Cassandra awoke late the next morning, feeling very much restored. She yawned and stretched the entire length of her body, noticing that the ache in her head was barely noticeable, and that she could breathe freely now without pain stabbing her in the side. As she pushed herself up into a sitting position, she saw the sleeping Jenkins slumped in an armchair he had pulled up beside the bed, an open book askew in his lap.
"Jenkins?" she said softly. Instantly his eyes were open and he was upright in the chair, the book falling to the floor, forgotten.
"Cassandra! Are you all right? How do you feel?"
"I feel great! The pain's almost totally gone," she assured him, then eyed him quizzically. "Why did you sleep in that chair? Why didn't you come to bed?"
"I didn't want to risk waking you during the night. The potion works best while one is asleep," he said. He dropped his eyes. "I also didn't want to presume..."
An uneasy look dimmed his features during the awkward silence that followed. Checking his watch distractedly, Jenkins suddenly stood and stretched stiffly, several joints crackling softly as he did. "You stay here, my dear; I'll bring you some breakfast. It's almost noon now, you must be feeling very hungry." He turned and quickly left the room before she could say anything.
The Librarian slipped out of bed and trotted to the bathroom. She pulled off the pajama top and examined herself in the large mirror, wrinkling her nose at the sight. The potion had almost totally healed all of the bruises, and her face looked nearly normal again; she had to look closely to see the faint, thin outline of the black eye. The scrape was completely gone. Then she noticed her dull-looking skin and her limp, oily hair—ugh! She desperately needed a long, hot shower. She turned on the water, and when it was ready eagerly stepped into the soothing stream of hot water, luxuriating in the feel of the water, soap and shampoo as it washed away the unpleasantness of the previous day.
When she was finished and dried off, she put the pajama top back on and wrapped her wet hair in a fresh towel. Going back into the bedroom, Cassandra found Jenkins patiently waiting for her there, a large bed tray laden with hot tea and covered dishes of food. She smelled bacon and eggs and suddenly felt ravenous.
"Oh, Jenkins, that smells wonderful!" she enthused, climbing back into the large bed and settling in as the immortal carefully placed the tray in front of her and poured tea. She began devouring the food with gusto as Jenkins sank back into the armchair and watched quietly.
She soon noticed that he wasn't eating. "Don't you want some?" she asked between mouthfuls.
"I've already eaten," he fibbed. The truth was that his stomach was in knots in anticipation of the conversation that was to come.
They chatted about inconsequential things while she ate, the uneasy tension between them growing heavier again with each passing minute. When she was done with breakfast, he removed the tray and set it on the nearby coffee table. He dropped back into the armchair, and Cassandra noticed for the first time how tired he looked. Knowing Jenkins as well as she did by now, she knew he had sat up with her all last night, probably hadn't eaten a thing since breakfast yesterday morning, either. He was still wearing the suit he had on the day before, and she was suddenly filled with guilt.
"Jenkins, I'm so sorry for yesterday, I just feel awful!" she blurted. He began to protest, but she stopped him. "No! Let me finish, please, okay?" He fell silent and waited for her to continue, his hands clasped in his lap.
"I'm sorry," she repeated remorsefully. "I shouldn't have said such horrible things to you. And I shouldn't have hit you, either. I totally overreacted to what you said. I didn't mean to pry into your personal life, either. I wasn't snooping, I swear—I was just cleaning and I only opened the box to see if anything important was in it. I saw the picture and the lock of hair, and I just...I just was curious, that's all."
Jenkins shook his head in protest. "I know you weren't snooping, Cassandra; I shouldn't have accused you of that..." he said quickly.
Cassandra waved her hands to interrupt him, and dropped her eyes. She took a deep breath to steady her nerves as she prepared herself for what she had to tell him.
"In fact, I realize now that I was being a hypocrite. Here I am yelling at you for keeping secrets, and this whole time I've been keeping secrets of my own from you." She sighed and began twisting the bedsheet in her fingers nervously, then forged ahead.
"I've told you already about my bad luck with men in the past. I had several bad boyfriends when I was younger, real losers. Most guys took off as soon as they heard the word 'tumor'. The ones who stayed were worse, though. There was one guy in particular, his name was Richard—Rich." She shrugged her thin shoulders.
