by Max Monroe
The way she said his name was broken, troubled—terrified and exactly how I felt. They were reliving every second of it with me, strapped to a freight train into the past with no way to break the restraints.
I squeezed my eyes shut as tight as they would go and put my head to Cassie’s chest to listen to her heartbeat. The rhythm was dangerously erratic, but somehow mine still managed to follow.
“Thatch,” Cassie whispered, and the sound of her voice cut through me like the sharpest of knives. She was troubled by my reaction, but I couldn’t stop one thing from repeating on a never-ending course in my mind.
Too little, too late.
“I asked you not to do it. I fucking begged you,” I told her raggedly, my voice a literal manifestation of my bloody heart on my sleeve.
“I know,” she conceded. I willed her to stop there, but she couldn’t stand to let me have the last word. She couldn’t stand to admit to being wrong, and that was the crux of the issue.
“But I make my own decisions. I don’t answer to you.”
“I’ve never asked you to. There’s a difference between asking you to change the way you are and asking you to see me.”
Her eyes were stubborn, and I felt like I’d never be able to look at them the same after this moment. They weren’t just passionate; they were downright violent, and it was all directed at me.
“All I see right now is an asshole!”
The cords of my throat strained with the force of my roar. “Are you kidding me? I fucking loved you!”
“Am I kidding?” she screamed, her limbs shaking with the effort it took to keep herself from hitting me. I could see it in her eyes. I swallowed against the burn in my throat and held my ground. “Not once have you said those words to me. Not once, and you choose now. As some part of a demonizing power trip where it’s your way or nothing? And it’s in past tense? Fuck you, Thatcher. Fuck you hard.”
“You knew how I felt,” I pushed, and she reciprocated physically, giving me a shove to the chest. I charged back and got right in her face. Her chest rose and fell rapidly with the fight to keep taking in air. “I fucking asked you to spend your life with me!”
“As a fucking joke!” she screamed. “A way to win at this stupid game we’ve been playing, a way to one-up your biggest challenge.”
“That’s wasn’t it, and you know it. It wasn’t a joke, not any fucking bit of it. You had to have felt it.”
“I didn’t feel a goddamn thing,” she denied, and I felt my heart freeze over.
“Well, congratulations, Cassie. Looks like you finally fucking win because I’m out.”
I watched Georgia run after Thatch as he stalked away from me and toward our campsite. And I wanted to reach out and grab those awful words that had come out of my mouth and shove them back down my throat.
Why had I said that? Why had he said that?
What in the hell just happened?
I was equal parts baffled and angry. Pissed at me. Pissed at him. And ultimately confused by his reaction. I felt like he was overreacting about this. He was making this into something I never meant for it to be.
Yeah, but your bullshit words didn’t help anything.
I couldn’t deny I had been an asshole. A total fucking asshole.
Not one goddamn bit of this, of us, is a joke.
My hands trembled and my knees shook as I ran barefoot after him. The skin of my feet protested in discomfort as gravel and twigs dug into the sensitive skin.
But I would gladly take the pain if it meant getting to him.
I needed to get to him. I needed him to know that I was a liar.
I was in love with him. I did need him.
I knew this, what had grown between us, wasn’t a joke. I knew what we had was real. It might have started out on a prank, but it had grown into everything I had ever wanted, even if I never really let myself imagine those things.
“Thatch! Wait!”
But he didn’t stop. He didn’t listen.
He was already inside of our tent and throwing his belongings into his duffel.
I crawled into the tent and wrapped my arms around his waist. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean any of that,” I whispered into his T-shirt. “I love you.” I finally found the strength to say those three words.
Three words I had never said to anyone besides my family.
Three words that should have let him know I was all in.
I wanted him. I wanted us.
But my words didn’t have any effect on him.
He shrugged me off and zipped up his bag, before maneuvering around me and getting out of the tent.
I stayed frozen in my kneeling position for a good ten seconds.
Shocked. Hurt. Angry.
Why wasn’t he listening to me?
I climbed out of the tent and found him throwing his bag in the trunk. Frankie and Claire had already packed up their things and were climbing inside of his car.
“Aren’t you listening to me?” I shouted. “I just fucking told you I loved you! Why aren’t you listening to me? Why are you freaking out? I don’t understand what’s happening right now!”
He walked around the front of the vehicle and toward the driver’s side door.
I ran toward him at a dead sprint and crashed my body into his before he could open the door.
“Thatch!” I cried, and his eyes refused to meet mine. He just lay limp against the door, staring over my head and out into the distance. I wrapped my arms around his body again, hugging his huge frame as tightly as I could manage. “Please, don’t leave like this,” I begged. “Just talk to me. Don’t leave angry.”
His brown eyes finally stared down into mine. They were so cold, so distant, and it was then I realized how much I had hurt him.
“Don’t go,” I begged again.
“Enough, Cassie.” His large hands wrapped around mine as he disentangled me from his body and moved me back with a gentle shove. “I’ve had enough.”
“Enough?”
“Yes,” he snapped. “I’ve had enough. I can’t do this right now. I need you to give me some space to process what just happened. I need time to cool down.”
