Cassy looked at her phone where she saw a lot of missed calls and text messages from Frank.

"Are you texting someone?" Connor asked her scared. "A cell tower could pick up your location – our location."

"I´m not dumb, I know not to text or call anyone when covering up a murder. Now stop being worried about me-" Cassy got interrupted by a phone ringing in someone´s pocket and Connor gave her an angry glance. "Not mine." She mouthed as she turned back to Laurel who was behind her. The woman quickly pulled out her phone and declined the call.

"Why is Frank calling you?" Michaela asked after some time.

"What?" Laurel acted clueless while putting her phone back into her pocket. Cassy watched her do so, as she wondered as well why Frank was calling her friend.

"I saw your phone, Laurel. What the hell is going on?" Michaela got angry, thinking about how Laurel forbade her to call her fiancé earlier.

"Laurel please don´t say you told Frank about this?" Wes pleaded and Cassy still stared at where Laurel put her phone, grabbing hers even tighter.

"You people tell me that I can´t call Aiden and you called Frank?!" Micaela hissed as angry and quietly as she could and Laurel rolled her eyes, not wanting to reveal her little secret. "I swear to god Laurel, if you told him anything-"

"I slept with him, okay?" Laurel eventually admitted and everyone looked at her with an open mouth.

"You what?" Cassy shouted shocked, everyone shushing her immediately.

"I didn´t call him, he´s calling me because-…whatever it doesn´t matter." Laurel explained breathlessly and while Michaela continued the discussion with Laurel, Cassy tried to process the new information.

"You slept with Frank." She murmured quietly to herself, looking down at her phone once more and the notifications of Frank´s messages lit up.

"I´m a cheater, yes. And a slut and a bad person. And now a murderer, judge me if you want, just do it while we´re carrying the damn body." Laurel panted, standing up and slowly everyone else rose to their feet again. Cassy stared into nothingness as she picked up the body with an exhausted groan.

6 weeks earlier

Cassy sat in Annalise´s class, playing with a pen. She thought of what Annalise had told her a few nights ago, about Lila having an affair. She knew Lila since they were children and they were best friends. Cassy was sure Lila would never do something like that. Laurel talking back to Annalise tore her out of her thoughts and she straightened up. Shortly after, the bell rang and she packed her stuff very slowly, wanting to talk to Annalise but Wes got there before her and the attorney left the courtroom before Cassy had a chance.

"Did she find out about the phone?" Cassy asked sarcastically, still angry with Wes for keeping Lila´s cell phone.

"I gave it to her. Did you know about the pictures on it?" Wes turned to his classmate but all he got was a confused look. "Nevermind." He turned to leave and Cassy followed him asking what he was talking about. "It doesn´t matter. We have a client waiting." He picked up a faster pace and left the building, leaving Cassy to her own.

The new client was a 17-year old boy who shot his abusive father, a policeman, in the back. Cassy could sense that the group had mixed feelings about him, however she felt sorry for him and his mother and thought he didn´t deserve to be punished for it. The group went to the courtroom the same day for the selection of the jurors. After the defense and prosecution had selected their jurors the prosecution filed a motion to have the abuse claims thrown out, which Annalise´s defense and choice in jurors was based on. Unfortunately, the judge allowed the motion and Annalise ordered her team to return to the house for a briefing. Cassy walked around the hallway in the courthouse, hoping to catch Annalise and talk to her but she didn´t meet her on the way out. Instead Frank ran into her and Cassy could feel that something was off again. It was like every time he saw her his mood was different, sometimes tense, sometimes happy.

"Hey." Cassy smiled walking beside him to their cars.

"Hi, you good?" he asked, not really looking at her but still in a friendly tone. Cassy nodded, swallowing nervously as they reached his car. "Before you ask…No, I can´t give you any information."

"It´s okay…I wondered if maybe you want to grab a drink some time? Just as a thank you for your work." She smiled and Frank seemed to try and read her expression, nodding softly.

"Yeah some time." He smiled slightly before getting into his car. Cassy smiled from one ear to another as she watched him drive away. It seemed like he was finally starting to like her.

