Chapter 27 Chase
Chase
Our fingers link together.
At the contact, a softness comes over me. A weight releasing. She feels like comfort and silent strength, leaving me in a trance-heady state.
My shoulders relax, muscles unlocking.
Annie’s eyes glow like frosted blue moons dipped in pearls. Underwater lights reflect off her wet skin, the beads of chlorine sparkling. Hypnotizing. It’s enough to banish the intrusive thoughts, the memories pulling me into a tailspin.
She glances down at our joined hands. Her eyes linger on the guitar inked along my forearm, then drift to the ring circled around my thumb.
With her free hand, she reaches out—tentative, featherlight—fingertips brushing across the worn sterling silver.
“You always wear this,” she murmurs, tone curious. “Why?”
I give her hand a squeeze. “When we were kids, my sister’s favorite movie was The Brave Little Toaster.”
She frowns, confused by the pivot, as if that answered her question.
I rub my thumb over the ring, letting the memory settle. “The ring belonged to our grandfather until it was passed down to my sister after he died. He got it in a pawnshop right after the war. Had nothing but pocket lint and a half-healed bullet wound in his leg.”
Her gaze blinks up to me, eyes rounding.
“Yeah. The irony.” I falter, smiling softly, gazing at the smooth band.
“Gramps said it cost him a week’s worth of meals, but he bought it anyway.
For our grandmother. She turned him down three times before she agreed, but he wore this ring for a year, as if it already meant something.
Like he was betting on a future that hadn’t said yes yet. ”
Her eyes soften, tracing the ring again. “That’s beautiful.”
“Stella loved that story,” I continue, emotion lodging in my chest and journeying up my throat. “She said it reminded her of that movie and that Gramps was like the toaster—scratched up, stubborn, always burning breakfast, but brave where it counted. Loyal till the end.”
I swallow down the raw lump, watching Annie’s eyes glaze with awareness, with empathy.
“She gave me the ring on my seventeenth birthday, telling me I’d inherited the stubborn, break-yourself-for-love gene. And if I was going to keep throwing myself into things heart-first, I should have something to hold on to when life got too heavy. A reminder to breathe.”
My eyes shutter for a beat.
Then I untwine our fingers long enough to slide the ring off.
Etched into the underside, glinting under the muted starlight: Brave Little Toaster.
“I had it engraved after she died. I’ve worn it every day since.”
Lips parting, Annie zeros in on the band, entranced, moved, caught in the web of pain-laced memory just like me. She watches as I return the ring to my thumb, then blinks up to my face.
We stare at each other, time softening its wheels.
A feeling flourishes in my chest. I can’t pinpoint it, can’t name it. But it’s there, growing with every sluggish second.
With no warning, I tug her to me.
My arms wrap around her waist until she’s flush against my chest and I can feel the erratic beats of her heart. Water sloshes around us. A gasp leaves her.
But she doesn’t pull away.
Everything goes still. The sound of my bandmates laughing inside the house is muffled as the water rides the edge of the pool, and all that exists is the space between us. This delicate, dangerous stretch where everything feels too much and not enough at the same time.
I tighten my arms around her waist, holding her in a vise as her warmth quiets my demons’ roars. Pressure blooms behind my eyes, a tension headache creeping to the surface.
“Chase,” she whispers, her face pressed to the planes of my chest as a tonic of chlorine, summertime, and watermelon tickles my nose. “You’re allowed to let this moment be new. It’s just me. It’s just us.”
Just her. Just us.
The thunder settles, not gone, but not as loud.
My mouth hovers near her ear, breath warm and ragged. “I’m sorry.”
“No.” She shakes her head. “You’re not. You shouldn’t be.”
My fingers tangle in her waterlogged hair.
What I shouldn’t be doing is touching her like this.
Like she’s mine. Like she’s here to stay.
My eyelids flutter, smoldering embers racing through my blood. I scrunch my hands behind her back as her lips paint whispers on my skin.
“Do you feel better?” she asks on a tremoring breath.
A beat, a smile. “Maybe.”
The weight of her forehead burns a hole through my chest, and I glance down, drinking in the minimal gap between us. Every inch of us touches. Water swirls, and my legs shake.
“Sounds like a yes,” she says.
My grip strengthens, fingers catching on her threads of hair as I skim them down the length of her back. “I should let go of you.”
The words are low, rough, no intention behind them, and the air simmers, bubbling like seafoam.
It’s a lie wrapped in a truth we’re both avoiding.
She nods against me. “Yes.”
But she sinks deeper. Clutches me harder.
With a mind of its own, my hand glides up the center of her back then down again. Up, down, up, down. Calloused fingertips tease the edge of her tank, dipping underneath the fabric.
The moment has a mind of its own too.
A power. A pull. A pulse.
She shivers, and a little squeak breaks free. Needy, breathless.
Damning.
The air shifts, thrumming with electricity.
I coast my palm along her bare back, dragging it up her spine, until I clamp the nape of her neck beneath the top, inhaling so deep I wonder if she feels it in her lungs.
The tank rides up her stomach, revealing a sliver of wet skin, and my other hand drifts down her body, splaying over her abdomen.
A broken groan escapes me as I nuzzle my jaw against her cheek, rough stubble over satin.
I’m sinking, drowning, teetering on the edge of absolute disaster.
“Chase…” Her body bows, seeking more contact. She’s trembling. Torn in two. Caught between right and wrong, standing still and no turning back.
My heart charges forward, good intentions snakebit by this need to get closer.
I fist a handful of hair and tip her head back until we’re eye to eye, lips impossibly close. “Annie—”
A cell phone starts ringing.
The theme song to Stranger Things.
I’m ripped from the fog as I glance across the pool and catch her boyfriend’s name lighting up the face.
A breath.
A clogged, cursed beat.
And then she unravels herself from my arms, as if struck by a fifty-ton weight. Smacked with guilt. Dismantled, toes to top.
Shit.
I stumble back, chest heaving, the water turning viscous around my limbs.
I don’t look at her. I can’t. I refuse.
The ringtone stops, but the silence it leaves behind is deafening. I see the phone still glowing along the side of the pool, Alex’s name lingering like a slap.
My throat chafes. I want to say something, but the words tangle on my tongue and choke me instead.
I’m sorry. So sorry.
I think a part of her hates him.
I think a bigger part of her hates me more.
But mostly…I think the biggest part of her hates herself.
Not a moment later, she bolts from the pool.