42. Cassie #2
I exit the employee-only area and join her in the hall, mostly so I don’t have to watch Josh drool over her.
“He loves me,” she says, in the affable way she used to talk to me before everything went down with Tim.
I cross my arms, not wanting to spend any more time out here with her than I have to. “What do you want, Nina?”
Her smile fades, and her dark eyes meet mine. “I want to apologize.”
I’m so floored, I would fall over if she blew at me. “What?”
“I made a mistake. A few mistakes, actually.” She looks down, then back up at me, and she almost looks… sincere? “Big ones.”
“What are you talking about?”
“When you left the party the other night, I sat down with Tor to watch the fireworks.”
Despite everything, my shoulders tense at her words. I swear to god, if she tells me she hooked up with him after I left, I’m leaving right now, and the only heir Carson Walters will have left by the time this night ends will be Tessa.
She must see the murderous gleam in my eyes, because she quickly adds, “He was sitting alone. I sat down. You know me.” Then, more playfully, like we’re old friends, “He’s crazy about you, by the way.”
My hackles lower a little, but my guard stays up.
“Anyway, we were talking, and he was giving me a hard time about what a bitch I’ve been to you. This is going to sound so strange, but as often as I used to hang out over there, it’s not like Tor and I ever talked alone, you know? So, I guess we never really talked about it.”
“About what?” I ask, guardedly.
She licks her lips and looks down like she’s working up courage, then she meets my gaze, and I see the sincerity glinting in her eyes again.
“I want you to know I’m really sorry for how I’ve treated you since last summer.
I really thought you made it all up to get back at Tim.
I truly believed he was innocent, and you were lying. ”
Believed as in past tense?
I keep listening.
She looks a little anxious as she delivers this next bit. “But it wasn’t Tim I hooked up with that night.”
Her words take a second to land, and when they do, they plant hooks in my heart and drag it down into my stomach.
Because if it wasn’t Tim but she thought it was, it could have only been Tor.
The implications don’t even have a chance to unfold in my head before she continues.
“I know you must think I’m such a slut, I don’t even know who I’m fucking, but it was… it was honestly a twin mix-up on my part, and Tor didn’t realize I thought he was Tim. We weren’t exactly talking, if you know what I’m saying.”
“Ew.” I grimace.
“I know, I know. Sorry. But I was drunk and goofing off. I tripped and caught myself on his shoulder. I ended up on his lap, and I thought it was Tim, so I… kissed him. He kissed me back, and once his hand touched my throat, it was game on—I didn’t need to hear anything else.”
Her description makes my stomach hurt, even if I know Tor was free to fuck whoever he wanted at the time.
“It meant nothing, obviously,” Nina says when I don’t respond. “Until this past weekend, I literally didn’t even realize it was him. Maybe I should have. There were differences. Tor’s much more… dominant than Tim was.”
“Yes, I know what Tor’s like in bed. We don’t need to compare notes.”
“Right. Sorry. Anyway, uh, since it was Tor, that means I was wrong about Tim. And I was wrong about you. And I know I’ve given you a lot of shit, so I just needed to come to you, woman to woman, and tell you I’m truly sorry.”
My eyes narrow slightly. “Did Tor put you up to this?”
“No,” she says, shaking her head.
“Tor and Tim were dressed differently that night. Tim was wearing a white T-shirt, and Tor was wearing a blue hoodie.”
Nina shrugs. “Maybe he had a white tee on underneath. He must have taken the hoodie off. He probably got hot. Maybe he only wore the hoodie on the boat. The lake can get a little breezy, you know? Or maybe I just didn’t notice. I told you, I was drunk.”
My eyes stay narrowed. Her answers are suspicious to me, or maybe it’s her delivery of them.
Seeing I’m not entirely convinced, she keeps trying.
“This actually makes a lot of sense because I could never understand… when all that legal stuff was happening, I told Tim I would happily testify that he couldn’t have…
raped you because he was with me, but he wouldn’t let me get involved.
He wouldn’t let me tell anyone. At the time, I didn’t get it.
I couldn’t understand why he wouldn’t just let me say the thing that could obviously get him off, but he wouldn’t.
And now I realize he had no fucking clue what I was talking about.
He must have thought I was offering to lie for him. ”
That part sounds true, and her question makes sense, but it sends my thoughts in a different direction than I think she intended.
