Chapter 55 Annalise
Annalise
I roll up to the gas station with an address in my pocket and a lump in my throat.
The building looks different: fresh paint, new signage, a gleaming red Coke machine out front where the old one used to buzz and leak. The cracked pavement’s been repaved, the flickering overhead lights replaced. It’s almost unrecognizable.
Except for the memory etched in my bones.
This is where Chase bled.
Where the world tilted and time split in two.
Where our story began.
Killing the engine, I sit for a minute, staring at the storefront like it might open its mouth and confess something. My reflection catches in the glass, and I hardly recognize the face staring back at me.
Someone weathered. Someone tired. Someone missing.
I hop out and walk inside, planning to stock up on road trip snacks as I make the fourteen-hour drive to Sevierville, Tennessee.
That’s where he’s living now.
A cabin in the woods. A life of isolation and self-loathing.
I pulled up the property on Google Maps, studying the street view as if it held answers. The road was narrow and crumbled, hemmed in by thick trees that swallow light. No neighbors. No traffic. Just a gravel drive that disappeared behind a slope of overgrown pine and shadow.
A place designed to be left alone. To fade.
And still…I’m going.
Because no matter how far he runs, I refuse to let him hide forever.
The welcome bell chimes, sounding brighter somehow. An older man hangs behind the counter, flipping through a magazine, glancing up with a nod in my direction.
“Filling up?” he asks.
I clear my throat. “Just looking around.”
“Take your time.”
Stocked shelves glimmer with overpriced snacks, packs of gum, and rows of energy drinks promising a jolt of life I can’t remember. The air smells like stale coffee and motor oil, a combination that’s almost soothing in its simplicity.
I peer over at the man as I scour the aisle that’s brimming with colorful candy and chips.
I recognize him.
The man who shot Chase.
He was all over the news. Twice. Once for the attack, and again when the gas station was ransacked by furious fans once they learned about Chase’s history with this place.
I remember the press conference from two years ago.
The store clerk in front of a wall of cameras, choking on his apology. Said he panicked. Said he’d been robbed multiple times in the same month. Said he thought Chase was reaching for something more than a can of dog food in his hoodie pocket.
He wept in front of reporters, talking about his daughter, about how she was in medical school and how he was working double shifts to help with the loans.
Said he couldn’t afford to lose the station. Couldn’t afford to lose everything.
Chase never pressed charges.
And while the D.A. tried to build a case anyway—reckless endangerment, excessive force—with no victim testimony and a city quick to rally behind its own, it didn’t stick.
The man kept his job. Took a leave. Came back quieter and older.
Now he’s behind the counter, wiping his hands on a towel, his soft eyes smiling at me as I grab a bag of trail mix, a bottle of water, and begin to check out.
“Will this be all today?” He rings up my items, reaching for a plastic bag.
“Yes. Thank you.”
A woman strolls in from the back room.
Black hair, warm skin, sleek heels that clickety-clack against the linoleum. She moves like someone who doesn’t belong behind a counter. Just a visitor.
His daughter.
She eyes me briefly, offering a smile, then starts restocking a tray of scratch-offs.
Nodding my thanks, I take my receipt and head toward the exit.
I make it halfway before I pause, something gripping me.
A pull.
A memory.
A need.
I turn back around, heart thudding.
“Do you…” Hesitating, I take a step closer. “Do you recognize me? From the band Honey Moons?”
The man’s eyes narrow slightly.
The woman straightens behind the scratch-off display.
“Honey Moons,” the clerk echoes. “Yes. That’s the one he was in.”
The air shifts. Not hostile but wary.
He doesn’t need to be named.
“I’m not here to cause trouble,” I say quickly. “I just…” I glance around the store, this cleaned-up version of a place that still carries blood in its corners. “I just wanted to stop by since I remember what happened and I—”
“Whole town knew. Then the internet knew. Then they lit us up.” The man adjusts his eyeglasses, gaze unreadable. “You know how many windows were smashed once word got out? How many death threats we got?”
The woman’s arms fold. “It got ugly after everything made the social media rounds. People threw bricks. Spray-painted awful things on the windows. Branded my father a monster.”
“I know,” I say softly. “I’m sorry.”
She exhales, tapping her burgundy nails on the counter. “But he came back, you know. This past spring.”
My pulse kicks up. “Chase?”
Spring.
The same season he disappeared, leaving nothing but a scribbled note, an “I love you” fading from his lips, and a broken heart full of loss in his wake.
