Page 79 of Montana Falls
She’d been someone I loved and trusted and never once hid things from, and I couldn’t recall a single moment in the last three days I hadn’t spent crying. In sheer fucking agony. The only reason I’d stopped was because I concentrated on the one tiny good thing about her; she hadn’t hurt Misha. She hadn’t killed him or wanted to kill him. That had to mean something, right? That maybe the Retta side of Cassie was someone I could reason with? That maybe she could be fixed and spend the rest of her years in jail, repenting for her sins?
Then I’d remembered the way my daddy had looked at me right before he died. Right beforeshekilled him, and I realized that jail was never going to happen.
Retta, Cassie, whoever she was, whatever she was to me or anyone else… it didn’t matter. She was going to die today because she had taken someone from me that was more important than anything else, and just like she had sought out vengeance for her pain, so would I.
My daddy deserved to have his killer put down, even if it caused me to lose people I loved again.
I could live with Misha and Lincoln despising me, even if it would break my heart into a thousand pieces.
I couldn’t live knowing that I had not killed her after everything she’d done tome.
My heart pounded in my chest, anxiety simmering just beneath the surface. I’d never been this still, this helpless before, and the sensation was suffocating. But I had to wait, and I did.
And then, I heard it.
The soft creak of the door. The hush of footsteps.
She washere. In what had been my mama’s dance studio, then sat empty every year since her death.
I kept my breathing shallow, focusing on the small sounds as they grew closer. My muscles tensed as I heard the faint rustle of fabric, the unmistakable scent ofherperfume drifting toward me. My heart clenched in my chest. I had spent years around that scent. It had always been familiar, comforting. Now it twisted into something dark, something tainted.
The footsteps stopped just next to the coffin a moment after the tinkling of a glass against a table. My pulse hammered in my ears.
The lid lifted, and just like that, I felt at peace.
I feltcalm.
There she was. Standing over me, her face barely visible in the low light of the room, and my eyes adjusting to the suddenness of it all as I opened them… I could see the cracks, the exhaustion, the bitterness in her eyes. ItwasRetta.
ItwasCassie.
I pushed myself up, locking eyes with her as I whispered, “Retta. Don’t move.”
Her expression didn’t change. She stood still, calm, her face like stone. It was unnerving, that cold silence, that detachment. I expected something — anything. Shock, anger, fear. But no, nothing.
She just cocked her head to the side and kept staring at me with such hollowness I knew that it was not Retta I dealt with.
This was Cassie.
“Aren’t you going to pretend to be shocked I’m alive?” I asked, my voice sharper now, stronger. The pain in my chest flared up, the betrayal cutting deep. “Aren’t you going to pretend to be confused and happy?”
Still, she said nothing. Her gaze stayed fixed on me, and the weight of that silence made me want to scream. How could she just stand there? How could she be so unaffected? I was shaking with anger, my hands clenched tight enough that the gun oughtto have crushed. She had been a part of my life, part of all of our lives. She was supposed to be family.
She was looking at me like she didn’t give a fuck that I knew who she was.
Her silence was suffocating, unbearable. I couldn’t take it anymore. My hands trembled, rage and heartbreak pouring out of me as I climbed out of my coffin and damn near shouted, “Why? Why the fuck did you do all of this to me?! To yoursons! To Mal, and my daddy and everyone else who loved you!”
Nothing. Not a word, not a flicker of emotion. She just watched me, her eyes like ice, like none of this mattered.
“I trusted you,” I hissed, my voice trembling. “I fuckinglovedyou! Misha loves you!”
At that, something flickered in her eyes. Something small, barely there, but I saw it. It wasn’t enough, but it was there all the same.
“Go on,” I hissed, “talk to me and tell me something. Anything.” I panted hard. “Or will you not talk to me now that I know? Maybe you’ve finally fucking noticed that I amSapphire, not Maggie. I have never been Maggie and I wouldn’t want to be.”
I opened my mouth to speak again, to demand answers, but then I heard it — a low rumble, faint at first but growing, the floor beneath me vibrating ever so slightly. The sound made my blood run cold, not because it was familiar, but because it was the same noise I’d heard not so many days ago.
Before I could finish the thought, an explosion hit.