“So that’s it?” My voice rose with my anger. “You’re just going to walk away?” I stabbed a harsh finger into his chest.
He didn’t budge. Didn’t react. Didn’t do anything but stand there and stare down at me.
His reaction made me feel crazy. This was worse than his angry words. He wasn’t giving me a single fucking emotion besides indifference.
“Stop acting like that! Stop acting like you don’t care!” I slapped at his chest, hard and erratic. I was desperate for him to show me something. Anything. “You’re done with me, Thatch? I do one thing that pisses you off, and all of a sudden you need space away from me?” I screamed. “Why don’t I get a say in any of this?”
“You did get a say,” he corrected, his deep voice cracking in the middle. “And I heard you loud and clear when you jumped off that cliff.” He opened the driver’s side door, and I tried like hell to push it back closed.
But he was too strong, swinging it open with ease. I tried to climb inside with him, but he must have signaled for Kline because I was wrapped up in strong arms and pulled away from the vehicle.
“Put me down!” I yelled as Thatch shut the driver’s door and started the engine.
“Calm down, sweetheart,” Kline whispered in my ear. “It’s going to be okay.”
“No! It’s not going to be okay! He’s leaving!” I cried, and Georgie’s sad eyes blocked the view of Thatch driving away. A few tears dripped from her lids as she wrapped me up in her arms and held me tight. “I’ve got you. I’ve got you.”
I was sitting inside my shitty apartment, inside my least favorite neighborhood in New York. The only thing Chelsea and I had in common was that we both needed a goddamn shower.
It had been three days since the camping trip. Three days since Thatch lost his shit because I had decided to recreatio
nally cliff jump, off a cliff I knew other people had been jumping off for years.
He had made no attempts to reach out to me.
I had made three attempts to reach out to him.
The responses I got revolved around the fact that Thatch wasn’t ready to talk to me.
He was being a dick.
And I was fine.
No, you’re not.
I. Was. Fine.
Three soft knocks on my apartment door woke me from my heart-fucked stupor. I shuffled across the redone hardwood floors in my “Classy Bitch” socks and flung it open without checking to see who it was.
I lumbered back to my home base—the couch—and plopped my ass back down into the cushions. With the TV remote in hand, I searched through all of the DVR’d episodes that had accumulated since I’d been living at Thatch’s apartment.
“So, you look great,” Georgia said as she meandered through my apartment, occasionally picking up random takeout containers and tossing them into the trash. “How are you?”
“I’m fine.”
“That’s great.” She glanced around the apartment. “The new floors look nice…well, at least what I can see beneath the trash.”
“Thanks.” I pushed play on the latest episode of Vanderpump Rules.
Georgia walked over toward the television and turned it off.
“Hey! I was watching that!” I flipped the television back on.
She turned it off.
I glared and turned it on again.
She turned it off again.
“Okay, I think it’s time for you to leave.”
“I’m not leaving.”
“Well, then, I’ll leave.” I got to my feet and trudged into my bedroom.
She followed.
“It’s nap time, G,” I said as I tossed a pizza box onto the floor and crawled into my bed. “I’ll call you later.”
She got into the bed with me.
“Go cuddle with Big Dick. I don’t feel like cuddling,” I whined and pulled the comforter over my head.
She yanked it off of me, and my annoyed eyes met hers. She looked concerned, and that sympathetic expression pissed me off.
“Stop it. I don’t need you over here worrying about me. I’m fine.”
She shook her head. “No, you’re not.”
“Yes. I. Am.”
“Honey, your apartment looks like New York relocated the garbage dump, and you’re wearing your underwear outside of your yoga pants.”
I peeked under the covers to find out that she was right. Big deal, so my underwear was outside of my pants. I’d seen numerous homeless people sport that look every fucking day in the city.
“It’s okay not to be fine, you know? I wouldn’t be fine if I were in your shoes.”
“I’m not wearing any shoes.”
“Yeah,” she said through a soft laugh. “But you’re wearing your Classy Bitch socks, and I’ve only seen you bust those out on two occasions.” She held up one finger. “When they canceled Friday Night Lights.” She held up another finger. “And when you found out that Prada purse you bought in Soho was a knockoff.”
I had the overwhelming urge to burst into tears. I covered my face with my hands. “I don’t like feeling like this. I never feel like this. About anything or anyone.”
“Yeah, but Thatch isn’t just anyone.”
“You got that right. He’s the biggest fucking asshole I’ve ever met. I wish I’d never fallen into that giant ogre’s trap.”
“You don’t mean that.”
“No,” I whispered, “but I wish I meant it.”
Georgia sat up and rested her back against the headboard as she rearranged me so my head was resting in her lap. Her fingers ran through my hair, occasionally getting caught in the numerous knots that had taken up what I considered permanent residence. My hairbrush could suck a fucking goat scrotum.
For a few quiet moments, I let her calming energy soothe the myriad emotions I was trying so hard to avoid.
“Why did that happen, Georgie?” I asked on a whisper. “I didn’t mean for things to go down like that. I wouldn’t have jumped off the cliff had I known he would freak out like that.”
