Page 159 of As the Rain Falls
“I try not to, but I can’t help it.” He presses his nose against my hair, inhaling the scent of me. “Ever since I first saw you, I just kept having these thoughts. All these thoughts, they keep plaguing me. I can’t stop thinking about it. About you.”
My whole body locks up.
“I need you to stop.” I manage to say, but body is shaking. “Please, Nathaniel. This isn’t right. Dad’s going to send you away again.”
The mention of our father, of Nathaniel being sent away, finally breaks the spell. He lets me go, and I scramble to the other side of the room for distance, grabbing something to throw at him in the process.
“I would never hurt you, Cassandra.” He frowns, staring at the small vase in my hands. “I swear.”
I shake my head.You already have.
“Why do you think they want to pull us apart?” I refocus, trying to get him to explain what’s making him drown in delusion. “They’re our neighbors, Nathaniel,” I emphasize. “Beckett is myfriend.”
“How can you call him a friend? Don’t you get it?” Nathaniel starts gesturing around, desperate for me to agree with him. “It’s all them, Cassandra. They don’t understand what we have. All these people, they don’t get it. They never have.”
“You’re high,” I accuse, my voice breaking at the last syllable. “What did you even take this time?”
Nathaniel blinks.
His smile is lazy.
Drunken.
He sounds so far gone.
“I like him, Nathaniel,” I insist, trying to get him to see how foul his prank was. “He’s a good person, and you really hurt him tonight. Why did you do that?”
“I… I didn’t do it on purpose.”
He never does.
My brother is stuttering, and I wonder if it’s something he’s doing it to gather empathy towards him. Could he go as far as pretending to have emotions such as feeling nervous? Maybe.
“I know you’re just pretending to like him because of Dad.” He takes a step forward. “You’re so smart for doing it, you know?”
“Is this what you think I’m doing?” I shake my head, appalled at the thought that in the end, Nathaniel’s delusion has suchdeep roots. “My feelings are not pretense, Nathaniel. When you hurt me, you really hurt me. When I say I like him, I mean it too. I’m not putting up a front right now. I’m so mad at you.”
“You’re mad at me?” His eyes widen with shock, and I start to hate what I’m seeing. This fake innocence doesn’t suit him. “That’s okay. I love you enough to forgive you for it.”
“You don’t love me,” I choke out. “And please, stop acting like this is all coming as a big surprise to you. You know exactly what you did tonight. You saw me having a life beyond this fucking mess, and you hated it.”
My words seem to rub him the wrong way.There’s nothing someone like Nathaniel hates more than to be confronted with the truth. He can’t handle the thought that we’re actually a problem, he and I. There’s nothing beautiful or pure about our bond. Just hurt and mistakes piled up together, weighing on me. And what happened with Beckett fills me with such visceral anger that I can’t help but fight back.
“How can you say that?” He takes another step, his voice so broken. Then, another. Until I’m being pressed again, trapped between him and my bathroom door. “You’re everything to me. You’ve always been—always been my everything. Ever since I saw you, and you were this small thing, I adored you.”
His hands grip each side of my face, keeping me right where he wants me.
I breathe in and out sharply and scream, “Get the fuck away from me!”
The voice in my head is warning me to run as his lips brush against the sides of my face.This isn’t a home; in fact, this is a prison. I’m being locked away from the world while he gets to feed me with fear and self-hatred until I am reduced to a fragment of a human being with no sense of sanity. Once I become crazy, he will find himself vindicated enough for not getting everything he wanted the first time.
My brother is abusing me mentally and spiritually. I feel taken again and again. I don’t even have anything left to give.
“I hate you,” I cry. “I really hate you.”
“Cassandra, all I want is for us to be together forever,” Nathaniel tries to convince me. “You’re the most important person in the whole world—”
“If I’m that important to you, why do you always try to hurt me?” I try to pull away, but he presses himself even further, using his body to get me to stop moving. “Wait, Nathaniel, get off me!”