"It's the classic 'abused woman story', I guess. After I was diagnosed and dropped out of school, I left home. My parents didn't care about me anymore, not that they cared about me all that much before the tumor, really. All they cared about was my success and the attention it brought them. I guess I was so lonely and so desperate for someone to love me, I fell for the first smooth-talker who came along. Rich was really nice at first; he complimented me, bought me presents, told me I was pretty, stuff like that." Cassandra kept her eyes locked on her hands in her lap, too ashamed to look at Jenkins, too afraid of what she might see in his eyes.
"But then he started to change. He became possessive, he always wanted to know what I was doing, where I was, who I was with. He was awful about it. If I didn't come home at exactly the time I said I would be there, he accused me of cheating on him, called me a whore. He would tell me I was worthless and stupid and ugly, told me I was a freak because of my math gifts and my synesthesia. He used to tell me that I was lucky to have him, because no other man would want a 'stupid fucking ugly freak whore' like me." She shrugged her shoulders again. "And I started to believe him."
Cassandra's voice was small and sad as she recalled those painful, hard days. Jenkins sat quietly, motionlessly, his hands clasped tightly in front of him, the look on his face a mixture of sadness, distress and anger as he listened. As she continued to speak, Cassandra's voice grew weaker and shakier with emotion.
"One night he came home late, completely drunk, again, but this time he had a friend with him. I was in bed, already asleep. He came into the bedroom and grabbed me by my hair, just dragged me out of bed. I didn't know what was going on. He was so…cold-hearted. He told me it was time for me to earn my keep."
Jenkins began to go numb with dread as he listened to Cassandra's terrible story. He had a sickening feeling where this was going, and he prayed that he was wrong.
"He dragged me out into the front room, where his friend was. He told me...he told me I had to..." Cassandra's trembling hand covered her mouth, as if the words she wanted to speak were too awful to be spoken aloud. Jenkins moved from the chair to sit next to the shaking woman, taking her hand and holding it tightly.
"You don't have to tell me this if you don't want to, Cassandra," he murmured softly. She took a deep breath and squeezed his hand back.
"Yes, I do," she said, glancing quickly at his face, the librarian's eyes welling with tears. She saw nothing but concern and pain in his.
"He told me I had to have sex with his friend," she began spilling out the story quickly, before she lost her nerve. "His friend was going to give him a hundred dollars for it. I…I couldn't believe it—he was actually going to pimp me out to this guy! He said I had to do it, if I expected to keep staying there, I had to do it. But I refused. Rich got so angry, angrier than I'd ever seen him before. He started yelling at me, said I was being disrespectful. He started punching me, said he was going to teach me a lesson, he was going to teach me to do what I was told. He pulled his belt out of his pants and started hitting me with it. And the other guy just sat there, laughing. Making fun of Rich for not being able to 'control his bitch'".
Cassandra started to cry, but she continued to speak. Now that she had started, she wanted to get the whole ugly thing out of her. All Jenkins could do was hold onto her and listen.
"I tried to get away from him, but he just kept chasing me through the apartment, and every time he caught me he would hit me SO hard. I was afraid, REALLY afraid, that he was going to kill me. I remember running into the kitchen and grabbing a knife from the drawer. I told him to stay away from me, but he wouldn't—he just wouldn't. He said that no dumb slut like me was going to tell him what to do, and he came at me…" She couldn't go on. Tears were dripping from her face by now. Jenkins silently reached his hand out to gently caress her wet cheek.
"What happened, Cassandra?" he asked quietly. It was like a dagger to his heart to hear such a disgusting story. Everything fiber of his being wanted only to find this animal and thrash him within an inch of his miserable life for what he had done to his beloved librarian. He didn't want to hear another word of this story, but it was important to Cassandra to tell him about it.
"He was yelling at me and hitting me with the belt, punching me. He was screaming at me, calling me a dumb cunt and said that I should be more grateful to him for allowing me to live in his house, eat his food, sleep in his bed." She glanced nervously at Jenkins and saw by the stricken look on his face that he had made the connection.
"I...I stabbed him," she whispered. "More than once."
