Chapter 11
Chapter
Eleven
Cassandra
He thought I was a dream.
An hallucination.
Fuck, I thought…
Shit, I don’t even know what I thought anymore.
I thought maybe — just maybe — he’d accept me.
That for one impossible heartbeat, I meant something to him.
That I wasn’t just another ghost drifting through the wreckage of his life, haunting his bed, swaying like smoke around the edges of his nightmares.
But the second reality hit him, he turned back into the same man who’d already torn my soul open with nothing more than a look and a single, cruel truth.
The same man who left me bruised and breathless at the bar while some blonde with legs for days rode his thigh like I hadn’t even happened.
Like I’d never been in his hands. Like I’d never been pressed against that mirror with his mouth at my throat and his heart pounding as if I was something worth breaking for.
“I shouldn’t have fucking touched you.”
His words won’t stop circling my head — a loop, a noose, a mantra I never asked for.
But you did.
You did.
And I melted into every second of it like it was salvation, like it was the only oxygen my lungs had left.
I let you put your mouth on me like I belonged there.
I let you whisper butterfly like the word was sacred.
I let you worship me in a way no one ever has — like you were going to keep me, like you wanted to.
And then?
You remembered who you were.
And I remembered who I wasn’t.
I’m not the girl who gets chosen.
I’m not the girl who makes the demons go quiet.
I’m not the girl a man like Dax fucking Kingston loses his mind over.
I’m just a pretty little distraction with a bad job, a soft heart, and a talent for falling in love with disasters wearing human skin.
The silence in Lola’s apartment stretches tight around me, thin as wire and just as dangerous. She hasn’t come out of her room. Not since last night. Not since I came home with smeared lipstick, swollen lips, glassy eyes, and the kind of silence that explains everything without a single word.
She knows.
She always knows.
And I can’t even cry.
I’ve used up every tear I had left on that man already — every drop wrung out of me like he was squeezing the last softness from my bones.
So I stand under the shower until the water turns cold enough to sting. I scrub my skin until it’s pink and raw, as if I can wash away the memory of his mouth, his hands, his breath hot against my throat.
But it doesn’t work.
Because he touched me like he was drowning.
And I let him.
I let him take one last breath before he disappeared all over again, like he always does, like he always will.
I dress slowly, each movement heavy, deliberate. Black jeans. Black tank. My hair still damp from the shower. No makeup. No perfume. No armour.
Just me.
Raw.
Stripped.
Empty.
I write a note for Lola and leave it on the counter. I don’t say much.
Had to clear my head. Will be back tonight.
I lie.
Because it’s not just my head I need to clear.
It’s him.
But how the fuck do you burn someone out of your soul when they already turned it to ash?
I step outside into the morning like it owes me a fucking apology. The sky is too bright, the air too fresh, the city too loud, too alive, too shamelessly indifferent to the disaster in my chest.
I want the night back.
I want the quiet.
I want the way he said my name like he was choking on it.
I want the way his voice broke when he realised I was real.
I shouldn’t have touched you.
Then why did you?
Why pull me closer like I was something you were terrified to lose?
Why kiss me like you were dying for it?
Why look at me like I was real…
Only to take it back the second your fear caught up?
I don’t remember walking here — feet moving, pavement shifting beneath me — but suddenly my boots stick to a floor I swore I’d never touch again.
The Crimson Room.
Red light.
Red walls.
Red memories.
And every one of them bleeds him.
That’s what it’s called — like it’s glamorous, like it’s some velvet-drenched fantasy instead of a dressed-up hell where the walls breathe secrets and the carpet swallows sins whole, where broken girls sell fragments of themselves for the price of a drink and a nod from a man who doesn’t give a shit if they make it home, as long as they leave their dignity at the door.
The bouncer doesn’t even blink when he sees me.
Just tilts his head, shifts his weight, and opens the door like I belong in the dark, like the shadows already know my name and have been waiting to pull me back in.
The second I step inside, it hits me — like it always does, like it will every time until the day I finally leave this city behind.
Sweat.
Smoke.
Cheap perfume wrestling with vanilla body spray until the air tastes sweet and sour and wrong.
Desperation with a glittery finish.
