Page 76 of As the Rain Falls (Sainte Madeleine #1)

I let my shoulders drop, considering what might happen next.

The chirping of the crickets outside quiets down as the first few drops of rain start to fall.

With how quiet it gets sometimes, it feels like nothing bad could ever happen in Le Port.

But I’ve watched people I love getting hurt badly over and over again.

It’s like everything is fated to… fall apart one way or another.

I could die here.

I am dying here.

And high school is still high school. Le Port is a small town.

Everybody deserves to be given the benefit of the doubt and have someone who knows how to read them.

A person who sees through each lie, bad first impression, and broken promise.

But it’s never granted to any of us to actually receive it.

“How can I make everything okay again? I never meant for it to get so messed up!”

She starts tearing up again, and this time her movements are more violent. I watch her start to scratch herself, and my instincts tell me that I need to physically stop her before she goes too far.

“Cass.” I reach for her, unlocking her seat belt to set her free when she starts struggling against it. “Calm down.”

“They’re all going to hate me, Beckett!”

I gasp loudly as she starts to slap herself, her chest, and her thighs, as if trying to chastise herself for her wrongdoings.

“I’m going to lose all my friends!”

“Hey, no. Listen to me.” I touch her wrists, bringing them further away from her body. “Just listen, okay?”

“No!”

“Every friend you lose over this is a friend not worth having,” I promise, maintaining my eyes locked with hers. “And you have me. I know you.”

“You believe me?” her struggle slows, surprise showing in her voice.

“I do.”

Cassandra sniffles, hiccuping again. There are tears trailing down her face, real ones. My heart clenches at the sight. She regrets everything. I know she does.

“I’m sorry,” I speak quietly, wiping her tears. “I’m sorry you’re hurting, Cassandra.”

“I didn’t even like him like that!” she confesses, green eyes pleading.“I swear, Beckett!”

And I do.

I do believe her.

How could I not, when she’s like this?

“A broken ego sometimes hurts more than a broken heart.” I offer a small smile. “Should I bother telling you you’re way too good for a guy like him?”

“No, don’t say that. I don’t want to be coddled. I just…” She turns her face away from me, staring at the road. “There’s something wrong with me. I don’t know why I do this.”

“Do what?” I ask.

“Let the wound fester until it gets rotten.”

I watch her trying to pull herself together, wondering who made her feel so small. People shouldn’t hurt this much. Not people like her.

“That’s a fancy way to put it.” I smile sadly.

“I have a lot of fancy vocabulary,” she replies.

“There’s nothing wrong with you.”

“Well, I beg to differ.”She shakes her head. “I mean, look at me. You can be honest, you know. I won’t get mad.”

“I have no interest in tearing you apart,” I shake my head, voice soft. “There really is nothing wrong with you, not in my eyes.”

She mutters something under her breath, and her face falls. Again, the hurt is unbearable. Caleb deserves nothing, nothing at all for turning her into a sobbing mess.

“Hey, no. Don’t do this, Cass.”

I reach for her again, trying to bring her closer to try to stop her from hurting herself.

Cassandra takes this as an opportunity to meet me halfway, jumping over the shifting gear on instinct and climbing into my lap.

It takes me by surprise, but I squash the feeling down fast, trying not to overthink this too much. Maybe all she needs is to be held.

“Shh.”

She clutches my shirt, finally holding onto something.

“But it’s my birthday!” Cassandra sobs harder. “I shouldn’t be crying on my birthday!”

“I know, baby.” I hear her make a wounded sound at the last word, as if the tenderness I’m offering so freely pains her.

I know exactly how she feels.

This is a bad night.

Another one.

It keeps on going. It never stops.

It never fucking stops.

“You’ll be okay,”I promise. “And I’m not just saying it. You’ve got friends, okay? People who won’t leave just because you might do the wrong thing sometimes.”

“Really?” Her gaze finds mine, locks in, and doesn’t look away. “You believe me?”

“Yes, Cassandra. Of course, I do,” I agree, smiling softly. “Happy birthday, by the way. You’re seventeen now. How does it feel?”

“No gifts yet.” She shifts, her eyes going muted with something I can’t quite describe. It’s all sad and unlike her.

“Well, I can’t fix that right now, even though fixing shit is really my thing,” I try to joke, keeping my tone light. When she doesn’t laugh at the bad attempt to cheer her up or say something, I try to get her attention again by touching the sides of her face. “Hey, are you okay?”

