13. Cass
CASS
PLAYLIST: PLAYLIST: APOLOGIZE – TIMBALAND, ONEREPUBLIC
“You are a fucking idiot,” Nikki tells me as she sits on the stairs.
“Shut up.”
“Not happening.”
“How much did you hear?”
“Everything. And I say this as a family: you are just as much of an idiot as her. How would you react if I tell you it’s your choice between misery and a life of your dreams? Because it is. You have been brooding for months, pissing everyone off. It’s just a super easy choice; you just stop.”
“Fuck you.”
“See,” Nikki says. “Same reaction as her.”
I groan.
“You’re black and white,” says Nikki and rubs over my back. “She’s like every shade in between. Things aren’t that easy, especially not with the emotional ones, like her.”
“You don’t even know her.”
“I know enough.”
“Oh yeah?” I ask aggressively, not requiring an answer.
“She was arrested fifteen times; the charges?” Nikki asks, not waiting for my answer.
“Speeding. Trespassing on private property to save a woman’s life, no charges.
Trespassing on a federal building where she hung a banner with friends calling out the injustice of separating an immigrant family from young children, charged and bailed.
Trespassing on private property in seven more cases, one of which involved stealing a stolen car, which was later returned to its original owner.
More speeding, one without charges because it saved the life of a pregnant woman’s baby.
One case of aggravated assault with dropped charges because she was in defense of her friend who got assaulted by a stalker.
And, last but not least, the misdemeanor from illegal street race in three cases. ”
I stare at Nikki with wide eyes.
“How did you find that out?”
“She’s a public figure, C. The internet knows everything.”
“I didn’t know—“
“Because you act and don’t think,” Nikki says. “She’s one of the good ones. Doing what she can. Caught between worlds, probably alone. Where would you be without us, and if you had others constantly decide for you what to do?”
“I would have left.”
“But what if she can’t? She has nowhere to go, and you know how that world works. Look what happened to Elli; her father flicked a finger, and she had to obey. It’s a different world, but that makes her problems just as real as ours. They are just different.”
Nikki’s words need a moment until I process them.
“Fuck,” I breathe out as I understand what I couldn’t see. What’s even worse, and Nikki is unaware of, is what state she is in. What happened. And I sent her back—back into taking away the one thing that meant something to her.
“I need to go,” I say and jump up, running to my car.
There is only one place she mentioned where I could find her.
Please, please, please be there, I send as a prayer. I cannot have someone else die around me, cannot feel the guilt of having caused yet another death.
I brake in front of the Four Seasons hotel with screeching tires, jump out, and run inside.
“Audrey Whitney-Morgan,” I say, “I need to speak with her.”
The receptionist looks at me like I am some sort of pest, and for the people here, I am. Never in my life have I felt more out of place than here.
“It’s important,” I say. “I know she is here. Call her, tell her it’s Cass.”
For one second I am convinced he is going to have me removed, but then he takes a phone and dials.
Time goes by, and I am close to snapping. I am sweating and caught in a limbo of images running through my mind. What if I pushed her over the edge? What if she’s choosing the same path as Elise? What if—
“Miss Whitney-Morgan,” says the man suddenly, and I inhale deeply.
She’s here. On the phone. Alive. “There is a young woman here by the name of Cass; she says she needs to speak with you, urgently.” The man’s eyes wander up and down my outfit.
A hoodie and baggy pants, dirty shoes and grease I can’t get off my fingers.
“Of course, Miss,” he says. His look is as unreadable as it can get, and my heart skips a beat.
He takes his time, clicking something on the PC next to him, and I am close to strangling him if he delays the answer any longer.
Then, he steps around the counter. “She awaits you upstairs,” he says and walks me to an elevator, where he uses a card to activate it, points me inside, and presses the upper button.
“If you may give me your car keys, otherwise it might be removed.”
Car. Right.
Do I trust him with my car?
“Valet will keep it safe in the garage,” he says as if he read my mind.
“Still in it, I believe,” I say as I check my pocket. “Was kind of an emergency.”
The man nods, and I am riding up for what must be an unbearable minute.
