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THERE WASN'T MUCH THAT SURPRISED CASSIE. She was a lot more observant than she let on, and she liked to think she could solve problems fairly quickly. But it was safe to say she was caught off guard when just as she was about to fall asleep, her phone pinged with a text notification.
It had been one of her days off, and Cassie could count the amount of times she got up from her couch on one hand. The sun had set long ago, and she'd decided to just stay on the couch, figuring falling asleep to a movie was a lot nicer than complete silence.
When she finally unlocked her phone, she was surprised to see the text was from Matt. All he'd done was send her his location, and Cassie could see without even zooming in, that he was at his apartment.
Although they weren't exactly on the best terms, Cassie immediately got up and quickly changed before heading out the door.
The location thing was something that they'd been doing since they both got iPhones. With Foggy too, if any of them needed one or both of the others, they'd share their location as a quick message / signal.
Matt opened the door before she could even knock. The last thing she expected to see was the blood on his shirt. It was black, but she could obviously see the red seeping through.
"Wh-what happened to you??" Cassie quickly stepped inside, allowing Matt to shut the door.
"I'm sorry, I didn't know who else to ask to come over," he spoke softly.
That was a lie. He could've called Claire, but Cassie was the first person that he thought of. No matter what was going on in his life, he always thought of her. And even though she was probably still angry with him, he just prayed that she wouldn't immediately leave.
"You need to take a shower and rinse off whatever you can." Cassie linked her arm through Matt's without waiting for an answer, and walked him to the bathroom.
"But—"
"No. I don't know why you called me over to help you. You're gonna shower, don't scrub by your cut or you'll rip the stitches. I'll clean it after. I'll help you, and then you're gonna tell me what the fuck is going on or I'm leaving."
Cassie silently held out a change of clothes and towel, and Matt took them, wanting to say something but afraid that if he pushed her, she might actually leave.
When he exited the bathroom 10 minutes later, it was almost silent. And when he heard Cassie quietly crying, he wanted to kick himself for asking her to do this. To see him like this, and help him when he'd refused to tell her anything before.
"Cassie, I—"
"Sit down," Cassie shook her head, not in the mood for conversation until she was finished.
Once Matt was on the bed, Cassie grabbed a small damp towel and tried to clean up around the actual cut as best she could. She could see him wincing from the pain a couple of times, but he didn't once complain out loud.
"Did you just come from the hospital?"
Matt didn't answer for a second. The pain was so great that as soon as she spoke, all he could do was concentrate solely on the sound of her voice to distract him.
"Uh— no. House call, I guess you could say. Her names Claire, she helped me before."
"How did you—"
"She's a nurse. Found me unconscious outside of her apartment and thankfully, she helped me instead of calling an ambulance."
"Okay," Cassie sighed. "So why didn't you call her to come over?"
"Because I needed to hear your voice. And you won't answer if I call."
Cassie closed her eyes, silently hoping her tears wouldn't fall. "Stop."
"What?"
"You can't just do stuff like this, and then say something sweet and expect me to just be okay."
"I'm not," Matt shakes his head. "I'm not just saying it. I needed to hear your voice. The only reason Claire helped me the first time was because like I said I passed out, turns out I'd done more than mess up my ribs. But I missed you."
"You think that's why I'm upset, because of someone named Claire, that I don't even know? Even if you weren't injured Matt, we're not together you can do whatever the hell you want. I'm upset because you're getting hurt like this, and I bet worse, and you just drop bombshells like oh I was unconscious and I fucked up my ribs. And then end on 'I miss you'? Seriously what is happening?"
As Cassie finally put a bandage and some medical tape on Matt, she took a step back. "I'm happy you're okay. But I'm going home now."
Before she could take another step back, Matt was up, gently grabbing her hands in his.
"Stay. Please." He sat back down, pulling Cassie closer.
"Then tell me what's going on," she whispered, putting a hand on either side of his face.
Matt felt like he melted into her touch. For a second, he forgot about the pain.
"Cassie, they're... they're dangerous people. If I tell you, it'll just make things worse."
"Don't you think that's something I need to decide for myself?" When he remained silent, she thought that was her answer. "As long as you don't do anything stupid for a little while, you should heal fine. Next time you need help, call Claire."
As Cassie grabbed her bag and slung it over her shoulder, she had to pause to put a hand over her mouth, fearing she'd start crying again. Matt, of course, could hear all of this. But he couldn't risk her life by bringing her in to any of this, any further than he already had.
"Bye Matt," Cassie didn't even bother to turn around as she shut the door, not caring it was a little loud.
"Fuck," Matt let out a string of curse words, grabbed the closest thing to him and threw it against the wall. Luckily for him, it was a book and he wouldn't need to worry about broken glass.
He had no way of knowing this, but it would've been safer for Cassie if he had told her. At least enough information that she would've stayed.
Because unfortunately for Cassie as she was on her way home in the backseat of another ride-share car, she was still being watched.
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a/n: short chapter barely 1k words BUT i didn't want this chapter to get to like 4k 😂