"In cases where emotion is currency, we have to cater our defense to the jury." Bonnie explained to the Keating 6 as they sat in the leaving room and were handed pictures of the jurors. "I´m assigning each of you your pet jurors to watch."

"Lumberjack? I- I don´t want this guy." Connor said annoyed, showing the picture of an older man, as Asher offered to trade for the sexy librarian.

"This is all fun and stuff but…what´s our defense? We picked a jury based on arguing abuse." Michaela wondered when their boss stepped in, explaining that Ryan´s blog was the key and if a witness would mention something he had posted there, they could use the abuse documented in the blog. Therefore, everybody had to look and read through all 800 entries. The six were working their way through the blog posts for an hour already when Cassy stood up to grab a drink from the kitchen. She met Sam on her way there as he seemed to be in a hurry to get out.

"Hi um…you were Lila´s psychology professor, right?" she stopped him and his expression suddenly changed. He nodded slightly, eyeing her up and down. "I´m Cassy I…we met at the um…the cocktail party at the beginning of the school year."

"Do you need something? I´m in a bit of a rush?" he slipped past her and walked towards the door when she spoke up again, forcing him to listen to her.

"I was Lila´s best friend and…it´s been really hard on me…her death and I have no one to talk to about it so I thought-" Cassy explained but got cut off by Sam.

"I can´t I´m sorry." He stated and Cassy looked at him confused. "If you were going to ask me if I could offer you a few sessions I can´t."

"But isn´t that kind of your job? Don´t you do stuff like that?" Cassy wanted to know, a bit confused and taken aback by his cold demeaner.

"I just don´t think it´s a good idea, seeing as my wife represents the number one suspect and you work on the case as another potential suspect-" he wanted to explain but Cassy was quick to interrupt him.

"I would never hurt her." She corrected him, not liking how he was suggesting she could have done something and he sighed.

"I know that. But the prosecution doesn´t care and I really don´t want to be pulled into that." He offered her a weak smile before heading out.

Next day in court the prosecution called Ryan´s English teacher to the stand. She talked about how Ryan once performed a song in which he sang about shooting his father.

"I think I read something about this on his blog." Cassy remembered and Laurel leaned over to Bonnie, telling her to get the date. She and Cassy scrolled through the blog when they came across an entry from January with the exact same lyrics. Annalise showed them to the judge who then allowed the blog and therefore the abuse claims to be part of the defense.

Annalise was in her office that evening, prepping for the trial when Sam came in. She didn´t say a word to him, still mad at him for admitting to having had an affair with Lila Stangard.

"One of your students came to me today…Cassy I think…she asked me for counseling." He told her and Annalise scoffed.

"You wanna screw her too?" she mumbled, reading through some statements.

"Annie…" Sam came closer and his wife now looked at him with a stern face. "I told her no. I said I didn´t want to be pulled into this."

"You´re gonna call her. You´re gonna call her now and you will tell her that you changed your mind and you want to help her." Annalise ordered and he looked at her confused.

"What? Annie that´s not a good-"

"She claims to have been Lila´s best friend, but she didn´t know about the affair and apparently Lila never told her more about you than that you were her teacher. You need to find out if she had mentioned anything that might come back at you later. And I want to know her angle on Rebecca. She knows her from the sorority and I need to know as much of her behavior from there." Annalise looked back down at the papers on her desk and Sam sighed as he reached for her phone to dial Cassy´s number.

"Hello?" Cassy answered her phone, surprised to hear from her boss this late.

"Cassy, hello it´s Sam Keating. I thought about what you had asked me today and I would like to offer you counseling." He explained his eyes fixated on his wife.

"Really? How come?" Cassy wondered and Sam was silent for a moment.

"Annalise, she told me about your emotional outbursts and thinks it might be better for your work if you work through your feelings with me." He lied and Annalise looked up at him, knowing she never told him about any of Cassy´s outbursts. "Okay great. I´ll see you tomorrow." He continued before hanging up and placing the phone on the table again.