The elevator door opens.
I stick my head out, and I’ve landed directly in a—Fuck me.
I don’t even have words for the marble corridor leading to a sitting area with huge glass windows overlooking the city.
“What the fuck,” I breathe out as I walk out of the corridor into the suite.
This is fucking insane.
“Addy?” I ask, walking slowly towards the sitting area, but she isn’t there. I glance to the right; there are doors everywhere leading to just another room.
I find a room with a table. A bedroom. A whatever room; I don’t even know how to name that thing in there.
And then I find her. Sitting with her head leaned against a massive window in a study sort of room with a desk, loads of wood, strange art I have no clue about, and a grand piano in the back.
The desk looks like it’s from the white house itself, and the overall superiority of the room repels me.
She just sits there, with a bottle of alcohol in her hand, almost empty and ignoring me.
“Addy,” I say. She doesn’t even react. I sit down opposite her with crossed legs.
“I’m sorry for what I said,” I say and swallow hard. Apologizing is not really my area of expertise. “I was—I sometimes don’t think, and just act. I don’t understand your world; you were right.”
She lifts her head from the glass.
Eyes red.
“You were right,” she says in a faint voice. “I’m captivated, stuffed into a cage. I’ve tried to flee my entire life from it, but it’s like I am escaping one cage just to be stuffed into the next.”
Heavy tears drop down her cheeks. All these tears. I don’t know what to do.
“I mean, look at this crap here,” she says.
“80k per night, and no one fucking cares. 80k could save so many lives. And yet, I am in here. Caged. Shackled. Impossible to do anything. I hate being here. If I could burn it all down, I would. But I can’t.
I don’t know how to escape the hell I am in, because there is just another one opening up to swallow me whole. ”
I have a million questions. A million things to say. But only one of them is important.
“What happened in L.A.?”
She looks away, shaking her head.
I slide over to her, grasp her face.
“What happened in L.A.?”
“Don’t,” she says.
“I’m not letting this go.”
Tears roll over my hands. So many they trail down my arms.
She just cries. I don’t know what to do with her.
So I kind of hold her, let her cry without saying anything.
At some point, her sobs die and the salty tears on my hands and arms dry.
She shivers slightly in my touch.
And then, she gets up, removing herself from the closeness without a word and an empty gaze.
She takes the last gulp from the bottle.
“You don’t get the big roles by being good,” she says. “You get them by being chosen.”
The bottle crashes into the corner as she turns and walks away.
I jump up and grasp her hand to stop her.
“Don’t,” she breathes out, trying to get away, but I don’t let her.
“Why not?”
She stares at our touching hands.
Nothing happens for a moment.
And then she pushes me back into the wall, hard, pressing my arm up and fixing it with her hand.
My breathing quickens. No one has ever handled me like this. Somewhere, very deep in me, a tingling sensation pulsates in my core.
A wave of alcohol washes over me as she bends down. Instead of kissing me, she trails her lips up to my ear.
“Don’t,” she whispers darkly. “Because if you do, I will be the next one you drive your car off a dock for.”
With that, she lets go of me like she was electrocuted and walks away through the marble corridor, swaying less than I expected her to after an entire bottle of whiskey in that short amount of time.
“You don’t get to decide that for me,” I say.
She stops.
Turns.
“No,” she says. “I’m used to not being allowed to decide anything. But I get to decide one thing, and that’s how and when I go.”
“I won’t let you,” I say, catching up with her.
“You can’t save someone who doesn’t wanna be saved,” she says in a dismissive tone.
I grasp her hand.
“And what if there is something worth living for?”
She chuckles darkly as if I have said the most obscene thing in the world.
“Don’t make yourself more important than you are,” she says derogatorily and removes her hand. Something that gives me a small stitch in my chest, but it’s not the point right now, so I shove it away.
“I don’t mean me,” I say. “I said something, not someone.”
She narrows her eyes.
“And what would that be, the thing worth living for?”
“Help me destroy Whitney-Morgan,” I say, goosebumps spreading over my entire body as I reveal my plan to the worst possible person ever. “For her.”