All you need is love / Cass&Dev
cassxtaylor:
“I was one of them” Cassandra countered immediately not knowing why those words flew the way they did but she couldn’t bear the thought of him thinking even worse of her then he must already have. Her throat felt heavy, her eyes burnt with unshed tears as he stood there waiting for her to explain. He’d never love her, never look at her again the way he used to- it was all shattered now. For a moment, Cass tried to put herself in his position and the view was so bleak, she shook the thought away wondering how he hadn’t wrung her neck or done her any harm yet. But she knew the answer, that despite everything that he was and the world thought him to be, to her he had always been a gentleman in every sense of the word, and a man deeply in love- a love she was now about to lose forever.
Leaning against the wall for support, she turned to stare at the ground, finally consenting to share her story “I told you that my family was dead but the fact is, I don’t know about them. My mother was a stripper…I grew up in strip clubs and it was hell. When I began going to school, I used to be bullied, called names and even some of my teachers used to slip their numbers asking me if my mom could visit them. We never really spoke and when she found a rich patron to get married to, I found myself on the streets at the age of fourteen”Â
It was a painful tale though Cass surprised herself when her voice hardly wavered lacking any emotion. She wondered if she would be able to feel anything after Devlin would walk away today- perhaps she’d live in the constant irony of feeling everything and nothing all at once.
“There was this lady Agnes who took me in her shelter and for a while I was fine, perhaps even happy but after she died, I lost it completely” she continued flickering a single glance in his direction “I used to sleep on the streets, do drugs and this was when the Royals found me. And-And things went on from there” Her eyes rested on his face and the sight rendered her speechless for a moment. She didn’t know how she’d be able to bear not seeing that face everyday of her life
“Past tense doesn’t apply when you are still having gal-pal meetings with them. And why would it be 'was'? Did you suddenly have a change of heart?” He scoffed at that, pressing his lips together so hard the edges were turning white.  She was a magnificent actress, he’d give her that. No one had gotten this close to him before, managed to use his own weaknesses against him. His love, his loyalty, his protective nature. But she had. Chipping away at his walls one at a time until she was at the very center. Beyond feeling like a fool, an idiot, a lovestruck guy falling head over heels for someone who only wanted information, who by definition was using him, Devlin felt completely ruined. As if the solid ground he had stood on was being ripped from underneath his feet. There was no stability left. No one to hold on to, to trust, to depend on. Sure he had his brother, he had parents, yet he knew he would never, ever open up his heart again after something like this. He couldn’t imagine trusting another woman again. Just as he had a really, really hard time picturing his life without her. Was this it? Because of course it should be. And who knew, it might all be a ruse. She might not love him at all, truth or no truth. He’d been wrong to think they were meant for each other. Wrong to think he would spend the rest of his life with her. Yet he couldn’t imagine it without her in it.
While she talked, he listened in silence. Learning things he hadn’t known, parts of her she had purposefully kept hidden from him. And while it was all very sad, and he normally would have felt for that girl. The homeless one. The one who succumbed to the streets, to drugs and just went from day to day living for that next high, she was a stranger to him. But most importantly this part of the story didn’t explain the past four years they’d had together. “And then? They asked you to seduce me? To break my heart? Where the fuck does marriage fit into that!? How the hell do you explain staying for all those years if it was all just a lie? What, did Charlotte get greedy? Want more dirt? What kind of person marries someone just to please her damn bosses!?” He cracked, voice rising, whipping fourth, searching for answers that she had yet to give him. “As tragic as that story is, for all I know that might be all it is. Another story, another lie to save your own skin. Cause you think I would hurt you, is that it? Thats why you’re even still talking to me I bet. Thinking I’d stoop to their level..” He gathered her opinion of him couldn’t be all that great, which almost made him smile in bitterness. All those moments he’d opened up to her, about the horrors he had been capable of over seas, the men and women he had hurt as a gang leader. All of that she probably used to justify her own means. It had all feed into her view of him, painting such a bloody picture of a man who deserved to be crushed from the inside..










