Page 133 of As the Rain Falls (Sainte Madeleine #1)

AN INTERLUDE

Beckett

We fell asleep after that, our bodies tangled together underneath the sheets. Her breathing was steady against my chest, and my arm was wrapped around her waist, keeping her tied to me.

At the time, I thought we’d made it through. Nathaniel would try something—I wasn’t entirely na?ve to think he wouldn’t—but I believed he couldn’t come between us.

Our love was built on patience. I thought it could drown out the noise of everything else.

And yet, nothing ever unfolds the way we expect.

It wasn’t until much later, while I was stuck in an interrogation room, that I realized how Cassandra had been trying to tell me something important that night.

The truth.

A truth so heavy, it clung to her days after. And I watched her slowly fall apart beneath the weight of it, feeling completely hopeless. Whatever fragile peace we’d built in the last month vanished out of thin air. She began to spiral again.

Cassandra stopped sleeping at night. She’d wake up trashing against me, begging me to get him off her. I’d find her in the bathroom without her clothes on, her cheeks flushed and her gaze so lost, staring at her shaky hands.

I can’t stop anymore.

It’s not working.

Why isn’t it working?

What is wrong with me?

She was getting sicker.

Haunted.

Distant.

Quiet.

Sometimes, she’d look at me like I was already gone, seemingly haunted by a ghost. And the more I tried to hold on, the more I felt her slip away. I should’ve let her speak. I should’ve listened, but I was never good at that. Not with Lucia. Not with her.

The moment began to replay in my head like a supercut while I lay in the dark, glitching, getting stuck on the same frame. Her voice, her sad green eyes, the way she clung onto me so tight. Cassandra was silently begging me not to let her go.

Tragedies are like rain, though.

Once the pieces start to fall apart, there’s really no use in stopping them.