Cassandra stood in the concrete room, pacing by the walls as she nervously rubbed her palms together. After the burial service for Susan and Jack had ended, she decided to visit Josephine, who already assumed her guilt for the fire. Cassandra wasn't sure what she wanted to say when she saw her again, but she didn't want a fight. The officer she spoke to less than two minutes before stepping into the room returned with a firm hold on Josephine's elbow. Josephine didn't look any different than the last time they met. Her hair was straighter, tied down, and her nails were scrubbed clean of polish.

When she noticed Cassandra standing in the room, there was no obvious reaction. Her eyes simply shifted between the table and the officer as he walked her into the room. She didn't struggle when he chained her cuffs to the desk, checking them to make sure it was secure.

"Thank you, officer."

With a slight nod and a warning command to Josephine, the officer left the room. Josephine sat there, her eyes locked with Cassandra's while her wrists were tightly shackled to the table. Cassandra looked at the door before walking over to take a seat at the desk. She folded her fingers into her lap, quietly observing Josephine where she sat.

"You look well."

Josephine chuckled. "Look at you working on your lying. I am in prison; you don't expect me to look well, but thanks. It's good to hear that I don't look horrible; I would hate to lose my looks along with everything else. I am sure you didn't come all the way here to see if I looked the same or if the prison women had already gone to work on me."

"No, I didn't. I honestly don't know why I came here, you see. I guess." She bit her lip and shrugged. "I guess I just want to know why you burned my company. The people you paid were caught, but what was the need? Why did you have to hurt so many people? Harrison and I were nowhere near the offices."

Josephine wasn't fazed; her expression remained impassive. "I wanted to hurt you, to destroy at least something else that you loved. My psychiatrist has called me many names at this point, but she also doesn't understand that I want you to suffer."

"I don't understand either. I want you to explain to me what I have done that merits you attacking me in everything? You burnt my garden, you tried to kill me, now, you burnt my company. You killed two people in that fire. Two good, decent people."

"Do you remember the letter I sent you some time ago? While Harrison was in the hospital?"

"You mean the one where you blamed me for everything that went wrong in your relationship? You blamed me for Harrison's disinterest in you; you blamed me for, practically, your entire life."

"That was not all I wrote."

"Forgive me, but I didn't have the patience to read your sordid letter in its entirety." Cassandra smiled, "I didn't feel like carrying your delusions on my shoulder."

"In that letter, I wrote that people always suffered in your place."

It was clear that nothing had really changed with Josephine. She was still convinced that Cassandra was the cause of her problems and probably still fantasizing about getting back with Harrison someday. In her twisted mindset, she blamed Cassandra, so she didn't carry any guilt for her behaviour. Josephine felt justified because she was the victim in her own story. For a few seconds, Josephine seemed to space out for a minute, with the tip of her long hair rolling at the end of her fingernails as she sat with her neck slightly bent.

"You never get hurt."

"Excuse me."

Josephine blinked for one long second, then turned her eyes back in Cassandra's direction as she did so. "Every time I do something to get you out of the way, someone else gets hurt, and you walk away unharmed. With the shooting in Himont, your guide was the one that got the nearly fatal bullet while you went to the hospital to check your bumps and bruises. With Harrison, it was obvious who got hurt, and it wasn't you at all. And then with Susan and Jackson, those were their names, right?"

"Susan was barely twenty years old; she was going to university to finish her degree and start work. She was happy, lively, her mother lives in another city. Hardworking and kind. Not anyone else in that office deserved to be hurt, but in the end, she was only just beginning her life."

Josephine laughed a little as a tear leaked from her eyes. "Oh, Cassandra, you don't know what I would give to go back in time. I spent years loving Harrison, and I finally got him to love me back. Finally, after so long. Only for his old man to die and leave him the company. At first, I thought it was a good opportunity for us to get closer. To give him my support while he grieved, but you stepped into the picture."

"For how long would you keep rounding off the blame to me? Has your 'psychiatrist' talked to you about that? Has she told you how immature and dangerous your infatuation with me is? I am not the reason you are crazy."

"You will go crazy too if you lost everything you loved just in the blink of an eye."

"Blink of an eye, then your blinking must be quite slow." Cassandra stood from the table, walking around with her fingers down the pocket of her sailor pants. She was trying her best to remain calm, to not let anger lead her, but it was hard.

