She explicitly warned me against going to her house. But something’s not right. Something is very fucking wrong. I don’t know what happened last night after Cassie got home. I watched as she got home, as she got inside and flicked on the light. I watched as Damon arrived home. I watched as the bathroom light went on, and Cassie’s bedroom, and finally as the house went dark. There was no noise, no struggle, no signal that I was desperately seeking. And so I went back to bed, Cassie’s panties in my hand as I jerked off and came all over the sheets where we’d just fucked for the first time in eight years.

But the girl I watched jog up to her front door last night was not the same girl I frightened in the diner this morning. Something happened. Something bad. And I’m going to find out what he did to her.

If only she’d open the goddamn front door. I knock and knock, pounding my fist on the door to no avail. I ring the bell. Something is wrong. There’s an anxiety gnawing at me. I need to get inside this house. I need to see with my own two eyes that Cassie is okay. When she left, there was a look in her eyes that scared the absolute shit out of me. A look I’ve never seen before, not even after the accident all those years ago.

I go around back, trudging through melting snow to the back door. I’m about to try it when I notice the kitchen window has been smashed. Shit. If she’s in there, alone, and someone has broken in, I have to get in there and save her. I’ll kill them if I have to, to keep her safe. I don’t care if I end up on death row if it keeps her from harm.

I climb up into the window quietly, shimmying through the gap and dropping over the kitchen counter and to the floor as silently as possible. I check the bottom floor before creeping up the stairs, taking them two at a time, flinching when the boards creak halfway up.

I can hear water running, and that’s where I go - to the bathroom. I try to open the door, but it’s jammed with something. “Cassie!?” I yell. Now that I know she’s in the bathroom, I’m not worried about an intruder — I’m worried about what a beat-up girl is doing in the tub at midday on a Friday. If she’s taking a bubble bath after a grueling work shift, if she’s listening to her iPod and can’t hear me, I will replace the door and apologize a thousand times over.

But I know in my bones that Cassie isn’t relaxing or listening to music or having a fucking bubble bath. I saw the haunted look in her eyes before she took off running; I’ve known that feeling myself a time or two. In the days after I found Karen in the well. In the nights after I drove off the bridge and ruined Cassie’s mother. In the long years I spent in Lovelock prison, everything blurring into one long nightmare. I saw that look in her eyes. The look that said: I don’t know if I can go on.

“Cassie!” I yell one more time, just in case. Nothing. I smash my shoulder into the door as hard as I can, again and again. On the third go, it opens slightly, just a crack, enough for me to see my beautiful girl lying pale and motionless in a bathtub full of water and blood.

“Oh, shit,” I mutter, kicking the door until I’ve created a hole big enough to reach my arm into. I discover the chair propped underneath the door handle and unwedge it, opening the door and rushing to the bath. I hit the tiles with my knees, the shock vibrating up my body as I look down at Cassie. She’s so fucking pale, dressed in a bra and panties, cuts and bruises littering her body. But it’s not those I’m worried about now. It’s the deep gashes in her arms that are pouring with blood, blood that starts bright red and diffuses to a pinkish color in the tub of water she floats in. Her hair fanned around her shoulders, she looks like an angel. She looks dead.

“No,” I whisper, reaching in and lifting her out of the tub, setting her on the tiled floor. I grab at the towels hanging on the rack, wrapping one around each of her wrists and holding them above her body, trying to use gravity to help stem the thick pulsing of blood from the identical deep lacerations on her wrists. I hold her wrists in one hand, searching for a pulse at her neck. It’s so faint I can barely feel her heart, struggling to pump whatever blood is left in her body to keep it going.

“Cassie, baby, can you hear me?” I fish my phone from my jeans pocket and dial 911. I know that by doing this, I’m inviting the wrath of Damon King upon me, but I don’t care. I would walk through fire to save this girl. I would open my chest and bleed my heart’s blood into her if it would save her right now. I would kill everyone in the world if it brought her back, if it woke her up. The ambulance is dispatched. I hear sirens wail in the distance. I keep checking her heartbeat because I’m terrified that if I take my fingers away from her neck, she will die right here in my arms.