Page 138 of As the Rain Falls (Sainte Madeleine #1)

It can’t be real.

Why can’t I…

God, no.

No.

Stop.

The memory goes away.

I can breathe again.

“You think touching me, hurting me, and controlling me was normal?” I ask heartbrokenly. “Nathaniel, I was a kid!”

He yells back, voice vacant. “No, I never hurt you. I never did anything you didn’t want me to. Sometimes, you even came to me first. You wanted it. You just need to remember everything.”

“Remember what?” My hands grip my shirt, and I feel the sting of my nails trying to dig into my skin over the fabric. “I was a baby! What the fuck did you even do to me?”

“You really think you can do this.” His confident expression becomes cold. “You really think you can just throw a party, kiss your little boyfriend, and pretend none of it happened?”

“I’m not pretending anymore! What did you… You’re a monster!”

There’s a flash in his eyes, something sharp and crazed.

Dangerous, even.

“Now, let’s not get emotional over this. Come home with me, Cassandra,” he asks, reaching a hand out for me. “You don’t know what you’re saying anymore.”

Silence stretches like a wire between us before I answer.

I can’t contain the sobs.

My head hurts too bad.

“No!”

Nathaniel’s jaw tightens. I watch him hesitate, glancing at the sky before pulling his other hand from his pocket.

“You’re really leaving me no other choice.”

I barely register the glint of metal before a gun is raised at me and fired.

The bullet ricochets against the cement and flies to the opposite direction, and a deafening crack echoes off the walls of the alleyway. My shaky hands fly to my chest protectively as I stumble back in terror, but the bullet lodges in metal, or concrete, or nothing at all.

He missed.

On purpose.

Heart lurching, breath catching in my throat, I yell.

“Are you insane?”

He barks, voice raw and shaking with something far uglier than just anger. “You think this is a joke to me?”

“I think you’re scared!” my voice cracks. “And you should be! I’ll tell everybody what you did to me!”

“Don’t fucking test me today, Cassandra! Don’t you dare walk away!“ His eyes flicker back and forth, and his grip on the gun is tightening. “After everything I’ve done for you?”

“You lost the right to call me family the second you put your hands on me!” my voice wavers, listening as the volume of the music upstairs slowly dies. “What else did you fucking do besides that night?”

His face contorts into something ugly.

He won’t tell me.

Not as long as I get angry at him because of it.

“You know I won’t let you be with him.”

Behind him, I catch a flicker of movement.

It’s Beckett, stepping out the front door.

Antony is only a few steps behind.

No, no, no.

Don’t come out here.

But my brother doesn’t notice, and I swallow hard to mask the relief I feel deep inside, praying that he won’t turn around. Nathaniel straightens, jaw clenched and shoulders squared, like he’s gearing up for something worse. It brings my attention back to him.

“I’ll kill you, Cassandra.” He tilts his head, unaware of the threat looming behind him, and adds. The words sound a little too calm, like a secret being confessed. “You know it wasn’t all that hard killing Lucia. I’ll do the same exact thing to you.”

My brother reaches into his back pocket and pulls something out. It’s a piece of fabric, yellow and frayed.

Lucia’s headband.

The one I kept underneath my pillow.

The one thing that belonged to her that I stole.

I never got to give it back.

“She’s gone, isn’t she?” Nathaniel sniffs it once before letting it flutter to the ground like something already dead. “And nobody ever found out.”

Beckett’s eyes drop to the floor, where the yellow headband is.

I watch him stop cold like everything is happening in slow motion, his mind rushing to put the pieces together just like I did back in December.

He should’ve been able to guess since the fundraiser, but the most obvious answers are often the ones we consider the least.

“Told her I’d do it. Fucked up her tires. Followed her car. Scared her off the road.” Nathaniel adds, sounding almost proud, “I did it all for you.”

“I never asked you to do this!” I shake, tears sliding down my face. “I never wanted this!”

“Oh, that’s so fucking easy, isn’t it?” my brother laughs humorlessly. “To put all the blame on me? She threatened me first! Lucia tried to tear us apart, and now you’re throwing it all away because you’re such a whore!”

“You’ve done nothing but hurt me!” I say each word clearer than the last. “I hate you! I hate you so much!”

His expression shatters. “You don’t mean that.”

“But I do!”

“Let’s just go home, Cassandra,” Nathaniel whispers, more desperate now. “Aren’t you tired of fighting this?”

And it’s disturbing, truly disturbing, to watch him shift like this. My brother still has a gun to my head and murder in his eyes, but his voice sounds more broken than ever, changing to whatever mask will make me break.

“You love me.” He reaches out, tears welling in his eyes, as if he’s the one who’s been wronged and not the other way around. “I know you love me.”

“No!” I shake him off, barely recognizing my own voice anymore. “You really are a monster!”

His lips tremble pathetically, and for a moment, I even think he might cry. I don’t let myself be fooled, because I know the softness is just another manipulation. It’s all another lie.

“How could you do this to me? You ruined my body!” I ask, my voice cracking under the weight of it all. “You made me feel… You raped me, and you killed her. You… I’ll never forgive you!”

Nathaniel flinches.

