Chapter 14 Annalise #2
Tag, in his blunt, no-bullshit way. My parents, in softer moments, their words carefully chosen but still laced with concern. Even Kenna, who swore she’d never meddle, let it slip between sips of wine on her couch: “Don’t you think you deserve better?”
And every time, I brushed it off. Called it worry. Misunderstanding. I told myself they didn’t see the whole picture. That they didn’t know Alex like I did, didn’t grasp the guilt I’ve carried, all the little weights that have turned into an anvil and kept me rooted by his side.
But Chase?
We only just met.
He has no reason to care, no reason to say something just to soothe me, or push me, or convince me that this life I’ve chosen might not be the right path.
Yet he saw it. Just like everyone else. And for the first time, the thought didn’t bounce off the armor I’ve built around this relationship.
His words reached me. Stuck.
Lingered.
And now they’re hollowing me out.
I close my eyes, swallowing the sticky knot in my throat.
Minutes whisk by while I’m lost to my battling thoughts. The car smells like a bamboo diffuser and the faint trace of woodsy cologne. I don’t look at Chase; I can’t. All I do is stare out the dust-streaked window until we pull into my brother’s driveway and I launch myself out of the vehicle.
“Annalise.”
He follows me. My work heels slow me down, his gait doubling mine. I whip around to face him, panicked, teetering on the edge of a nervous breakdown. “What did I just do?” I croak out, shaking my head back and forth. “God. I can’t believe I—”
“Hey. It’s okay. Whatever it is, it’s fixable.”
My chest feels like it’s crumbling, the falling debris making my stomach churn. I almost double over. “Oh God…”
“Annie, listen.” Chase takes both of my hands in his, squeezing softly, centering me. “It’s okay. I promise. Fuck what I said last night. It was stupid, presumptuous, and clearly counterproductive. You were right. I don’t know you, and you never asked for my advice.”
His hands are calloused and cool, but his touch warms me. Defrosts my frozen bits. And I don’t understand it. We’re essentially strangers, yet I feel comfortable with him.
Safe.
The thought only heightens my nerves again.
It jumbles my thoughts until I blurt out the unexpected: “I almost killed him.”
His grip on me tightens, just for a breath, and then he lets me go. “What?”
I take a step back, nearly tripping over the first porch step. “Five years ago. Alex. He was teaching me how to drive, and we got into this argument, and I…” My eyes slam shut, memories pervading, intruding. “I lost control. Hit a tree. And he…he almost died.”
Chase studies me beneath the awning, his whiskey-brown eyes digging. “Shit,” he whispers. “I’m sorry.”
I cross my arms, nails biting into my skin.
“I walked away with a few scratches, while he suffered a TBI. He was never the same. A lot of the time, things are good. He’s loving, attentive, spoils me.
But when he’s under pressure, frustrated…
he’s like a different person. Mean, angry, volatile.
” The words feel polluted on my tongue, like admitting it makes it more real.
More damning. I wrap my arms tighter around myself, trying to hold in the ache.
“But I can’t blame him for that. I did this to him. I broke him.”
Chase exhales, raking a hand through his hair.
“I know what you’re thinking. That I should’ve left him a long time ago. That I’m making excuses.”
He doesn’t answer right away. Just watches me, his expression hard to read, until finally, he says, “I think you’re carrying something too heavy for one person to bear.”
I swallow, pressing my fingers against my temples.
“There’s only me. I’m all he has. His parents moved to Rome, and they’re hardly in the picture.
They just abandoned him—left him with a restaurant and all this trauma.
He’s an only child, has no friends, no relationships.
What kind of person walks away?” My breath is shaky, riddled with despair.
“What kind of person just gives up on someone like that?”
Chase shifts his weight, his hands flexing at his sides like he wants to reach for me again but doesn’t. “I don’t have any answers for you,” he says. “But I don’t think you’re asking the right questions.”
The words settle between us, heavy and unmovable.
My throat tightens. I dig my fingertips into my temples, trying to force some clarity into the dust storm inside my head. Chase doesn’t push, doesn’t fill the silence with empty reassurances or platitudes. He just stands there, watching me with an intensity that makes my skin prickle.
I blow out a breath and step back, sinking onto the porch steps. The wooden slats creak as I drape my arms over my knees, staring down at the cracks in the pavement. “I don’t even know why I’m telling you this,” I admit.
Chase hesitates before lowering himself beside me. He stretches his legs out, hands clasped loosely between his knees. “Sometimes it’s easier that way. Talking to someone who doesn’t have a stake in it.”
I nod, grinding the heel of my stiletto into a weed-laden groove. “No judgment. No expectations.”
“No history,” he adds.
The mood shifts, less strained now, something more delicate settling into place. The porch light flickers above, moths flitting toward the glow, chasing the elusive warmth.
“You were sixteen?”
I glance at Chase, rolling my lips between my teeth.
“When you had the accident,” he clarifies.
“Yeah.” Sighing, I look up at the navy canvas dotted with tiny stars. “I was sixteen.”
“That’s how old my sister was when she died.”
My heart clenches, muscles locking. I peer over at him again, studying his profile, the tight lines of his jaw and the tick in his cheek. “I’m so sorry.”
“She drowned.” He bows his head, hands dangling between his thighs.
“She was a swimmer. As professional as you can get at sixteen. It was a big day—scouts were going to be there, college coaches watching. She was practicing before everyone arrived. And then, while I was talking to my parents…” His jaw flexes.
“She was floating facedown in the pool.”
A sharp, uneasy weight settles in my chest. “Oh my God…that’s…”
“I was right there. Right fucking there. I jumped in, tried to pull her out, but she was already gone.” His voice is raw, scraped clean of anything but grief.
“She was a strong swimmer. The strongest. She trained every day, pushed herself harder than anyone. But she was exhausted. Dehydrated. They said she passed out in the water and…that was it.”
A breeze drifts through the porch, but I barely feel it.
Chase stares past me, lost in something I can’t see.
“It kills me,” he says after a minute. “It kills me because she didn’t want to go that day.
Said she had a headache, didn’t feel good.
But our parents made her go. I could have intervened, could have said something, could have prevented it…
but I didn’t. And I have to live with that every day. ”
His words strike a chord deep in my chest.
I think of Alex, of the accident, of all the ways I’ve twisted myself into barbed-wire knots trying to make sense of what happened.
What I did. What I didn’t do. What I owe him because of it.
“God, Chase…” A tear trickles from the corner of my eye, carving a pathway down my cheek. “I understand.”
Chase notices the wayward tear but doesn’t call attention to it. Maybe he understands too, that sometimes acknowledging grief out loud only makes it worse. More cumbersome.
He pulls away and leans against the porch beam, tilting his head toward the sky. I follow his gaze, my breath hitching at the sight of the moon, bright and full, hanging low over the trees. It shimmers like it’s been dipped in liquid gold.
“The moon,” I murmur, squinting at the warm, ambrosia globe. “Looks like a floating ball of honey.”
Chase stares at it, a smile flickering as the silence stretches for a handful of seconds. Then he says, “We’re in our honeymoon phase.”
I look at him.
He looks at me.
I blink. Blink again.
And then a burst of laughter escapes. A snort. An unbidden explosion of joy. “Our honeymoon phase,” I echo, barely containing another wave of giggles. “I like that.”
Our smiles linger, scaring away the shadows for a little while. We sit side by side, staring up at the honey moon as the remnants of our losses drift further out of reach, beyond the night sky.
We both shared a piece of ourselves tonight. The most broken piece. The dirtiest piece.
And I guess that should make me feel worse somehow.
Sadder. More burdened.
But all I feel is less alone.