Norma Jean - By Amanda Heath Page 0,48

So I thought I had cleaned you out of my life. Little did I know what I was getting myself into. No one is a bigger idiot than me.” Tears spill out of my eyes as I think about the life I could have lead had Creed not messed with it. He took something special and good and made it ugly. Took the only person who could ever truly love me, away from me. I hate him more for that than I do for how he treated me in our relationship.

“I believe you. I still don’t see what this has to do with Macy.” He puts his hands over mine which were on his knees and gently pushes them off. I hate to admit that hurts, but I hurt him. And for no reason.

“Someone told Creed about last night.” It’s my only answer. If he can’t figure it out in his head than he’s not the guy I think he is.

“Jesus. We had sex in his bed.” He scrubs his face with his palm and I get up off the floor. He doesn’t want my comfort. “So he kidnaps Macy? What kind of sense does that make?”

I sit down next to Cassie and put my arm around her shoulder. This will hurt to finally admit to her family. “He hurt several people that wronged him in the process. Think about it. You and Norma love that little girl. He hurts her, he destroys y’all.” Tears start to fall from her eyes and I flinch. If I had known what I know now, then we wouldn’t be sitting here. But that’s life, you don’t get to see the road you take when you make a decision. Yeah it sucks, but I can’t do anything to fix it. I can only make it right.

“We need to call Mason and Marley. They will fix this. And him.” He gets up suddenly and starts to head towards the door.

“Wait.” I say halting him before he can leave. “Tell him Cassie.” She looks at me with big scared eyes, but if I could open up to him, then so can she. This is Chance. He wouldn’t hold any of this against us.

“Tell me what?” Chance asks turning towards us with both eyebrows raised.

“Umm…okay so I have known all along who is Macy’s father.” Cassie looks down at her hands and fiddles with her jeans.

After a minute you can see it cross his face. The pain. The betrayal. We have all had a lot to do with that look. Seems like now everyone around him is hiding something. Which isn’t a lie. I feel awful this is how he had to find all this out. Just because Creed took Macy as some vindictive punishment for the rest of us. “No. Cassie you didn’t.”

She starts to cry then. And the gut wrenching sobs tear me apart. She has been hiding this for years. Longer than I have been hiding my shit. This is something she hoped no one would ever figure out. I took that away from her and not because I slept with Chance.

“I was going through a lot then Chance. You know this, you were going through the same shit. Except you vowed to never have sex and I vowed to have lots and lots of it. Some of it was unprotected. At the time I slept with Creed, I was slowing down. I hadn’t slept with anyone in weeks and I have only slept with two guys since then. I knew what this would do to you. I knew what it would do to everyone. I wasn’t ever going to come clean but Norma figured it out. He didn’t just take Macy to hurt y’all he did it to hurt me as well.” She uses her hands to wipe the tears while I look down at the floor. Chance is still standing but he looks like he won’t ever be the same. The haunted look in his eyes is almost more than I can take.

“It was months ago. I came down for a visit on a weekend. I had been staying in Cassie’s room and stumbled upon some old notebooks. Cassie wrote about it in one. I couldn’t tell anyone though. If you had read it, you wouldn’t either. The words to this day still haunt me.” I take a deep breath and stand up. I walk right up to him and take his hand in mine. I don’t know what possessed me to