“Cass?” I look up and meet her gaze. “You break your own heart by staying here. You don’t need to drown alone. Fuck, you don’t need to drown at all. Come find me when you’ve decided to stop living in the shadow of my brother’s ghost.”
Those words hit harder than I care to admit. I fall to the ground as soon as she disappears, but this time I don’t scream. I don’t shout. I don’t dramatise my pain. I fall to my knees, and as the tears flow silently down my face, I break like I’ve never broken before.
Chapter
Two
Cassandra
Inever really believed in true love—not in the way the movies tried to spoon-feed it to me, not in the way the books made it sound like this holy revelation that cracked people open and stitched them back together again, as if love itself was some celestial surgeon that could mend wounds simply because it felt poetic to imagine it doing so.
I watched all of it; I read all of it, but it always seemed like a fairy tale women built as a coping mechanism, something soft and glittery to cling to, so girls like me wouldn’t give up entirely, wouldn’t allow the weight of real life to crush us before we’d even had a chance to live it.
It was hope, I suppose—thin, pretty hope—hope that one day I would stumble into something that would break me open and make sense of every love song I’d rolled my eyes at since I was old enough to understand that heartbreak existed long before the breaking ever actually happened, long before you even realised you were standing in the blast radius.
“Hey, Cass, you coming out tonight?” Lola calls from the kitchen, her voice bright enough to scrape at the edges of my mood while she fixes up my go-to comfort drink. Hot chocolate loaded with whipped cream, marshmallows and grated chocolate, because she knows exactly how to weaponise sweetness against me and use it as ammunition when I least expect it.
“Lo, I don’t know. I have to work.”
“Have to?” She leans around the doorway, brow raised, already wearing that look she gets when she’s about to dismantle my excuses one by one, like she’s preparing to pull me apart with a grin. “Or are you just making bullshit excuses about why you can’t let that gorgeous blonde hair down and have fun for one fucking night?”
I stare into the mug she’s stirring, pretending the steam is suddenly fascinating, pretending the swirl of chocolate is an answer to my problems.
“I have to work,” I repeat, even though my voice betrays me with a tiny giggle when she presses the mug into my hands and the deep cocoa scent invades every sense I have left intact, curling itself around me like a warm, sugary trap.
“Have to?” she echoes, smirking like she’s been waiting for this moment all damn week.
“Come on, Cass, when have you ever played by the rules?”
“Hey, I’m a good girl.”
The words leave my mouth in a tone even I don’t believe, thin and unconvincing, like a lie dressed in a school uniform.
“Sure you are, babe,” Lola says, stepping closer, eyes glinting with the kind of mischief that has dragged me into trouble more times than I’ll ever admit. “So…” she trails off, tilting her head at me like she’s watching me crumble in real time, like she knows exactly which part will crack first. “You know you want to.”
“Do I though?” I laugh, mostly because the alternative is admitting she’s right and I’m not emotionally prepared for that level of honesty today.
“Sure, you’re right,” she says with the fakest seriousness I’ve ever heard. “Why would you want a fun night out with your best friend—by the way, that’s me, if you didn’t get the hint—when you could spend a seedy night waiting on men who?—”
“Okay, okay, enough. I get it.”
I roll my eyes hard enough to see galaxies.
“Seriously, Cass,” she says, dropping the theatrics for the briefest, most sincere second, “why don’t you quit that fucking hellhole?”
“It pays well.”
“Yeah,” she mutters, grabbing a spoon like it personally offended her, “and one day I’m going to get a call saying they found your body in a ditch.”
I sigh, long and tired, the kind that comes from somewhere deep. “Don’t be so dramatic.”
The worst part is—she wasn’t dramatic, not really.
That thought had crept into my mind more times than I’d admit to anyone.
But bills were bills, and survival didn’t care about comfort or safety, didn’t ask whether you were coping or crumbling. The risk was worth the payoff. It had to be. “If I say yes,” I add, lifting a brow, “will you drop it?”
She makes an exaggerated cross over her heart. “I swear.”
