9. Chasity
CHASITY
The heavy wooden door of the inn clicks shut behind me, plunging the hallway into a hushed stillness.
A strange hum vibrates just under my skin, the ghost of the bonfire’s pulsing music and the whiskey’s slow burn.
I float up the stairs, my lips still curved into a smile that feels foreign, unpracticed.
In my room, the cool mountain air that drifts through the open window does nothing to snuff out the lingering warmth.
I pull off my boots and the borrowed flannel, the scent of woodsmoke clinging to the fabric.
All I can see are flashes of the night—Lachlan’s quick grin in the firelight, Rosa’s wild dancing, the quiet, steady way Ben watched me from across the flames.
For hours, I forgot to be anxious. I just was.
The smile lingers as I change into an old t-shirt and shorts, already anticipating the deep, dreamless sleep that has become a welcome stranger these last few nights.
The quilt on the bed looks thin against the sudden chill, and I remember Lachlan mentioning extra blankets stored in the antique wardrobe.
I swing the creaky door open, the scent of cedar and old linen greeting me.
My fingers search for a woolen edge in the darkness, brushing past my neatly folded jeans and sweaters.
They hit something smooth and slippery. Plastic.
I freeze. There, hanging in the back of the closet, is the white garment bag. A silent, accusatory column of white against the dark wood.
The air leaves my lungs in a sharp, painful rush.
My knees buckle and I stumble back, hitting the edge of the bed with a soft thud.
I can’t tear my eyes away. It’s not just a dress in there.
It’s the seating chart I agonized over for weeks.
The blush peonies Mom insisted on. The string quartet Jason's mother booked without asking me.
A whole lifetime of polite nods and quiet compromises, all sealed inside that sterile plastic sheath.
I see Jason at the end of the aisle, his handsome face composed, his eyes holding not joy, not excitement, but a look of quiet resignation, as if he too was just getting through it.
The warmth from the bonfire leeches from my skin, replaced by an icy dread.
Shame, hot and violent, crashes over my head, pulling me under.
My throat closes up, and the simple act of breathing becomes a conscious, desperate effort against the weight of what I’ve done.
My carefully constructed peace shatters into a million tiny pieces.
I’m not a free spirit finding herself in the mountains. I’m the coward who ran.
My fingers, numb and clumsy, swipe across the phone screen. Jason’s name glows back at me. I press the call icon before my courage can dissolve completely. It rings twice. My heart hammers against my ribs, a frantic drumbeat in the sudden, deafening silence.
“Chasity?” His voice isn’t angry. It’s quiet. Exhausted. That’s so much worse.
“Jason. I…” The words jam in my throat, a useless pile of debris. “I’m sorry.”
A long pause stretches across the line, heavy with everything we never said. “I know.” Another breath. “You really hurt me.”
“I know.” I whisper it back, my own voice a stranger’s.
“But maybe… we were both just going through the motions. For a long time.” The admission hangs, a truth we’d both polished over with denial. There’s a faint shuffling sound on his end, like he’s pacing. “My mom is losing her mind, by the way. So is yours.”
“I’ll call her.”
“Yeah.” He sighs, a sound that scrapes me raw. “Look… just… take the time. Figure it out. Call me when you’re ready.”
The line clicks. He hangs up. The finality of his gentle dismissal shatters me more than any screaming match ever could. Kindness is a blade, and he just slid it between my ribs without a sound.
The air in the room becomes thick, unbreathable.
I’m choking on the smell of cedar and my own failure.
I grab the quilt off the bed, wrapping it around my shoulders like a shield, and flee.
The back door of the inn groans open and I stumble onto the small porch, the cold a clean shock against my hot face.
Black mountains cut sharp, jagged shapes against a sky spilling over with stars.
The chill bites at my lungs. Muffled music and the clatter of dishes float from a kitchen vent, a ghost of the warmth and laughter I felt only an hour ago.
I grip the wooden railing, the rough grain digging into my palms, and I break.
The sob rips from my chest, violent and ugly.
It’s a sound of pure grief, for a man I didn’t love enough and for a life I ruined because I was too much of a coward to speak up sooner.
