Cassie returns with Alex back to L.A. in the hopes that now that she has a child, he will be more careful to care and to love and that will outweigh the abuse. Once they step off the plane, their image to the public is renewed, and they are seen as a helplessly in love couple protecting their newborn child. Everything begins to fall in place. Cassie stays home to take care of Connor and Alex offers to go to therapy. It's everything Cassie ever wanted in life. For her husband to admit that he abuses her and try to stop.
Therapy begins well. Cassie finds a great therapist who is willing to keep their names a secret. The two of them go to different group therapy sessions with wives who are abused and with husbands who are trying to stop. Cassie soon realizes that all of these women have the same story that she has. It's called 'battered woman syndrome' and Cassie is like a textbook case. She was never fully supported by her family, though she supported them and never received any thanks from them. She has gone through life quietly and controlled, caring for people but never really being cared for. When she found her husband he gave her all she could ever dream of having. Love. But because he wasn't raised right, she found herself taking care of him, showing him the love that he had never received. And then came the beatings. Everything was perfect until one thing went wrong. And that one thing flipped a switch in him that made him turn on her. It was usually something she couldn't control but that he saw as her being taken away from him. He was incapable of sharing her. He didn't let he have friends of her own because he was jealous for her. And if that ever came up, if he ever felt neglected, he would react by beating her.
She realized he was acting like this with Connor. She realized he only saw his son as someone to compete with for attention rather than someone to love. He would never love their son the way that Cassie loved him. And that almost sealed the deal for her, but she was doing well in therapy. She thought she was making some strides and hopefully Alex was too.
Cassie was feeling supported in therapy. She was hearing these women's stories and they were hearing hers with sympathy and love. But then when her therapist pulled her aside one week and told her to check on Alex and his therapy sessions, she realized she was in trouble. Alex had skipped out for two weeks with the excuse of work. He wasn't really willing to work on it. He wasn't really willing to go to therapy. So she came home. And realized he was not getting the help he needed.
She came home upset, ready to ask him about therapy, but she walked in on him with whiskey in hand and her baby playing on the floor. She was furious at him for drinking around her son. And then he lashed out at her for his image in the papers. Because she left him 10 months earlier, he became the punching bag for the press. They tore him apart and weren't willing to let his career survive without some investigation into his wife's pregnancy. And that's when she realized he would never forgive her. His image would always be at fault because of her.
He flew into a rage and beat her, with Connor crying on the floor. After Alex was finished, Cassie picked Connor up to sooth him. It was the beginning of the end.
That night, Cassie realized that she could never disappear. If she wanted to leave, she would have to publicly leave him. She wanted her freedom, not just her safety. She realized that the only way he would let her go was if he no longer loved her. So she was going to make him hate her.
The next morning she filed for a divorce and scheduled a press conference. At the press conference, she announced her divorced based on 'extreme cruelty' citing that Alex had abused her and she had the proof of the bruises on her body. The press threw a fit. But she didn't care. She was free. And as she looked into the crowd, she saw a lone man in the corner. Alex. He understood. Or at least she thought he did. He looked at her with a somber glance and he was gone. She would never know, because she would never speak to him again, but she believed that he finally let her go.
She'd find a place to stay. Will had moved to Tacoma, and she had planned on meeting him there. But that didn't matter. It didn't matter where she went or what she did. She was free. And her son was safe.
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