It’s thick in here — that sticky perfume of sin and survival, a humidity made of breath and want and the quiet, exhausted resignation that comes when you know you’re dying slowly but you’re doing it in stilettos and body glitter and a smile sharp enough to slice through a man’s wallet.
The lights are low and bloody, the kind of red that stains more than it illuminates, casting everything in a warm haze that makes skin glow, makes lies easier to believe, and makes bruises look like deliberate art.
The mirrored ceiling above the main stage reflects everything back twice — the girls, the men, the money, the ache — a kaleidoscope of hunger and performance.
Suspended in the centre, the giant black cage hangs empty for now, chains clinking softly when the bass trembles through the floor; it won’t stay empty long.
Girls are already working the poles.
Indigo — tall, all legs and attitude, spinning with a precision that says she’d break the pole in half if it dared slow her down.
Cherry — crouched low, heels stabbing into the stage like she’s hunting something and smiling at the thought of catching it.
They’re beautiful.
But it’s a hollow beauty, learned and sharpened and worn like armour. The kind of beauty you build when the world teaches you the only thing worth valuing is the way you arch your back, the curve of your mouth, the sway of your hips.
The bartender catches my eye when I approach — a small tilt of his chin, a softening around the mouth that tells me he knows better than to ask questions — and without a word, he slides me a glass of flat soda with a twist of lime and a shot of sympathy.
I take my place at the far corner of the bar, back to the wall like always, because some habits are survival, not choice.
I watch the men.
The same types every night — business suits with loosened ties, Rolexes glinting under the red lights, wedding rings they forgot (or forgot on purpose) to leave at home.
They toss money like it’s redemption. They cheer like it’s a game.
They look at the girls like they’re starving, like the stage is a buffet laid out for their consumption.
But they never see me.
Not unless I’m bending over their drinks or laughing at their jokes.
And tonight, honestly? I’m grateful.
I don’t want to be seen.
Not after last night.
Not when every part of me still feels like it’s echoing his name, vibrating with the ghost of his hands, aching with the memory of a man who kissed me like he wanted to keep me and then threw me back into the fire.
Dax.
I close my eyes and let out a slow breath that doesn’t calm a damn thing.
God, I can still taste him.
Still feel the weight of his hands — bruises he didn’t leave on my skin but carved straight into bone, deep into the soft places I never let anyone see.
I came here to forget.
But all I’ve done since walking through the door is remember.
I stir my drink with a straw, watching the ice melt into nothing, and try not to think about how easy it would be to disappear in a place like this. How many girls already have. How many more will.
Indigo hops off the stage and sweeps past me, blowing a kiss as she goes. “Cass, baby, you back for real or just slumming it?”
I manage a weak smile. “Little of both.”
She smirks, eyes glittering like she knows exactly what that means, and disappears behind the curtain, her heels clicking out a rhythm like war drums marching toward the night.
The music shifts — slower now, dirtier, something sultry and dangerous that curls around the room like smoke.
The lights dim even lower.
And I wonder — not for the first time — how many pieces I have left before I stop being a person altogether. Before I become just another girl in bunny ears and a tight dress with a laugh that isn’t real and no exit plan.
Except…
That’s not true.
Because I made one.
Two years ago I enlisted to volunteer in medical relief. I did it quietly, secretly, half-convinced they’d laugh at my application and bin it on sight.
But they didn’t.
And then the letter came.
And suddenly I could be gone in weeks.
No more heels.
No more tips.
No more men who look at me like I’m something they’ve earned the right to touch.
No more crawling into bed at 3 a.m. smelling like whiskey and regret.
I could be free.
So why does every cell in my body still feel tied to him?
Why do I still feel like I’m waiting for a ghost to walk through that door?
I don’t notice the man who sits beside me at first.
Not until he’s too close.
Too casual.
Too smooth.
He has the kind of presence women glance at twice — not because he demands attention, but because it rolls off him like smoke and silk and something sinfully earned. Like charm was built into his bones and danger was tattooed into his grin.
And that grin…
It’s slow, crooked, amused — the kind of grin that makes your knees tilt inward and your mind wander toward all the wrong, reckless places.
Dark hair, mussed in a way that says he shouldn’t be trusted.
Olive skin, glowing under the lights as if richer suns have kissed him.