Page 11 of The Monster and the Masochist

Cass smelled nothing like Sienna.

She smelled like no one I’d ever met.

She was like no one I’d ever met.

The first time I’d ever met her, I’d been so shocked at the fact that she’d just shamelessly assaulted me in my mother’s kitchen that it had taken me a moment to work through my feelings toward her.

Most of my feelings manifested as anger first. I was sure a therapist would have something to say about this, but who am I kidding? Who has time for therapy? And my feelings for Cass were no different.

The fury I’d felt when she’d stuck her nail in the cut on my face had been all-consuming.

It had taken me days to realize that while she was probably the most infuriating person I’d ever met… The days after that incident, I hadn’t thought about Samwell and my stupid trauma once.

The peace that had brought me was… foreign. It made me crave more. Soon, I was obsessed and desperate to get that woman to do something else unhinged to me to distract me from the constant, looming threat of a complete mental breakdown that I’d been viciously fighting off for the better part of my entire life.

So, the anger had slowly morphed into straight-up worship.

The six weeks she’d lived in this guesthouse with me had been the best in my life. I hadn’t been able to drink myself into a coma when the memories came knocking, because I obviously couldn’t expose Cass to that when she had no other choice than to be here.

Besides, I didn’t want her to see me like that.

And I hadn’t really needed to do that when she’d been here, because I’d been too busy making sure she didn’t flit off into the night to try and save her brother to really worry about my own shit.

But now she was gone, and she hadn’t answered any of my texts since I’d recovered from my stab wound.

She was gone, and Samwell was lurking in the back of my mind, and I didn’t have any fucking vodka.

Should I just run out and grab some?

There was a twenty-four-hour liquor store back near the arena. I’d purposely driven past it on my way home in a valiant effort to avoid the inevitable.

I did this a lot.

Convinced myself I didn’t need it, even though I knew deep down I would end up doing it anyway.

It came in waves.

I’d go a few months without spiraling, then something would trigger me–or maybe my demons just got sick of being locked away–and I would be forced to go on a bender again to get them to leave me alone…

They were definitely active tonight.

That urgent, anxious feeling was churning in my gut, and my skin felt too tight.

My mind didn’t feel like my own, and the racing thoughts were starting to get to that familiar level of unbearable.

I knew how to slow them down… but I also knew if I let myself succumb to this again, it would last weeks, and I had my fight with the Russian coming up…

Besides, it was almost two am. If I drowned myself in a bottle of vodka, I would miss my morning coffee meeting with Jerry, and then he would definitely know something was up.

Another big perk of resisting the urge to drink was that we always had these meetings at the cafe near Cass’s office, and sometimes she would come in to order her Venti triple long oat milk iced latte.

She hadn’t caught me staring yet… I don’t think she even knew I was at that cafe nearly as often as she was, and for that I was grateful.

I was scared that if she knew, she would stop going. And that would be a tragedy.

I loved just watching her exist.

Fuck, she was so perfect.