Page 97 of Shattered Veil

I understood the question without further elaboration. “Just bad memories. You know.”

“Right…I do,” she replied. Silence stretched between us, and I felt Cassie take a quick breath before stating, “I never really had nightmares.”

“No?”

“No,” she replied somberly, “but Liam did.”

I found my hand stroking aimlessly up and down her back. “Oh?”

“Mhm,” she hummed. “Teenage years weren’t exactly the best.”

I whispered, “Right…I know.”

“Always felt like he got the brunt of it,” Cassie admitted. “After she left, we shared a room for a while. Sometimes he’d wake up screaming.”

My insides coiled uncomfortably at the obvious, casual mention of her mother along with the confession of Liam’s grief, and her reasoning for speaking of it sat heavy in my gut.

“Is that what you thought I was going to do?” I asked. “Wake up screaming?”

She shrugged. “Maybe.”

The realization of the memories I had brought forth for her struck me deep, and I gave her a squeeze as I murmured, “I’m sorry you went through that.”

Her shoulder bobbed once more. “It didn’t last long. That was when he moved away.”

The enigma that was her rough upbringing had consistently lingered in the back of my mind from the day that we had built the bench on her front porch. As much as I wanted to know her on a deeper level, it didn’t feel right to ask about her formative years—more specifically, the time after her mother had died. I assumed we would speak of it eventually, and considering the depth of my feelings for her, I knew that it would hit me hard.

I simply hadn’t expected that time to be now…and her words regarding Liam moving here to Salem caught me entirely off guard, for I had never considered the timing of it all.

I had automatically assumed differently before. That Liam had already left to start his life as an adult away from the town he had grown up in. That, maybe, he didn’t have the financial means to return upon his mother’s death…but that wasn’t the case.

“Liam…left you?”

“Hmm?”

“You were fourteen,” I recalled the information aloud. “Your mother died…and your brother thought it was a good time to up and pack his bags?”

“Oh.” Cassie recognized my accusation and, as casually as she could, replied, “No, it wasn’t like that.”

“He left you alone with your abusive father,” I noted, near-horrified. “I don’t—Liam’s so protective of you. I don’t—I don’t understand.”

It exited me in a disbelieving tone, for it didn’t sound like something Liam would do in the least. There were times that his overprotection of her resembled that of a guardian rather than a sibling, and try as I might to imagine the scenario, I simply couldn’t.

She angled her head to look at me, sadness in her gaze as she audibly swallowed.

“This is a, um…bit of a band-aid rip conversation,” she admitted. “There’s no use easing into it. It just makes it…harder, I dunno. Are you sure you want to jump on this train?”

There was nothing but steadfast trust in her somber eyes, and my heart fluttered at the notion as I truthfully returned:

“I’m already on the train, Darlin’.” Flexing my fingers where they had stopped on her waist, I said, “Just rip.”

And rip, she did.

“She shot herself.” My pulse slammed my ribcage. “In our home.” My lungs burned. “Liam was the only one there, and he saw it happen.”

My breath left me to the point that my, “Oh. God,” was practically silent.

Voice a mere rasp, she said, “He didn’t leave me. He stayed for months.” Cassie rephrased, “He stayed in that house with me for months, but he wasn’t…well. Begged me to go with him when he said he needed to go. We fought for weeks ’cause I knew he needed to leave for his own good, but he kept refusing to go without me. I just,” she paused, “there was too much change at once for me, I think. I stayed ’cause I was young, y’know?”

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