Page 141 of The Monster and the Masochist

“I’ve never told anyone that before,” she marveled, her brown eyes shining in awe. “Well… except my therapist. She knows about it.”

“You have a therapist?” I gaped, somehow more surprised about this little tidbit of truth than I was to learn about Sue the Monster. I wasn’t sure why this shocked me, but Cass just nodded, like it was no big deal.

“I think everyone should, really. Honestly, it should be free. Therapy has helped me a lot.”

“And what does your therapist say about the voice in your head?” I asked incredulously.

Cass rocked her head from side to side, biting her lip.

“She says it’s likely a defense mechanism I developed as a child. When I was a little girl, I spent a lot of time alone, locked in that basement. I’m the oldest, so before Cal was born, it was just me and the darkness. I think my monster started out as an imaginary friend. It was something to keep me company. Something I could vent all my pain, rage, and frustrations to. It felt real… It still feels real.”

My heart clenched in my chest, and suddenly I felt like a whiney little bitch for being so fucked up over what had happened to me as a child.

What Samwell had done to me was nothing compared to what Cass had lived through.

“The day Cal and I broke out… my mother attacked him. I was just… standing there, watching her strangle him to death. It was like I was frozen…”

Cass got this glassy, faraway look in her eyes, like she was seeing the events of that horrible day play out before her in real time.

“My mother was this massive force in my life. She’d always felt invincible. If she’d decided she was going to kill my brother, I didn’t think there was anything I could do to stop her… So I…” She closed her eyes, and a fine tremor rolled through her, and I felt my breath catch.

I reached out and took her hand in mine.

She jumped slightly at the contact, looking at me like she was surprised I was still here, and my heart broke for her.

“So you asked your monster to kill her for you,” I murmured, and Cass nodded.

“Yeah.”

“Jesus.”

She gave me a sad smile. “Yeah. Well… it worked. My monster took over, and it helped me do what I couldn’t do on my own. With its help, I was able to grab that knife and slit my mother’s throat. If I hadn’t done that, Cal would be dead. Maybe Naomi, too. Gnomes was in a bad way that day.”

I’d never seen Cassandra look so vulnerable before, and it horrified me.

Cass… The bad ass defense attorney that had clawed her way out of literal hell with nothing but sheer will and fury… was sitting here exposed. It was suddenly clear to me that beneath all her iron-tight armor, that little girl who’d deserved to be loved was still in there.

That little girl whose mother had locked her in a basement to rot.

Pain and rage twisted in my gut at the unfairness of it all, and I reached out to tentatively brush my knuckles against her soft cheek.

She turned wide, haunted eyes on me, and suddenly, all I wanted to do was tuck her away somewhere safe and take care of her for once.

“You did the right thing, Cass. You did what you had to do to survive.”

She nodded, though there was a darkness in her eyes that I didn’t like.

“Well, my monster seemed to develop a taste for violence after that. There hasn’t been a day since that it hasn’t urged me to kill again. I’ve spent years in therapy learning how to keep it in this sort of… mental cage. As long as it’s in the cage, it’s just a voice in my head. But if it ever gets out, I’m scared of what it might make me do.”

This is why she told me she was afraid she might kill me.

This is why she sometimes said ‘we’ instead of ‘I’.

“So you see, Theo, there’s nothing you can tell me that’s going to make me think you’re more fucked up than I am.”

She gave me a tentative smile, and I squeezed her fingers in mine.

“I don’t think you’re fucked up, Cassandra,” I rasped, and her wide, chocolate eyes looked disturbingly glassy. I’d never seen Cass ever come close to crying, but for a split second, I thought she might.