Cassandra gulps, a frown forming on her face.

“I don’t know.”

“Okay.”

“Just hold me.”

“I am.”

“I need you.”

The switch happens so quickly, I would’ve missed it if we hadn’t been so physically close to each other. She jumps from overly sad to curious, impulsively reaching out to touch my chin.

“I need you so bad.”

“Cassandra?”

Her thumb rubs against the curve twice before her lips press against mine for the tiniest of seconds. It’s not exactly a kiss, more like a quick brush, and over before it even starts.

I stay put, watching her pull back, noticing how her mouth pressed into a stubborn straight line again. Then, she reaches out to me, more frantic about it this time around.

“Kiss me, please.”

Fuck.

God.

No.

I stare her down, forcing myself to take a step back and try to figure her out. It’s awkward and confusing. I don’t get where she’s going with this.

“Cassandra.” I pull back. “What are you trying to do?”

“I don’t know,” she breathes out, sounding honest but lost. “I guess I just want to see if it feels any different.”

The rain starts coming down harder now, harder than before, tapping against the surface and blurring the windows of my car. A storm that doesn’t stop, so unlike this fragile moment. Cassandra sounds like she wants to do something reckless out of spite, just to make a point.

“Every time he kissed me. Every single time,” she explains through gritted teeth, tilting my head towards her. “I don’t know what I did wrong, but I always felt like pure death.”

Cassandra’s lips touches against mine again, soft and hesitant, testing the waters. She presses herself against me, trying to mold her body to mine, and the world slowly stops with how good it feels.

I didn’t expect it to.

Not even a little.

I wasn’t thinking that far ahead.

“I always thought about doing it with someone like you…” her words drag in doubt, an explanation stuck in her throat. “But the real thing, it’s still a little better.”

And understanding dawns on me that she’s just trying to use me for something. It stings a little, but I’m not mad about it either. Alex didn’t try to flirt with me for no reason. She’d been really unhappy about Nicolas, and I guess I seemed like a nice guy in comparison. Slow always wins the race.

“Why did you kiss him?” I ask, suddenly wanting to know what her thought process was all along. My lips are tingling, the ghost of her touch still lingering. “What was in it for you, besides all the pain and the obvious confusion?”

Her eyes roll a little, the kind of attitude that tells me how the answers to my questions don’t really matter. She actually goes as far as ignoring them altogether, asking me one of her own instead.

“Isn’t it funny how you never really answered me that night?”

“About what?”

“I asked you,” she smiles, looking sadder than ever before now. “I askedyou directly because I wanted to know if you wanted to kiss me then. You never answered.”

I snort, finding her words silly.

“That’s because you kind of sprung everything on me, Cass.

Just like you’re doing now.” I swallow hard, my hands itching to do something.

“I felt something, but I didn’t know what to say to you then, and I didn’t want to sound like I was saying something just for the sake of it either.

And after that, we fought, and you were dating Caleb. ”

“You felt something? For me?” she pauses, a little breathless. “Why didn’t you say so?”

“I still don’t know.” I shake my head. “I couldn’t wrap my head around any of it fast enough, I guess. I wasn’t expecting you to like me.”

“But I felt like it was all so obvious. It was obvious that I liked you a little, though. Like you. I still like you so much,” she counters, the corner of her lips twitching with disappointment. “How can you expect me not to? You call me sweetheart, and you’re so nice to me.”

“I…” I trail off, avoiding her gaze. “I’m not expecting anything. It’s not like I was doing it on purpose, either. It’s just what came naturally to me when we started talking on the phone.”

She raises a brow, her voice dropping.

“To be nice to me or to flirt with me?”

“You never told me anything about your feelings towards me as clearly as you’re doing now. How was I supposed to know the answers?” I sigh, eyes locking with hers again.

The disappointment fades from her delicate features, turning into frustration. I understand why she would feel that way, but still. She needs to try to understand me a little too.

“Cassandra, I’m not trying to lead you on, if this is what you’re thinking. We started texting, and I enjoyed that—”

“Then, don’t,” she snaps, shifting to cup the sides of my face. “Please, don’t lead me on.”

“I’m trying not to.” I tilt my head back and lick my bottom lip. It still tastes like her, just a little. “We’re talking right now, aren’t we?”

It’s clearly not enough, though. Because right after I say that, Cassandra begins to challenge me.

“Be real with me.”

“Okay.” I nod quickly. “But you need to ask better questions, too.”