"How do you know about those outbursts?" she wanted to know and they stared each other down for a moment until the realization hit her. "Bonnie…"

The 5 students were spread around Sam´s burning corpse when Laurel´s phone started ringing again.

"That Frank again?" Connor asked curious and Cassy, who crouched by a tree, looked up. "Guy´s whipped."

"You should answer." Wes advised her and after a short discussion with Michaela she picked up.

"What?" Laurel said in an angry tone. "The bonfire, stop calling me!" she continued after a moment and Cassy looked down again, putting her hands into the pockets of her jacket to keep them warm. "Explain what? How you lied to me just so that you could screw me, add me to your list of student conquests?" she heard Laurel´s voice fading away as the woman stepped away. "It´s too late." Laurel wanted to hang up when something seemed to have her not to. "Cassy?" she suddenly asked Frank on the phone and everyone, including Cassy, looked at Laurel. "Why do you want to know that? Are you screwing her too?" Laurel stared at Cassy who now stood up and the others also switched their gaze onto the youngest. "Goodbye Frank!" Laurel hung up, not breaking eye-contact with Cassy.

"Wait…so you both were screwing Frank? I knew it!" Connor cheered and Cassy couldn´t quite make out what Laurel´s expression meant.

"No…no I didn´t, we didn´t…I never slept with Frank!" Cassy then looked at the others, defending herself but they didn´t seem to believe her. "I swear I didn´t he just- I-…" she had tears in her eyes as she leaned back against the tree. "Laurel I swear I didn´t sleep with him!"

"I don´t care. I don´t care what he does. He means nothing to me." Laurel said, walking past her.

Annalise scheduled a session for Cassy and Sam, the same time she was in court for the trial. Cassy knew that she couldn´t argue with Annalise and she agreed to seeing Sam. She entered the empty house and Sam greeted her leading her to his office.

"Have you done something like this before?" he asked as she sat down in front of his desk and he behind it. Cassy shook her head and Sam cleared his throat taking out a notepad and a pen. "So let´s start with how you met Lila."

"Um…We were best friends in high school but I´ve known her since we were children. She was the one that suggested Middleton to me." She told him, smiling as she remembered their friendship.

"And when you came here you were still best friends?" Sam asked with a suspicious look and Cassy sighed as she tried to push down the tears.

"At first…I came before school started…it wasn´t hard for me to get into the sorority, Lila vouched for me. But when I moved in…she was different than in high school." Cassy recalled, her fingers fidgeting.

"Different how?" Sam leaned back, playing with the pen in his hand.

"She´s changed…she told me about Griffin and their virginity pack which was complete nonsense." Cassy scoffed. "Lila wasn´t religious…I told her he was just doing this to have her under control but she wouldn´t listen. And then there was Rebecca. Her new bestie."

"I take it you didn´t like her?"

"You mean the dirty, drug-dealing bitch? No, I don´t like her. Lila and I fought a lot that summer…she was keeping secrets, which she never did." Cassy remembered as she crossed her arms over her chest. Sam leaned forward, seemingly more interested, asking which secrets. "I don´t know, that´s why they´re secrets…She talked to Rebecca a lot. We had a fight a few nights before she disappeared."

"And how did that make you feel?"

"Like shit? I accused her of being a drug addict and of being fake. She said that I didn´t get that she was going through a rough time and I told her that she was a spoiled brat and didn´t understand what it was like to have a rough life." Cassy teared up but managed to hold the tears back. Sam wanted to know what she meant with having a rough life and Cassy bit on her lip nervously.

"My parents know Annalise. My father was her client once." She admitted and Sam looked surprised. "They had a business and were accused of fraud. Annalise took their case because it seemed impossible to win…and it was. The business went down and so did the image my parents had worked for so hard. We were struggling but we didn´t want to show it. I studied a lot, was a straight A- student, even skipped a few grades…photographic memory helped. I applied for a scholarship to Middleton and here I am…" Cassy told him about her financial struggles and Sam nodded, remembering the case.