Jenkins took a deep, silent breath at the stunning revelation. "Did you kill him, Cassandra?"
She looked up at him, her blues eyes now red with crying, wide and pleading for understanding. Her voice was barely a whisper, full of fear, when she answered him.
"No. I wanted to, though. I tried to, but all I did was hurt him, badly. He almost died, but he pulled through." Cassandra's face crumpled and she started sobbing uncontrollably. "I was so scared..."
Jenkins silently gathered her into his arms and held her close as she wept. Cassandra kept talking, forcing her words through near-hysterical half-sobs in her desire to get everything out.
"When you said those things yesterday, it brought back all of those memories. It was like I was suddenly in that apartment again, listening to him screaming at me, feeling afraid that I was going to get hurt again—that you might get mad enough to hit me, and something inside of me just said 'No! I'm not going to put up with this again!' I just wanted it all to stop and to get away," she choked out. She tightened her arms around him, clinging to him like a frightened child and nearly wailing now.
"But you're nothing like him, Jenkins! I didn't mean to treat you as though you were! I know you love me, I know you do, and I am so sorry! I don't know what I would do without you! Please don't be angry with me, Jenkins! I'm so sorry! Please don't hate me!" She began crying so hard that she could no longer speak. She buried her face in the Caretaker's broad chest and wept.
Jenkins closed his eyes in anguish and tightened his arms around her, holding her close as she cried. He gently pulled the bulky towel from her head and began stroking her damp hair, murmuring assurances to her and kissing her head as he numbly tried to comfort her.
"I'm not angry with you. And I don't hate you, my love, I could never hate you," he whispered hoarsely to her as she sobbed, his heart breaking for her. "I could never hate you. I could never raise my hand against you, either, my love. I would cut it off first!"
As she cried herself out, he belatedly remembered the handkerchief in his pocket and clumsily dug it out for her. She sat back in the bed as she wiped the tears from her face and blew her nose. He continued to stroke her hair, pausing occasionally to finger strands of it while myriad emotions ran through him. He felt immeasurable pain for her that she had nearly taken a life in order to protect her own; he knew exactly what kind of a toll that could take on a person's spirit, even if it was justified. He was horror-struck and sickened by what she had experienced; she never mentioned having any other serious relationships with men in her life before, and he had foolishly assumed that he was the first. It made him literally dizzy with rage that any man could treat someone as kind and giving as Cassandra so brutally.
He held her for a long time, saying nothing, eventually falling into a gentle rocking motion as he tried to soothe her. He lightly brushed her cheek with the backs of his fingers. "I am so very sorry for what you had to go through, Cassandra. I'm so sorry," he said softly, helplessly. "I'm so very sorry for bringing all of that back to you. I wish there was something I could do to take it all away!" The troubled immortal spoke quietly but vehemently to the miserable young woman in his arms.
"I should never have spoken to you as harshly as I did yesterday, and I bitterly regret it. Those were stupid things for me to say and I wish to all the gods that I could take them back. We ARE partners, we are equals—you're NOT my concubine or my whore, I'm not just using you, not for anything, I swear it. You are the most important thing in my life, Cassandra Cillian. You're the queen of my heart, and I love you so very much."
She smiled weakly at his courtly words. When she looked at him, the expression on his face was so serious, it almost made her giggle. As she sniffled and dabbed the last of her tears away, she tried to ease the tension by teasing him a little. "You sure can talk pretty, Mr. Jenkins." She looked straight into his dark eyes, her tone again serious. "Does that mean you forgive me?"
A pained expression filled his face; that she felt like she even had to ask such a thing! "Of course I do, my love!" he said fervently. "Do you forgive me?"
Her bravado deserted her at the pathetic tone of his voice; her face crumpled again as she nodded her head vigorously and held her arms out to him. With a huge sigh he eagerly leaned into them again, and they held each other tightly as Cassandra wept fresh tears into the shoulder of his now-damp suit coat.
He feverishly kissed her neck, blinking back tears of his own. He held onto her as long as he could, hiding his face in her hair and breathing in her scent of honey and lavender. He wanted to remember this moment in every single detail. He needed to tell her about the woman in the photograph, and he feared that this might be the last time Cassandra ever touched him again.