Susan was buried in Hooke town; her mother decided it was better than flying her out to bury her back home. Jackson was buried later in the day, at the church cemetery where she met his parents for the first time. Susan had developed feelings for Jackson, feelings he reciprocated, but now they were nothing more than lifeless bodies beneath kilos of sand. Josephine didn't even show an ounce of remorse, not that Cassandra expected her to.

"Is Harrison the first?"

"Excuse me?"

Cassandra whipped around, her hair flying over her shoulders. "Obsession. Is Harrison your first obsession? I am asking because I have thought it over in my head, over and over. You are thirty-six; there is no way he just happened to be the only one. Or maybe he is. Maybe, that's why you have no control over your insanity."

"That's my secret." She smiled brightly. "Is he here?"

"Who? Harrison? Yes."

"Is he coming to see me?"

"No."

"Why?"

Josephine looked up in surprise. "He doesn't want to see me?"

"Oh, he did. I talked him out of it." Cassandra replied with pride, smiling sincerely. "You see, he is still recovering from everything you did to him. The shooting, the drive-through, the poisoning. Emotionally, he is ready to see you, talk to you, and try to understand why you did what you did. The thing is, there is no understanding you because you don't even understand yourself."

"You don't want him to see me, do you?"

"Of course I do not. You ran Harrison over with a car, and you injected him so he would die. Forgive me if your definition of love and loyalty are not the same as mine. You are venomous; you are vindictive, obsessed and dangerous. Left to me, you wouldn't even know how to spell his name, let alone see him in person."

"Even if I am left here forever, I would always have him in my heart. Do you hear me? You can try to keep him away from him, but I would always be there. I would always be the first woman he truly wanted to start a relationship with."

"That's the funny thing about history; it's the past. He is free to remember it, and so are you. You are free to dream of it, to keep it because it is the only memory you would ever have of my fiancée." Josephine frowned, and Cassandra braced her hands on the desk and sneered, "Understand. While you remember Harrison in all his kindness, attractiveness and love, he would not remember the same way. You would be the woman who almost left his mother without a son. You would be the woman who terrorized him in the name of 'love'. You would be a history he would want to bury and forget."

"You can't erase me; you owe after all you stole from me."

"One day, if that day exists in the world, you will finally understand that I owe you nothing. Absolutely nothing. You are the one who owes a lot of people the years and family you have stolen from their lives. I don't expect you to carry them in your conscience; you don't have one. So I have them on mine, but out of guilt, because it is not my fault. I carry them so that I would be one more heart that remembers them, their life, and their worth. I wish you good luck. You can do whatever you want with your life, but my life and Harrison's you will no longer ruin."

She swiped her hair off her shoulder, then turned around to grab her purse and made her way to the door when the scrapping of the chair made her stop. She turned over her shoulder to see that Josephine was watching her, but the woman said nothing, just a hint of a smile teased at the corners of her lips. Sure that she had nothing more to do, Cassandra held on to the cold knob of the door and pulled it open.

The feel of the hot air as she stepped out made her heart ring with peace. An alarm blared, and Cassandra spied the officer slipping into the room just before she descended the stairs. Josephine had signed her fate, but Cassandra was ready to rewrite her story in faith that she was not too late to do so. Time would never wait for her, so she would never wait for time to make things right in her life.

The sun hit her face as she pushed the glass doors open, and the breeze caressed her face. Harrison stood at the driver's seat of the Range Rover, shades over his eyes as they were still sadly sensitive to light, but he looked good to her. The light blue shirt he wore covered most of the scars he received during the accident. Somehow she seemed to still see them even through the shirt.

He didn't notice her a first, his neck angled towards the busy street, but as she rushed down the stairs in her heels with her heart in her throat, she knew when he noticed her. A smile touched his lips when he saw her, and before he could prepare himself for her gentle attack, she threw herself into him.

Her bag hit the floor. She snaked her arms around his neck and pulled him to her, slanting her lips over his. She loved him, a fact she never forgot to thank God for each time she woke up in the morning because she could just have easily lost him to death. There was a reason he was given his life, and she didn't intend to waste that time again.

He sighed and enclosed her hips between his hands as he pulled her closer to him; his warmth engulfed her. A hand moved over her shoulders and pushed her upper body into his, and she laughed against his lips. For every scar on his body, she was going to make up for it with her love and devotion.

As her fingers moved into his hair, she felt her ring pull against the strands, with that, she knew her life was nowhere near over. She was back, and she planed on taking back the reigns of her life