Page 60 of Beg for You

I ignored people’s stares and my phone, and as soon as it stopped vibrating with another call, I hit Ted’s number and asked him to pick me up.

It rang three more times while I waited and chimed with multiple text message notifications before I pulled my phone from my purse and silenced it. All the calls and texts were from Cal. I had no desire to listen to his lies and excuses. Why he wanted to even try was beyond me. I’d looked him in the eyes and asked him to deny that he’d planned to use me to get back at my father, and he couldn’t.

As far as I was concerned there was nothing left to talk about.

I waited for Ted in a diner at the opposite end of town. I sat and ordered a coffee, ignoring the stares and whispers—the way my heart felt like it had been torn to shreds in my chest.

Ted must have sped all the way, because he was there in record time. I ignored his concerned look and climbed into his car, staring out the window, barely even seeing the countryside blur by.

I’d worked something out during that awful confrontation with Cal…Joel. Or more felt something deep inside me, something I’d never wanted to believe.

There was no escaping who I was.

I was the daughter of a prominent man. I was expected to do and say certain things. I was Cassandra Deighton. Cassy didn’t exist, she never had. She’d never fitted into the world I was born into. And that world, the people that I thought I despised so much, they…it was all I had.

I knew where I stood in that world. I knew what they wanted from me.

What was the point of fighting it? I’d tried to break free and look what happened. Not only had I made a fool of myself, I’d more than likely given Cal—God, Joel—a way to hurt the only family I had left.

Grabbing my phone again, I opened the messages and called up the last text from my father. It simply read:

Dad: I need an answer.

He’d sent it to me yesterday. My reply was equally short and to the point.

Me: I’ll do it.

Squashing the sick feeling in my stomach, I shoved my phone back in my purse and stared out the window again, letting the ice in my veins harden and spread, refusing to allow the emotion burning inside me to get free.

This was what I’d been born for, to advance—or in this case, save—my family any way I could. I’d always known it and had stupidly tried to fight it.

Not anymore.

I was done fighting.

Chapter Fifteen

Cal

Chest heaving with my labored breaths, I stood in the middle of my apartment, surrounded by wreckage. Broken canvases were scattered across the floor. The paintings Cassy had found, the ones I’d painted during my recovery, the ones she kept going back to, I’d destroyed them all.

My gaze was on the painting I’d done of Cassy, the one she’d posed for. Bare and exquisite…trusting. Before she worked out who I was, before she’d discovered what I’d planned to do at the start.

Before I’d hurt her so damn badly she’d emotionally retreated right in front of me.

Jesus, I was sure I could almost see ice forming on her pale skin. She’d transformed into the ice queen before my eyes and then she’d pushed back as hard as she could. She hadn’t said anything I hadn’t deserved.

She’d given herself to me, had opened herself up to me in ways I knew she never had with anyone else.

I ran my hand over my cropped hair, the scars uneven against my palm, and growled.

She’d given her trust, her body to me.

And I’d betrayed her.

I slammed the heel of my hand into the side of my head. I’d tried to explain. I’d tried. But I’d stuttered and tripped over my own fucking tongue. My fucked-up brain hadn’t been able to form the motherfucking words to make her understand, and she’d walked away.

I had to make her understand.