Chapter 13 Chase #2
“It didn’t pan out,” I echo, leaving it at that. For now. “You mentioned new material?”
She blinks, the deviation catching her off guard. Slowly, she unfurls her legs until they’re draped over the edge of the chair. When she sits up, the tightness in her posture returns, coiling back into place.
Nodding, she flips open the notebook and pulls a pen from her silvery blue pouch.
“I, um…had a few thoughts at work. I scribbled some lyrics on a napkin, then pieced them together the best I could when I got home. It’s not much, but it could become something?
” Her lip disappears between her teeth, fingers curling around the spirals. “Or maybe not. I don’t know.”
“Show me.”
“It’s not finished yet. Not even close.” Two shimmery eyes scan the first verse. Once, twice, five times over. Her breathing becomes more labored, and her bottom lip slides out from the hook of her teeth, now puffy and quivering.
She stares blankly at the page, no longer reading.
I stare at her, reading everything.
“Or we can run through some more covers,” I pivot, sensing her uncertainty.
“Sure. Yeah, I…” The skin between her eyes pinches as she blows out a shaky breath, then tosses the notebook on the deck. Annie pops up from the chair and starts to pace. “What am I even doing? I can’t write songs.”
The honey-tinged moon bathes her in a soft glow, highlighting her misery.
Black mascara still veins her cheekbones. Her limbs tremble with trapped emotion. A hint of cigarette smoke wafts from her clothing.
I rest the guitar on my thighs and lean forward, tracking her disjointed movements. “Want to talk about it?”
“No. I don’t know.”
Her shift in energy is like a sudden stormfront. Jarring, unexpected. The pain returns tenfold.
But I’m no good at this.
A year of therapy was hardly enough to instill me with pearls of wisdom powerful enough to impact this broken, passionate, beautiful girl.
And that’s the downside of these late-night meetings—it’s impossible not to feel something when I’m with her, which is a level-ten mistake. She has a boyfriend. A serious, long-term boyfriend. The kind that leads to wedding bells and baby swaddles.
I shouldn’t be looking at her like I want to be the guy to wipe the tears off her face, hold her until the trembling ebbs, and be that soothing alternative to a stick of nicotine.
That’s fucked. Catastrophe in the making.
But she’s hurting.
And he’s not here.
Releasing a sigh, I set down the guitar and lean it against the side table. I stand from the chair. Take two steps forward.
Annie’s eyes lift, widening, welling with a new dusting of tears. “I’m fine, Chase.” She swipes at her face, erasing the evidence. “I’m okay. I’m calm.”
“I never said you weren’t.” I squint, drinking in her micro expressions, her cues. She’s always making offhanded comments that belittle her worth. Thinking she’s too much. Worried she’s not enough. Apologizing for everything. “What happened?”
“Nothing. It doesn’t matter.”
“You look like you just had your heart ripped out.”
She shakes her head, glancing at the patio door like she’s waiting for someone to barrel through it. “I don’t know what I’m doing.”
“With what? Music?”
“Everything. My whole life.” She’s rattled, shaking from head to toe.
“I’m exhausted. Wasting my days sweating over hot stoves and forcing smiles for customers.
This is the only part of the day I look forward to.
And that’s sad, Chase. It’s pathetic. And then he’s always…
” Her gaze drops, voice fading. Both arms fall to her sides as she deflates. “He doesn’t understand it.”
I frown, stepping closer. “Who? Your boyfriend?”
Alex.
The guy Tag seems to loathe and Annie seems to love.
I can’t shake the memory of him at the restaurant. Of him, with her.
Hard. Overbearing. Emanating control.
She doesn’t talk about him much, but she’s often on her phone, texting, looking stressed. Can’t imagine he appreciates her late-night getaways.
The thought has me taking a step back.
“Yeah,” she whispers, the word wrung out with defeat. “He thinks this is a waste of time. The music, the writing.” Her attention flits to the notebook discarded on the deck. “He says I should focus on what actually matters.”
“And what actually matters?”
“Paying bills, work, thinking about the future. Growing up.” A small laugh scrapes past her throat, but there’s no humor in it.
“He doesn’t mean it like that. Not really.
He just…worries, I guess. About stability.
About us. And I get it, I do. I can’t live off late-night jam sessions on my brother’s deck. ”
“No,” I agree. “But you shouldn’t have to pick one or the other.”
She glances up.
“Work and stability matter, but so does having something that makes you feel alive. It’s not about choosing. It’s about balance.”
Her hands ball at her sides. “He doesn’t see it that way.”
“But do you?”
She presses her lips together, jaw shifting like she wants to say something but isn’t sure she should.