I didn’t know Nina offered to be Tim’s alibi.
Why wouldn’t Tim let her testify to his innocence?
Unless he was protecting Tor.
There was enough evidence—real and manufactured—that I liked Tim Walters to make it believable that I might have had sex with him that night. There was also evidence that one of them had sex with me, so if it wasn’t Tim, then it had to be Tor.
If the charges had been against Tor Walters instead of Tim Walters, they may have had a harder time getting him off. I didn’t like Tor back then. I wouldn’t have slept with him, and people may not have been as quick to convince themselves I would have.
People liked Tim more than they liked Tor when they had two options. Given the choice, everyone in this town—perhaps including his own family—would have saved Tim.
But they didn’t know those were the stakes.
They thought I would be the only casualty.
They believed the battle would be fought against me in arenas where they had the upper hand—the court room itself, where they employed far better lawyers, and the court of public opinion would be no challenge at all.
They thought they could save Tor if they were willing to rip me open and leave me bleeding out on the battlefield—and Tim was completely willing to stab me in the back.
Nobody thought I would bring a gun to their knife fight. Maybe they would have made a different choice if they understood the choice they were making, but they didn’t expect me to fight back, and they certainly didn’t expect Tor to join my side.
If all of this is true, I might understand the way Carson feels.
The horrible things he said to me about his own son.
A man like Carson Walters wouldn’t respond well to a perceived betrayal like that, while a mother like Myra would undoubtedly plead with him to move past it for the sake of their family.
The result would likely be a dinner just like the one I had the night Tor brought me to their house.
I don’t know if that’s what really happened, of course, but after reviewing all the evidence, I do find it believable.
Nina may not know that family loyalty is the lifeblood of the Walters family, but I do.
Did Tim decide to take a bullet for his brother when he didn’t think the shot would prove lethal?
Maybe.
The night I shot him, Tim said, “I didn’t rape you, Pritchard,” and I thought he was just trying to gaslight me, but maybe he was telling the truth.
Taking the bullet for his brother was one thing when it was just a court case he expected to win, but when I was standing there with a loaded gun… his commitment wavered.
Did Tor draw up plans and hand them to Nina, directing her to come up here and convince me he’s innocent so that I’ll come back to him?
He might have.
She hasn’t executed his plans as well as I did, but she’s not the match for him that I am, so that’s not entirely surprising. What must have been her improvising led me somewhere he didn’t want me to go, but even the best architect can only work with the resources at his disposal.
The thing about doubt is that once that seed is planted, it’s nearly impossible to fully dig up.
The roots sprout immediately, poisoning the fresh soil it’s planted in.
Even if it’s removed fairly quickly, its essence lingers.
The soil is never as fertile and trusting as it was before doubt touched it.
Before the other night, it never crossed my mind that it could have been Tor in Tim’s bedroom last summer. Tor and I barely even interacted, so I don’t know what would have even prompted him to do something like that to me.
But now that Nina told me with such insistence that it was, and I started to think it through and make sense of it, it started to feel like reality. It began to feel like what actually happened, and it changed everything—some things in ways I don’t even understand.
It was unthinkable to me before, but now I find it believable.
There have been moments when Tor has been rough with me during sex, even that moment when he emulated parts of what happened to me that night, and the way he clamped his hand over my mouth in Tim’s bedroom when I was freaking out after my talk with Nina…
it felt exactly the same. His skin even smelled the same.
A shiver passes over me, but I don’t let myself run from it this time. As I have many times over the past few nights lying alone in the dark, I reimagine what happened to me last summer putting Tor in Tim’s place.
And it feels different.
Because he’s Tor.
Because he tricked me into loving him before I knew better.
Because I’m his Daisy.
It’s twisted and deeply depraved, but what about our love story isn’t?
He told me once that the truth doesn’t matter if the lie is convincing enough, and I chalked that up to his dysfunctional upbringing because the truth has always very much mattered to me.
I don’t know what the truth is, though, and I don’t think I’ll ever truly know.
Maybe if he would have denied it immediately, if I had witnessed a sense of betrayal cross his face that I would even think that about him.
But that’s not what I saw.
Because that’s not what he felt.
And I don’t know what that means.
And maybe I never will.