She glanced down at me. “Are you sure about that? Because from where I was standing, he was begging you not to do it. He looked desperate, sweetheart. Distraught, even.”
Honestly, I wasn’t sure. And I didn’t like that my gut feeling told me I was an asshole for being so fucking stubborn.
“But why would cliff jumping freak Thatcher Kelly out?” I changed the direction of the conversation. “The man took me skydiving, for fuck’s sake.”
She shrugged. “I’m not sure.”
“Are you sure you’re not sure? Because I have a feeling Kline knows something. And if he knows, then you probably know.”
“Kline wouldn’t give me the details, which is saying a lot considering he never keeps anything from me. But I think it had something to do with Margo.”
That had my mind racing for answers I was almost a little too scared to find out.
“C’mon, Cass.” Georgia nudged me up to a sitting position. “Let’s get you out of this apartment and grab some lunch. I think a little fresh air will do you some good.”
She walked toward my bedroom door and glanced back with a smirk. “And we’re not leaving here until you shower. You literally smell like balls.”
I smiled for the first time in what felt like ages. “Like that bothers you. Everyone knows you love smelling like Kline’s sac.”
She flipped me off and strode down the hallway. “Get your stanky ass moving! I’m hungry!”
Slowly but surely, I got out of my bed and hopped into the shower.
I told myself it had nothing to do with Georgia being right about me not being okay and me being desperate to stop the “I miss him” loop of crazy that kept circling inside my brain, and everything to with the fact I hadn’t eaten since the night before.
Yeah, that’s exactly what it was.
I was fine. I was hungry, but I was motherfucking fine.
Fucking liar.
“You didn’t have to do this tonight,” I said loudly while I leaned toward Kline’s ear to be heard over the noise of Z Bar.
“Didn’t have to do what?” he asked back innocently.
I nodded and laughed. “Give me a break. You know what.” There wasn’t a question in my mind he’d rather be at home with his wife than in the middle of some crowded bar with me. But Kline Brooks was a world-class individual, and I was seriously lucky to call him my friend. “But thanks.”
He raised his glass in salute before taking a drink, and I desperately tried to make his effort worth it. I wanted to pretend I was okay, like I wasn’t missing Cassie—like I knew how to go on. But the truth was, I didn’t. She’d become ingrained in every aspect of my life, and I liked her there.
I battled myself, and not for the first time since it’d all gone down. Had I really given her a fair shot? Was I making the whole thing a bigger deal than it was?
Half of me, the part that missed her—and yeah, it was probably the bottom half—thought definitely. I was letting my whole traumatic history with Margo color my opinion. But the other half had a laser-like memory when it came to her face in the moments before she jumped.
It wasn’t a decision in good fun because she couldn’t see how important it was to me. It was a distinct choice. A choice to hold herself away from me and everything we’d built.
A choice where she’d always put herself before me.
Everyone always speaks of selflessness in a relationship, but I expected and respected a little selfishness. I never wanted her to be the person I made her. I just wanted her to trust me enough to know the difference between respecting me and giving herself up.
But the road she was on was dirty, and she hadn’t yet uncovered the center line.
“Where’d you go just now?” Kline asked. The back of my neck felt tight under my palm.
He grabbed my s
houlder and gave it a squeeze, and I knew no one knew what I was feeling better than he did. Still, I had to wonder if he would have ever chosen a life separate from Georgie if their circumstances had been the same.
Not a chance in hell, heaven, or Manhattan.
I looked up to see Wes walk in, and I knew they’d called in the cavalry. I shook my head, and Kline looked over his shoulder to find the source of my amusement.
“Jesus. Whitney too?” I asked. “You guys went all out.”
Wes came to us on an easy weave through the crowd, and Kline turned to shake his hand when he arrived.
“Thanks for coming,” I said. He grabbed my shoulder and squeezed. I smiled; I knew it wasn’t my normal, but I tried.
“Ah, fuck,” he breathed before pulling me into a hug. Not a bro-hug either, but a full-on comforting squeeze with one arm tight around my back and the other hand on the back of my neck.
My throat felt tight, and I had to force a swallow down past the imaginary lump.
“Love you, man,” he whispered in my ear. It was so opposite of everything I normally had with Wes—and all the things I knew were always there.
Fast jokes and ribbing, our relationship could look petty from the outside looking in, but that was just the way we lived our day-to-day fun. This right here was all I needed to know to have that freedom—the three of us would be there for each other forever.
Granted, none of us was immortal, so there’d be a limit on the timeline of some kind, but with modern medicine, I was hoping it’d be somewhere in the 120-year range.
“Love you too, Whitney,” I murmured back. He gave me one last squeeze and then shoved me out of the way.
“Great. Now get out of my way,” he said with a teasing smile. “Your fucking huge body is blocking the bar.”
My face accepted the notion of a genuine smile then, and I stepped aside so he could order a rum and Coke.
“Fucking lush,” I teased as he flagged down the bartender with an arm in the air.
“Better a lush than a pussy,” he said with a nod toward my beer.
“I don’t know,” Kline interjected. “Pussies are pretty nice.”
“Right?” I agreed with a laugh, and Wes smiled at the sound.