I watch her for a moment before exhaling through my nose. “Look, all I’m saying is your life isn’t just what happens in the daylight, or in the nine-to-five grind. It’s this too. The things that make you want to keep going. You showed me that. Hell, it’s why I’m here.”
Her eyes flutter closed, chest inflating, deflating.
Then her face completely crumples. A brittle crack in the sunny facade she always wears.
It catches me off guard, stilling me for a beat. But instinct overrides hesitation, and I step forward, bridging the space between us.
My arms lift—slow, unsure—before I carefully pull her in.
She doesn’t think twice. Just folds into me like it’s second nature.
We’ve never hugged before. Hardly even touched.
I still remember the last time I comforted someone with a hug.
Stella.
The day before she died, she shuffled down the stairs with a warm compress and collapsed beside me on the couch. Her temple fell to my shoulder, the heat pack plopped atop her head.
I wrapped an arm around her, drawing her in, unknowingly giving her the last moment of comfort she’d ever have.
The memory tightens my grip on Annie, my arms looping around her back, tugging her closer. My chin brushes her wisps of hair as she trembles with a devastation I can’t fully grasp.
All I know is that it’s because of him. The man who’s supposed to love her.
And in that moment, I want to strangle him.
My heart kicks harder when she nuzzles into my chest, her breath topsy-turvy, her sniffling muffled against the fabric of my dark Henley. Warm tears seep through, dampening my skin.
A telltale buzz fizzes in my blood. It’s been years since I’ve been this close to a woman. No sex, no fleeting intimacy, no vanilla musk clinging to my sheets.
I thought I was broken. Dead inside. Immune to the need for physical connection.
But I’m not.
And this is the wrong damn time and the wrong fucking girl to start figuring that out with.
“I’m sorry,” Annie mumbles, her lips hovering just above my galloping heart. “I don’t mean to fall apart like this. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
“There’s nothing wrong with you.”
“I just…I want to pursue my dreams. Live large and free. I want to travel the world, experience bright lights and sweeping cities. But I also want to settle down one day, live simply, savor the little moments.” She inches back slightly, her eyes rimmed with red. “Alex says I can’t have both.”
“You can have both,” I say, releasing her, putting a much-needed distance between us. Then, without thinking it through, I add, “Maybe just not with him.”
Shit.
That was a massive overstep.
Number one rule of friendship: never give unsolicited relationship advice, especially when you’re the outside party with borderline selfish intentions.
Not my place. Not even fucking close.
Annie’s eyes widen to glistening spheres, burning under the string lights and the moon.
Panic surges through me.
I can’t tell if she’s about to slap me, storm inside, or if she’s having an ah-ha moment.
My muscles lock as I stand there, staring, trying to conjure up some sort of backpedaling, apologetic spiel.
The words don’t come.
An owl hoots from a faraway tree as branches shift and sway against the breeze. The air is heavy, thick, suffocating.
A dish crashes in the kitchen.
Annie nearly leaps out of her Mary Janes. She looks toward the house, eyes darting to the small, dusty window, where her brother stands at the sink, his face an unreadable mask.
But he saw.
The hug. The forbidden contact. The cloud of tension so tangible it might as well have a pulse and a mouthful of teeth.
She smooths out her sweater, her hands vanishing inside the sleeves. Her gaze draws back to me, just for a millisecond, before she swivels around and disappears inside the house. The sliding door claps shut, snapping me back to reality.
I grit my teeth. “Fuck.”
With a low growl, I press my palms to my temples before dragging them down my face.
What the hell was I thinking?
Through the window, I catch a glimpse of Annie’s silhouette evaporating down the hallway, her shoulders drawn tight, arms curled around herself.
She’ll probably spend the rest of the night convincing herself I didn’t mean it the way it sounded.
That I wasn’t implying anything. That I was just being supportive.
Or maybe she won’t.
Maybe she’ll let it fester until it picks apart the foundation she’s been teetering on for years.
I shake my head, sinking into the chair she abandoned and gripping the arms like a flimsy anchor. My attention pans downward, looking for a distraction, anything to pull me out of my messy, scrambled thoughts.
That’s when I see it.
Her notebook, half open, forgotten on the floor of the deck. A few crumpled napkins are stuffed inside, scrawled with ink.
Scribbles in the margins. Crossed-out lines. Colorful doodles.
And at the center of the page, a partially written song.
Unfinished and raw.
[Verse 1]
I used to chase the sun
A beacon fire, bold and bright
But now I’m choking on the fumes standing in the ashes of a hollow, wasted fight
Every promise turned to smoke
A matchstick in the sky
Flickering out (??), a smothered flame
Our pieces drifting by
[Pre-Chorus?]
But you, you never faded
Even when
The words stop there.
Like she lost the nerve, or the hope, to write the rest.
But in my head, the song keeps going.