Page 196 of The Monster and the Masochist

Live.

I can’t live like this… It’s too much… It’s too fucking much…

But my mouth wouldn’t speak the words. All I could do was silently shake my head, and soon, I was curling my fingers into my hair and tearing at the roots.

I slid down the wall until I was crouched on the floor, but I couldn’t even hide my face in my knees because if I did… If I closed my eyes…

Cass was on her knees before me in an instant, and her soft hands cradled my face, tilting my head up to face hers.

“Theo… please…” she gasped, and it took me a second to realize that her cheeks were wet too.

She was… crying?

“Baby, please…” she choked as she gently stroked my cheeks with her thumbs, and the pure look of devastation on her face struck a chord deep inside me.

“Theo… please. Please, tell me what to do to help you.”

Suddenly, the world stopped spinning and time seemed to freeze as I realized that Cassandra Walker wasn’t just crying… she was begging.

Cassandra didn’t beg.

Not ever.

But here she was, literally on her knees before me, begging me to let her in.

“Theo,” she choked on my name as she brushed her lips over my cheek.

“Baby, you have to tell me what to do here… I can’t…” She crushed her eyes shut, and her entire body shook with emotion as more tears slipped out from her long, dark lashes.

“I would kill for you, Theodora, do you understand that? If someone hurt you, I will fucking destroy them… but I don’t… I don’t know what I’m supposed to do when the person fucking hurting you… is you.”

“C-Cass…” I rasped, and she opened her eyes as she leaned forward to rest her head against mine.

Instinctively, I found myself wrapping my arms around her, and she curled up into my chest as a deep, painful sob wracked through her perfect body.

“Please, Theo. Please stop hurting the person I fucking love more than anything. Please stop hurting my wife.”

Cassandra broke down in my arms, and I held her as I struggled to process what she’d just said.

She… loved me?

She really loved me?

She’d called me her wife… She’d said it like it was real… like… our marriage meant as much to her as it always had to me.

I might not have believed it if she wasn’t curled into my chest, crying like she was suffering just as much as I was… and I realized in that moment that I was hurting her.

I was hurting her by hurting myself, and the last thing I wanted in the world was to hurt Cassandra… but…

“I-I don’t know how. I don’t know how else to make it stop,” I croaked, whispering the words into her soft hair.

I kissed the top of her head as more hot tears spilled down my cheeks, and I crushed her closer to my chest.

“Pain and… and the alcohol. It’s the only thing that works. It’s the only way to get rid of him when he comes for me. I don’t know how else to make him go away.”

She looked up at me through her lashes. They were wet and clumped together with her tears as she searched my face.

“The man who hurt you when you were a little girl?” she whispered, and I swallowed thickly as I fought off another flashback.