"I remember how disappointed Annalise was. She told me about you. That they had this little child and they didn´t care about their image they just wanted to protect you." Sam gave her a comforting smile as he handed her tissue. "But back to the fight…Can you tell me exactly what happened? Annalise might find this helpful." Sam said and Cassy nodded slightly.

Flashback

"Lila! Stop walking away, we need to talk about this!" Cassy yelled as Lila stomped into her room and threw her door shut behind her. "Lila!" she huffed as she opened the door and stepped into the room.

"I don´t know what you want from me. I did everything to help you here and this is how you repay me?" the ginger beauty lay on her bed and had smudged mascara all over her eyes.

"This- Lila do you hear yourself? Ever since I came here you´ve been nothing but absent! Telling me you made a virginity pack with Griffin? Sneaking onto the roof to do drugs with that skank, sneaking away in the middle of the night? Where are you going?" Cassy inquired, tears also rolling down her cheeks.

"It´s none of your business!" Lila crossed her arms and turned to the other side.

"Lila…We were best friends…we used to talk about everything…why are you shutting me out?" Cassy cried and she could hear Lila sob before she sat up and faced the younger girl.

"Well, we aren´t best friends anymore. I don´t need you." Lila huffed and Cassy whimpered as she stepped back, shocked by her reaction.

"Don´t say that Lila…don´t say something you don´t mean." She sobbed quietly and Lila stood up walking towards her friend, causing Cassy to step back out on the hallway.

"I mean it…and I don´t want to have anything to do with you. Leave me alone Cassidy! You are just some poor ass bitch who thinks she´s so much better because she´s so smart. Well, let me tell you, you´re not! You would be nothing without me-" Lila insulted Cassy who couldn´t take it anymore and slapped her right across her face, leading to both gasping in shock.

"Oh my god Lila I…I didn´t mean to I´m-" she wanted to apologize but Lila shut the door and left her former friend standing in the hallway.

"I never got say how sorry I was..." Cassy sobbed as she thought about the night of their big fight. Sam wanted to say something but they were interrupted by Annalise and the rest entering the house.

"I´d say we end this session here and you go freshen up and join the rest. We´ll talk another time." They both stood up and Sam place his hand on her shoulder. "You did very good today." He offered her a smile which she replied. He looked at her for a moment which made her feel a little uncomfortable as his hand slid down, stopping at her upper arm. He squeezed it lightly when the door to the office opened and Annalise stepped in, taking in the scene that was going down in front of her. Cassy cleared her throat, grabbing her bag and leaving the room to the couple.

She joined the group in the living room who were talking about the jurors they had watched during the trial.

"Your two didn´t do anything that stood out." Laurel told Cassy as she handed her the pictures of the jurors Cassy was supposed to watch.

"Does anyone else think that sexy librarian is a lesbian? I mean she stares at Annalise´s boobs all the time." Asher said, showing a picture of one of the jurors.

"They are great boobs." Connor admitted and Cassy grimaced at the topic the boys were discussing.

"Can we focus? Please?" Laurel begged and got backlash for her chart of the jurors where she kept tabs on who was on their side. While Michaela, Connor and Asher were talking about Connor´s sex life, Laurel went to Frank to talk about something. Cassy was still rattled up from the session with Sam and especially about the awkward situation with him at the end. She just hoped that Annalise didn´t get the wrong picture.

"Oh my god…Lumberjack just messaged me." Connor suddenly said when his phone beeped.

"What did he say?" Cassy leaned in to read the message.

"All cop killers deserve to fry…" Connor started and then looked around the group with a triumphing face.

"Especially little bitches who don´t know how to respect their daddy." Cassy continued for him. "Oh my god…that´s great."

The next day in court they gave the judge the message and he excused the juror and replaced him with another woman. Next the defendant´s mother was on the stand, recalling the abuse she had suffered under her husband. The prosecution, however, made clear that she was not in imminent threat when her son shot his father because he didn´t threaten her life. Arguments that she might have died another day from the punches and kicks wouldn´t stick with the prosecutor and she made sure to tell the jurors that Ryan shot an unarmed police officer in the back.