And then, I feel myself losing it again.

It hurts.

Everything hurts.

“I really wish you were dead!”

Everything stops.

Beckett meets my eyes for one breathless second.

The moment hangs between us, and I see deception, heartbreak, and even hatred.

His expressions smooth out, replaced by understanding.

It’s a punch in the guts. Even now, he is trying to keep his darkest emotions all reeled back in because there’s too much urgency in this moment to even begin to address my betrayal.

All because I didn’t tell him.

I lied to him. I did that, and we won’t be okay.

We won’t be okay ever again.

The pain gets squashed by a feeling of acceptance when Nathaniel’s finger twitches on the trigger.

“Together we go.”

“No!”

The shot gets muffled, as though the sound travels through the depths of the ocean straight to my ears, and I close my eyes just a second before Beckett lunges forward, hearing him call out my name. I feel the bullet brush against my skin, feel the cold breeze making the hairs of my arm rise.

This is it.

This is how I die.

He finally killed me.

I’m gone.

But I open my eyes again only to find out that I’m still alive.

The gun slipped from Nathaniel’s grip as he fell because Beckett pushed him, and the bullet flew out next to me, at my side. It touched the surface of my arm, but nothing else.

My heart is still beating.

It’s going to keep beating for a very long time.

“I’m going to kill you, motherfucker!” Beckett grabs Nathaniel and slams him into the ground. “Get the fuck away from her! Don’t you ever touch her again you fucking piece of shit, you’re a monster!”

I stumble backwards and reach for the gun.

Fists fly.

Beckett isn’t holding back. Punch after punch, he pounds into Nathaniel’s face, not leaving my brother any room to breathe. I watch Nathaniel cough out real blood as Beckett takes him apart, takes apart the chest that once pressed me down, the body that housed so much cruelty against me.

Nathaniel’s scream rips through the alley, raw and piercing, too surprised to even defend himself.

I aim at his head but feel unable to move.

Just kill him.

The front door bursts open.

Kayla rushes out first, followed by Angelina. I watch, unmoving, as Antony takes a step towards the fight but hesitates and pauses when he glances at me again. After all, the gun is still between my hands.

“Okay, Cassie,” his laugh is nervous, too light. “Hey, hey, it’s okay. Just drop that for me, yeah? Before someone gets hurt.”

“Oh my God, Beckett!” Kayla screams. “You’ll kill him!”

“Beckett, stop!”

Blood .

There’s so much blood.

“He killed her!” I start to scream, as if saying it aloud will finally make someone else believe me. “He killed her… he killed her!”

Antony’s hand brushes against my wrist, and he gently eases the gun from my fingers. “No… no! Cassandra, what are you even saying? She died in a car accident!”

“Lucia,” I choke with the pain taking roots in my chest. “He killed Lucia. Nathaniel killed Lucia. He was driving behind her. He showed me. Told her he’d kill her. She knew . How did she know?”

Angelina is trying to pull Beckett off my brother now, using every ounce of her strength to do it. But Beckett is resisting, teeth clenched, gripping Nathaniel’s shirt and slamming him repeatedly into the ground.

Blood gushes out of his mouth.

His limbs are flat against the floor.

“Enough!”

Mateo comes out of the building, steps faltering before he pushes Beckett off Nathaniel.

It’s not, though.

It’s not enough.

“Get off him!” he cries, his face so pale and sickly. “What the fuck!”

“Man, don’t die on me!” I hear Kayla say.

She’s checking my brother’s pulse; she’s—

She’s checking his pulse.

But all I can think is die.

Die.

Die.

“Cassie?” Antony shakes me harder, doubt creeping into his mind. “She didn’t die because of him, right? He’s… He’s lying, isn’t he?”

I ask, voice barely audible. “Is he dead?”

My voice feels distant, like it’s coming from someone else.

Antony breaks, hands flying up, gripping his hair. “I was supposed to drive her… He couldn’t—no. No! It was an accident! It was an… accident! It was…”

Beckett is sobbing now.

Loud, ragged sobs that don’t even sound like him. It’s the sound of something shattering for good, the loudest thing I’ve ever heard, because a heart like his isn’t used to breaking like mine. It unravels as it hits the floor.

He looks so small, so broken.

It’s all so unlike him.

I did that.

I try to reach out for him, but my body won’t move.

Die, die, die.

“Say something!” Antony pleads. “Did he really kill her?”

“Is he… Is he dead?” I repeat, but the world is tilting, my legs beholding beneath me. Antony reaches for me, steadying me just as I stagger. “My head hurts…”

My brother’s body is lying completely still on the floor.

His eyes are closed.

I can see him clearly from where I stand.

Too clearly.

It throws me off a little, seeing him vulnerable.

“Angelina…” Kayla’s voice echoes, panic rising in her voice. “He’s not breathing!”

“We’re going to jail for this. Oh my god, we’re going to…” Mateo stumbles back and curls on the floor, spilling his stomach’s contents.

“Is he dead?” I whisper again. “Is he—”

The world. Everything around it. It becomes so narrow.Small dark dots sprinkle in my vision, blooming until…

And then, nothing.

Just quiet.

Just dark.