“Yes. He handed me a check,” the man says. “Didn’t ask for anything. Just said he wanted to make it right. For the station. For my daughter. For what it cost us.”
“He asked about my medical schooling,” she adds, her voice softening. “Said he hoped I made it all the way through.”
My eyes sting. “He…never told me.”
The woman studies me for a beat, her brown eyes tender. “He didn’t say much. Just that he’d made mistakes. That this was one he could at least try to make right, and that he wished he’d come by sooner.”
I blink fast, throat thick. “That sounds like him.” Then I look at her, absorbing the quiet warmth behind her words. “I’m Annalise.”
She offers her hand across the counter. “Parvati.”
“Thank you. For telling me.”
She gives a small nod.
As I turn to leave, Parvati calls out one more time. “Hey…if you see him, tell him we appreciate the money. It saved us.” She looks down as she unzips a backpack with a hospital badge clipped to the strap. “And let him know I’m still going. Two years into my residency. Neurology.”
Her fingers brush the tag: Resident, Parvati Singh—Rutland Regional Medical Center.
“Yeah,” I murmur, fingers curling around the plastic bag, my chest full. “I will.”
Then I push open the door and step into the frost and sunlight, heart pounding, mind racing, the past pressing closer with every mile I put between me and that station.
I drive.
Toward the cabin.
Toward Chase.
Toward the love song we never finished.
***
It’s smaller than it looked in the pictures: tin roof, log siding, a tiny porch made of wind-beaten wood planks.
A painted brown door and a single square window make up the face, the home devoured by billowing, mature trees.
I choke on my own heart, and it tastes like grief and fear.
Eight months.
Eight months he’s been here, living and hiding.
Away from me. Away from everything.
All because he was scared of what he was becoming.
But I know the truth.
He was becoming my rock, my light, my savior.
My favorite song. The honey moon in my midnight sky.
As I sit in the driver’s seat, clutching the wheel, I stare at the house like I might be able to see through the logs and catch a glimpse of the man who abandoned me.
Anger stabs at my chest. Remorse. Red-hot pokers of buried pain.
I need answers. I need clarity. I need him.
With a deep breath, I switch off the ignition and pocket my key fob. The house seems to move farther away with every step I take. Everything blurs. The trees, the rust-colored logs, my thoughts. I don’t know how he’ll react. I don’t know how I’ll react.
My mind takes me back to August when I sat behind the wheel for the first time in years. My palms were slick. My heart thundered so loud I could barely hear the instructor.
I remember the tunnel of motion, the trembling, the ache in my jaw from clenching it so hard.
I thought I might crash again. Lose control. Fall apart the way I did the first time.
But I didn’t.
I took a breath, gripped tighter, and kept going.
This feels the same.
Like stepping into the wreckage before the impact and trusting that this time, maybe the wheels won’t spin out.
I climb the steps slowly, my pulse badgering at my throat.
One knock. That’s all it takes, until suddenly I’m sixteen again, barreling toward something I don’t know how to stop.
I wait on his front stoop, hands tangled in my fuzzy sweater, makeup half melted from the car’s heat vents. The air is warmer here. Softer. A fifty-degree breeze brushes against my skin like a memory I’m not ready for.
Then I hear it—
The rapid click-click of nails against wood.
Toaster.
Tears blanket my eyes, distorting the door in front of me as I shift my weight from foot to foot, every second stretching like a lifetime.
Breathe, Annalise.
Just breathe.
Footsteps follow.
Heavier. Familiar.
I wait for it.
The twist of a knob, the creak of a door.
And when it happens, I’m not ready. I’m not ready to face him.
My stomach coils with anxiety and fear and hope and love.
So many vivid memories. So much history.
The door cracks open a sliver, and there he is—
Chase.
Blinking into the hazy sunlight. Squinting as he registers me.
Another blink. A beat.
And then recognition settles in, mirrored in his eyes, raw and unguarded.
He pulls the door open wider, standing before me in a white T-shirt and dark-wash jeans—feet bare, dog at his side, wearing a dumbstruck expression.
He looks the same. He looks different.
A dream dressed as devastation.
Chase swallows hard. “Annie.”
My body vibrates as I stand on his stoop, slack-jawed and sunk, unable to look away. We stare at each other for a long time. Saying nothing. Saying everything.
A spectrum of mixed emotions rockets through me.
How dare you.
I miss you.
Why did you leave me?
Can I come in?
You look different.
You look perfect.
I love you.
Chase’s lips part to speak, but nothing comes out. Just a strangled sound, bleeding with all the same things I’m feeling.