Chapter 15
Chapter Fifteen
CHASE
The neon Bud Light sign cast a sickly blue glow across the scratched surface of Callaghan’s bar, making the untouched whiskey in front of me look almost black.
Ice clinked against glass somewhere behind me, followed by the familiar hiss of beer hitting a pint glass—sounds that used to feel like home but now set my teeth on edge.
I’d been here for hours, since I picked myself up off the hospital floor and dragged myself back to Sable Point after the bomb Elena had unwittingly dropped on me. Pregnant.
My finger traced the rim of the glass for the hundredth time. When I’d ordered it, Kai had raised a brow but said nothing. He knew better than anyone that sometimes you had to stare your demons in the face to remember why you were fighting them.
Didn’t stop him from eyeing me every ninety seconds, though. That was when it hit me. Step two: find a sponsor.
“Hey, Kai?”
He responded with a tilt of his chin in my direction.
“Will you be my sponsor?”
He gave me a single nod, and that was that.
I went back to staring at the liquid in my glass, but I wasn’t going to drink it.
The rush of cold December air hit me before I heard the door close.
But it wasn’t the cold that made every muscle in my body go rigid.
It was her. Even without looking, I knew Elena had walked in—like my body had developed its own Elena-radar over the last year.
A hint of that dark vanilla scent that haunted my dreams drifted over, and my heart did that stupid stuttering thing it always did around her.
“I wasn’t going to drink it,” I muttered as she took the stool next to me.
“Okay,” Elena said softly.
I kept my eyes fixed on the whiskey, terrified of what I’d see in her face. Pity would break me. Indifference would destroy me. The gentle understanding in her voice was already doing enough damage.
“I just needed to know I could sit here and not drink it.” My voice came out rougher than I’d intended, scraping against my throat like gravel.
“You don’t have to explain, Chase. I get it.”
The tenderness in her voice finally gave me the courage to look at her. She was still in her scrubs, hair slightly messy like she’d been running her hands through it. Dark circles under her eyes matched my own, but it was what I saw in those eyes that stole my breath.
When our gazes met, it wasn’t pity or apathy I saw.
It was so much more.
Sadness.
Regret.
Hope.
Love.
The word hung between us, unspoken but impossible to ignore, like a physical presence in the stool on my other side at the bar. Behind us, someone fed quarters into the ancient jukebox, and the opening notes of some sad country song filled the air. Fitting.
“Chase...” Elena’s voice cracked on my name. She reached for my hand but stopped halfway, her fingers hovering in the space between us like a question I wasn’t sure how to answer.
I forced myself to release my death grip on the whiskey glass. My fingers ached from how hard I’d been holding it. “How did you find me?”
“Your mom texted the family group chat looking for you.” Elena’s lips curved in a ghost of a smile. “The one I’m still in, by the way. She won’t let me leave.”
I snorted. “Of course, she won’t. If Emma has adopted you, you’re an Everton now, whether you like it or not.”
“I do like it,” she said quietly.
We lapsed into a silence that was not awkward, necessarily, but still uncomfortable. There was still so much to say. But where did we even begin?
Elena spoke first. “Will you come somewhere with me? I want to show you something.”
I pushed the whiskey glass away, toward the back of the bar.
“Anything you need, Elena. Anything.”
I’d made that promise once before, and I’d failed her.
I wouldn’t fail her again.