Page 91 of Keeping Score

Oh, shit.

I sat up with a jolt from my position on the couch, nearly sending my laptop toppling to the floor as I jerked upright. I was in Brody’s hoodie, surrounded by takeout containers and half-drunk wine glasses.

“Just a second,” I shouted, looking around at the disarray that had become my life.

Shit. Shit. Shit.

I couldn’t let Cassie walk in and see me like this and still try to convince her I was fine. One look at the place and she’d know just how bad off I really was.

She’d tell Liam. Liam would tell Brody. And Brody would realize how pathetic I was. How better off he was without me.

I brushed crumbs off my lap, folded the blanket, and tried to make it look like I hadn’t been camping out in the living room the last few days because sleeping in our bed suddenly seemed wrong.

“Maggie,” Cassie called again, refusing to be ignored.

I’d done plenty of that the last few days. Her calls had gone unanswered. Texts unresponded to. Hell, I was pretty sure she’d tried showing up here before, but I’d been working weird hours at the office to avoid having to be at home.

“Damn it,” I muttered under my breath, knowing that the mission was a lost cause.

Cassie would see that my life was in shambles and in usual Cassie fashion, would try to save me from it. But there was nothing she could do unless she had a time machine—or maybe a miracle up her tiny, colorful sleeve—so really, what was the point in even getting into it?

I sighed, walking over to the door with dread in my step.

“Look, Cassie, I—” I opened the door, ready to over-explain a myriad of reasons why she didn’t have to worry about me when I felt the wind knocked from me.

Cassie barreled toward me, wrapping me in her arms with the strength of someone much bigger than her tiny frame seemed capable of.

“Maggie,” she said, patting my hair down. “I’m here.”

My lip quivered. Tears sprang to my eyes. And suddenly I was holding her back, crying into my best friend’s arms.

For the first time since that night, I let myself feel it all. Every mistake. Every wrong move. Everything I’d done to get me to this point washed over me at once.

“I ruined everything,” I sobbed into Cassie’s hair, holding onto her like a lifeline. “I always ruin everything.”

“You don’t,” I felt her shake her head as she held me tighter. “And you didn’t.”

“Everyone’s gone now,” I said, realization sinking in. “I made everyone leave me.”

“I’m here,” she told me, giving me a reprieve from the flood of pain that I’d been drowning in. “And I’m not going anywhere.”

I guess my plan of insisting I was fine went out the window the second I cried in Cassie’s arms like a newborn baby.

Cassie was a lot of things, but stupid wasn’t one of them, and I doubted that I could convince her everything was fine and dandy while I had mascara stains under my eyes and hair that quite obviously hadn’t come out of its bun for four days.

Cassie, saint that she was, pretended not to notice my dishevelment. Instead, she got right to work.

“What are you doing?” I asked her, watching her move around my apartment like a tornado.

“I’m cleaning up,” she said, holding a broom, a container of paper towels, and disinfectant spray.

“Cassie, you don’t have to—” I started, but she fixed me with a stern look that she had recently perfected during motherhood that silenced me at once.

I watched as she cleared the living room of debris, carrying my dirty dishes to the sink and swatting my hand away each time I tried to intervene.

“Just sit down and relax, okay?” Cassie said. “Let me help you.”

Sit down and relax.