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Chapter Thirty-Seven

M y heart was in fucking pieces. The girl in the car beside me was quiet as she stared out the window. But this time, it was a calm sort of silence. As if a weight I hadn’t known she was carrying had been lifted from her.

Now, she just looked tired.

“I’m sorry,” Cassie said after a while in the dark of the car.

“For what?” I whipped my head to look at her.

“For leaving the gala. I didn’t want to ruin anything for you.”

“Jesus Christ, Cassie. You don’t need to apologize.” I couldn’t believe this girl. “But can you do me a favor next time?”

She looked at me, nodding.

“Stop ordering fucking Ubers,” I said, exhausted. “I’ll take you anywhere you want to go. Just stop leaving without me.”

A smile crept onto her face despite everything, and she nodded, healing some fraction of the crack in my chest that had torn open tonight.

“I promise,” she whispered.

I reached over and took her hand in mine, and I held it the entire way home.

The apartment was dark when we got home, as if even the city lights that usually illuminated it had gone to sleep.

It was late, but I was wired. My mind was whirling with all the revelations that had taken place tonight about Cassie’s past and this secret part of her life I never could’ve guessed at.

“Are you going to bed?” she asked timidly.

“Are you?” I responded without answering.

She looked utterly exhausted, and I knew she needed to, but God, I didn’t want to let her out of my sight.

She shrugged. “I guess so.”

But she lingered.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, feeling stupid as hell for the question as soon as I asked it.

Everything in the world was fucking wrong.

“I think I’ll sleep on the couch if that’s okay?” she asked, tugging at her fingers.

“Why?”

It took her a breath before she admitted it, but when she did, the words twisted something inside of me.

“I don’t want to be alone.”

“You’re not,” I told her. “You don’t have to be.”

She looked up at me with hope.

“Come on.” I nodded my head toward my bedroom. “You can hang out with me in my room.”

If she fought me on it, I’d just carry her there myself. She didn’t want to be alone, and I didn’t want to be without her.

But she saved us both from the struggle and nodded, sighing in relief as she did.

I gave her my sweatpants and a hoodie, and she disappeared into the bathroom connected to my bedroom to change. She didn’t fight me on that the way she used to. She also didn’t fight me when I tucked her under the comforter.

But when I turned to leave, she sat up abruptly, eyes wide with something close to fear.

“I’m just getting my laptop,” I assured her. “I’ll be right back.”

She nodded, settling back down in my bed. The sight of it was too much for my heart to handle.

I left the room, dragging in the deepest breath I could before searching for my laptop. My mind was a mess, a fucking hurricane of thoughts, and I needed to make sense of at least one of them.

When I came back, she was already asleep, her hair fanned out on the pillow I slept on every night.

I let myself look at her—the way I couldn’t when she was awake. She looked so small like this. Fragile in a way I knew she’d hate me thinking.

I’d only known her for two months, and somehow, she’d carved out the biggest piece of my heart without even lifting a damn finger.

Holy fuck, I’m in trouble.

But for the first time, the thought didn’t scare me. If it was going to be anyone, I was grateful it was her.

I changed into sweatpants before sitting on top of the covers beside her. Opening my laptop, I finally typed the search I’d been itching to make since the moment we got in the car.

For the next hour, I read everything I could about alcoholism. The disease, the traits, the fucking devastating effects it had on a person’s mind, body, and life.

By the time I got to the effects that children of alcoholics faced, my heart felt like it had been shredded to pieces.

Hypervigilance: Check.

Low-self esteem. Check.

Fear of conflict. Fucking check.

And the list went on.

Fear of abandonment, perfectionism, chronic anxiety, trust issues, and people-pleasing tendencies.

Cassie checked off every single fucking box.

All these things I’d been thinking were personality quirks were signs of fucking trauma that I hadn’t even guessed at.

She was fucking traumatized from an upbringing I couldn’t protect her from, and it bled into every area of her life.

I slammed my laptop shut, breathing heavily as I looked over to where she slept beside me.

I leaned down on my side, staring at her face only inches from mine, her features finally relaxed in the safety of sleep. I trailed my hand through her hair, feeling so beyond grateful she was here beside me and not anywhere else in the world right now.

I thought back to the promise I’d made to Maggie earlier that same night.

Promise me you won’t hurt her.

She had asked me as if I ever would. As if I was even capable of that, now that my heart belonged solely to Cassie.

I would never hurt her. I knew that. But I could go one further. I wouldn’t let anything else fucking hurt her, either.

Never again.