can’t keep the stress off my expression when she says his name. I don’t want his name on her lips or Daray’s. I want him wrapped away, tucked safely in a blanket—and maybe between my arms.
Cassie clocks my reaction instantly and smiles, bitter and thin.
“It was so easy for us to fuck around on you. And now you’re acting like Eric wasn’t your own fuckboy?
There’s no way you’re that close with someone, and you’re not fucking.
Everyone thinks so. Even now, you’re parading him around.
It just feeds Daray’s story. Nobody will buy that he just happened to be there when Daray screwed you over.
He made sure everyone knew you started it all. ”
This is who Cassie is—insecure. Daray is, too, if this is what he was carrying about how close I was with Eric.
And Cassie now is caught up in loving someone who exploits the worst of her just to keep her under his thumb.
I should know. But I’m not under anyone’s thumb.
And Cassie’s larger belly fucking proves I didn’t do anything wrong.
I square up, and even if she’s more than a half-head taller than me.
“I don’t need anyone’s approval, and I’m not afraid of gossip.
But if I were? Look down, Cassie. Your stomach speaks to my truth more than it ever will to Daray’s.
” I step away from her. “Suit yourself. Keep him, love him, whatever. I hope he is everything to you that he refused to be for me. Good fucking luck.” I breathe and open the door.
“As for telling Daray?” I look over my shoulder.
“Maybe I will. Maybe I won’t. But you and that child bear no weight in my decision.
Because I don’t need Daray. I’m not alone. ”