Kate Cassidy explained why she’s removing some of her tattoos in honor of her late boyfriend, Liam Payne.
“I knew that some of you guys would be offended at the fact that I decided to laser off these tattoos on my body,” Cassidy, 27, said via TikTok on Wednesday, July 29, while replying to a comment that read, “She don’t love him no more.” She continued, “The only reason that I am getting these tattoos off is literally just because they are too thick to my liking. They’re the very first tattoos I ever received, and I went somewhere really random.”
Cassidy went on to say that she asked for a “fine line tattoo,” which she expected to be even more dainty than her result, and got a “thick, bulky” result.
@kateecass Replying to @Sammi Herrera🥀🖤
♬ original sound – Kateecass
She added, “Listen, the meaning behind all of my tattoos are so, so special to me. I am not lasering them off for any other means other than the fact that I’m gonna get them redone somewhere else that has experience in fine line tattoos.”
The tattoo in question is a “444” tribute for Payne, who died at age 31 in October 2024. The number signified the couple’s angel number.
Cassidy has more tattoos in honor of Payne, including an angel wing, “LP” on her wrist, and a wilted rose on her thumb, and a 4 on her wrist.
The influencer dated Payne for nearly two years before his death. They met at a restaurant in Charleston, South Carolina, where Cassidy was working in September 2022. In December of that year, they made their red carpet debut at the British Fashion Awards in London. In 2024, Cassidy shared that she was living with Payne in Florida.
In October 2024, Cassidy traveled with Payne to Argentina, but returned to Florida two days before he fell off a third-floor hotel balcony and died.
Since his death, Cassidy has been candid about her grief journey. In February 2025, she told The Sun, “I feel like my life has changed so much and I think about Liam every second of every day. It still doesn’t feel fully real for me that he’s not here. Sometimes I’ll wake up and it’s a reality I have to face for the rest of my life.”
Cassidy continued, “When I left Argentina, we had such a great day. We were in such great —you know, full of love, and I never would have expected any of that to occur. If I could see into the future, I would have never left Argentina but unfortunately, I do have — we did have our own separate lives. This wasn’t the first time we traveled separately together. We would quite often here and there in the past, so I never thought this would have happened.”