Michaela was crawling on the cold ground, desperate to find her engagement ring. Laurel tried to calm her down and get her to stand up and leave, as they still needed to dispose the trash bags.

"Oh my god what if we don´t find it?" Michaela whimpered.

"Guess you´ll just gonna have to cancel the wedding." Connor joked, earning hate from his peers.

"Stop! We still need her to return the trophy to Asher´s." Wes explained causing Cassy to roll her eyes.

"No way, look at her." She pointed at Michaela who was a complete wreck.

"There´s no way she can do that." Laurel agreed and Connor got mad.

"No, no, we all had to do things tonight that we didn´t want to do. This one is on her." He shivered from the cold and from disgust.

"I´ll do it." Laurel offered, having a plan on how to get them out of this dilemma.

After the closing statement of the defense and prosecution team, Laurel was still convinced, they optimistically only had half of the jurors on their side. Everyone was anxious to hear the verdict the following day. However, once they were in the courtroom the prosecution shared that they had received an anonymous tip that the jury was tampered with. The judge asked the jury and a woman stepped forward, saying she found out about jury nullification and that she shared it with the rest of the jury, leaving the judge with no other choice than to declare a mistrial. Everyone on the defense was happy, seeing as it wasn´t a win but still beneficial for Ryan. They returned to the house to pack everything up and discuss the outcome. Sam joined them and walked over to Cassy.

"Hey Cassy, I just wanted to tell you that if you want, I have time for a session tomorrow." He said quietly so the rest wouldn´t hear them. Cassy nodded and he gave her a piece of paper with his number.

"Thank you." She smiled and he placed his hand on the small of her back without anyone seeing it. Cassy was uncomfortable and pulled away with an awkward smile.

"You´re welcome." He returned the smile before going upstairs. Cassy grabbed her stuff and shook off the weird feeling she had after the encounter, wanting to leave the house as soon as possible, when she ran into Frank in the hallway.

"Hey. About that drink I offered once-" she started a conversation but got interrupted by Frank.

"Yeah let´s go." He stated to her surprise and to her questioning if he meant now he simply nodded. They went to a pub near campus and sat by the bar. They were already a few drinks in and didn´t really know what to talk about.

"So how long have you been working for Annalise?" she asked him while sipping her drink.

"Many years." He simply replied. "How´d you find out you were adopted?" he wondered and she almost choked on her drink, not expecting such a direct question. "Sorry, I just-"

"No, no it´s fine…Um,…my parents didn´t want me to live a lie so, when I told them I wanted to got to Middleton they told me that I was originally from Philadelphia." She explained and Frank downed his drink, ordering another one. "And what about your family? Do you have siblings?" she wanted to know and Frank looked at her sternly. "Sorry is it a topic you don´t talk about?"

"I´m not really in contact with my family…not too much anyway." He admitted taking a sip. An hour had passed and Cassy was quite drunk and Frank admittedly wasn´t feeling sober either. The drunker they got they more they found stuff to talk about.

"You know Frank…I didn´t know you were this much fun to be around." She slurred her words and Frank smirked slightly. "You´re always so serious like oh look at me I´m Frank Delfino I´m a tough guy." She imitated him and he laughed, saying, he didn´t talk like that. "You do…kinda." They looked at each other once they stopped laughing.

"You´re actually not too bad to be around yourself…except when you get emotional." He admitted and Cassy punched him softly for the last remark. She looked at him downing the next drink and when he put the glass down, she suddenly wrapped her hand around his neck and pulled him in for a kiss. It took a second for him to realize what was going on and immediately pushed her back.

"What the hell?!" he cursed with an angry face, wiping his mouth.

"Oh my god…I am so sorry I thought…I thought there was-…I´m so sorry I didn´t mean to overstep." Cassy apologized, shocked herself about what she just did.

"This is wrong you´re-…you´re my student…" Frank stood up, grabbing his jacket from the barstool next to him. "I´ll see you tomorrow." He said, still confused as he walked away.

"I´m sorry." Cassy called after him, unsure if he could hear her. "Oh no, stupid, stupid me." She hit herself on her head, instantly regretting her actions.