Tears stream down my face, hot then instantly cold in the night air. I can’t stop them. I can’t breathe around them. I just dissolve against the railing, a whimpering mess held together by a quilt.
A hinge squeaks. I look up through a blur of tears as the back door opens, framing Lachlan’s tall silhouette against the warm kitchen light. He sees me, and my whole body tenses, caught in the full, wretched spectacle of my unraveling.
His face is unreadable in the dim light, his body half-shadow.
I expect a pithy joke, a dose of his usual sarcasm to slice through the tension.
He does neither. He just steps out onto the porch, letting the door swing closed with a soft click, and walks to the railing a few feet away from me.
He doesn’t look at me. He just leans his forearms on the wood, his gaze trained on the same dark, jagged horizon that I’ve been staring at.
The silence stretches, filled only by the whisper of the pines and the ragged, hitching sounds of my own breathing.
The space he leaves between us is a kindness, a quiet allowance for me to exist in my own mess without an audience.
“I ruined my whole life,” I choke out, the words scraping my throat raw on their way out. The confession hovers in the cold air, a wretched, ugly thing.
Lachlan turns his head slightly, his profile sharp against the star-dusted sky. His voice, when it comes, is low and steady, a tether in the overwhelming blackness.
“Would it have been better to just keep living it unhappily? Less destructive because it looked prettier from the outside?”
The question lands like a stone, sending ripples through the frantic, churning waters of my guilt.
Better? No. It wouldn’t have been better.
Just quieter. Easier for everyone else. The truth of it loosens another sob from my chest, but this one feels different.
Less panicked, more mournful. The conversation unfolds from there, my words coming in broken fits and starts between shuddering breaths.
He doesn’t push, just listens with a stillness that pulls the truth from me.
“I don’t even know who I am,” I admit, the words barely a whisper. “My whole life has been a checklist. Good daughter, good student, good fiancée. I don’t know who I’m supposed to be when someone else isn’t handing me the script.”
The shame of that admission leaves me feeling hollowed out, my skin transparent under his steady gaze. I wait for the pity, for the sympathetic head tilt. It never comes.
He shifts, turning to lean his back against the railing, facing me now. “Maybe this is the first time you get to find out.”
His words don't fix anything, but they land like an anchor in the storm of my thoughts. “Maybe this is the first time you get to find out.” The violent sobs quieten, leaving a trail of hiccuping breaths and a profound, hollow ache. I pull my quilt tighter, but the cold has sunk deep into my bones.
Without a word, Lachlan pushes off the railing and disappears back inside.
I’m left alone again with the immense, silent mountains, but the panic doesn’t return.
He reappears a moment later, a thick, dark wool blanket in one hand and two lowball glasses in the other.
He settles back against the railing, closer this time, and drapes the heavy blanket across both our shoulders.
The shared space is suddenly intimate, charged.
The night air, which a moment ago felt clean and sharp, thickens.
He extends a glass toward me. “It’s whiskey. Drink it.”
As I take the glass, his thumb scrapes deliberately against the cuff of my t-shirt.
It’s a fleeting touch, barely there, but a jolt of heat shoots up my arm.
I bring the glass to my lips, the sharp, smoky burn of the liquid a welcome shock to my system.
It chases the chill from the inside out.
We sit in the quiet, the vast darkness of the valley spread out before us.
I am acutely aware of everything about him.
The solid warmth of his body seeping through the blanket into my side.
The scent of him—not just the bonfire and old wood, but something warmer, like cinnamon and clean linen.
I turn my head to thank him, but the words catch in my throat.
He is already watching me, his expression soft in the faint starlight.
His gaze drops, for just a second, to my mouth before flickering back up to my eyes.
He looks away quickly, toward the mountains, as if catching himself.
My stomach does a slow, unfamiliar flip.
It isn’t the anxious lurch I’m used to. It’s something else entirely.
Something warm and heavy. For the first time since I fled my own life, a seed of trust takes root in the hollow space in my chest. It’s not because he offers answers or promises.
It’s because he sits here with me in the wreckage, under the weight of this huge, warm blanket, and makes me feel like the person I am right now—fallen apart and lost—is still someone worth knowing.