Chapter 57 Chase
Chase
Present Day
It takes a moment for my words to settle in. To click into place.
And then I hear the air leave her in a noticeable whoosh.
“Chase,” she rasps, a hand lifting to her mouth. “Chase, no.”
She launches herself at me, taking me in her arms. Two soft hands cradle my face, forcing our eyes to meet.
Her touch. Her scent.
God, how I’ve missed it.
“You can see me,” she says, desperation bleeding through. “I’m here. I’m right here.”
My watery gaze finds hers as my head shakes, breath sawing out in agony-drenched gasps. “Shapes,” I murmur. “Lights. The streaks in your hair.” I drag trembling fingers through her hair. “But not enough.”
She’s close to hyperventilating. She can’t find any air.
“I couldn’t put you through this. I was changing—physically, mentally. I couldn’t do that to you. Love isn’t always about staying. It’s about knowing when to walk, when the cost of staying might be worse than the loss of leaving.”
The pain. The pain is excruciating.
But it’s not my head this time. It’s having her in my arms while not having her at all. She’s still so far away. A beautiful mirage I can’t grasp.
Annie clutches my cheeks tighter. “You don’t get to rewrite love like that. You don’t get to make it noble and erase me from the ending.”
Tears slip from my lashes, catching in the stubble on my jaw. “I didn’t want you to see me like this. Weak. Angry. Falling apart every time another piece of the world goes dark.”
“You think I wanted the version of you that only shows up when things are easy? No way. That’s not how it works. I want you, Chase. Even broken. Even terrified. Even sick.”
I suck in a breath, then untangle myself from her arms. “Please, Annie. Just go. You have to.”
“No.”
“You’re strong. And you still have music—”
“You’re the music!” she shrieks. “You. Only you. All the music died the day you left me. My heart is with you, Chase.”
Devastation rips through me like a fault line finally splitting open.
Surging forward, I grip her cheeks between my hands and press my forehead to hers. “Then your heart is with a dead man.”
The words are jagged and low, spilling through clenched teeth like they’re rotting on my tongue.
Because it’s true.
Because I am.
Because it’s over.
The secrets. The hiding. The harrowing truth.
“What?” She gasps. Her hands fall from my face. “Don’t say that. Don’t you dare say that.”
I just stare at her. Haunted. Hollow.
As honest as I’ve ever been.
“You’re not dying,” she whispers, more to herself than to me. “You’re not dying.”
I stay silent.
Don’t correct her.
And that’s when I feel the shift.
The fear deepening, turning into something raw and paralyzing.
“Chase,” she says again, louder now, stumbling back a step. “Don’t do this. Don’t just stand there and look at me like that. Tell me it’s not true.”
My eyes flutter closed. I exhale like the words are knives in my chest.
“It’s a tumor,” I finally say. “Glioma. Along the optic chiasm.”
And for the first time, I’m grateful I can’t see her clearly.
Because I don’t think I could survive the look in her eyes.
The black storms swirling in crystal-blue seas.
She chokes on a sob.
“It’s low-grade on paper, but aggressive as hell,” I continue.
“The kind that usually shows up in kids, not grown men. And when it does show up in adults—especially along the optic pathway—it hits harder, faster. It’s not always fatal, but this one’s pressing on all the wrong nerves in all the wrong places.
If it spreads deeper, I’m done.” Tears pool in my eyes and spill over, unchecked.
My knees threaten to give out, but I stay standing, if only to prove I still can.
“The vision loss is permanent. I don’t see people anymore, Annie.
Just shapes. Movement. You’re a silhouette in front of a dying sun.
The streaks in your hair are the only thing I recognize.
The rest is…gone. Your beautiful face. Your eyes.
The way you looked at me like I was worth saving, worth loving. It’s torture. It’s worse than death.”
My legs give out.
I collapse in the middle of the room, elbows on my knees and head in my hands.
Annie buckles in front of me, clutching my face. “Listen to me,” she begs, choking on tears. “Listen. Please. There’s still time. You can see a doctor, you can—”
“I have,” I say, sharper. “I sat in a white room with one of the top neurosurgeons in the country. He looked me in the eye and told me to get my affairs in order. That if the vision loss is all I get, I should be grateful.”
She croaks.
Speechless. Wordless. Stewing in disbelief and denial.
“Even though it’s technically low-grade, it’s in the worst possible place. They can’t get near it without cutting through things that control basic functions—speech, memory, movement. One wrong move and I’m not just blind. I’m gone.”
“No…” She shakes her head, squeezing me tighter, trying to evict the trespasser in my head with nothing but love and hope and futile words. “No. That’s not…there are second opinions. Treatments. Trials. We can fly anywhere. I’ll make the calls.”
My forehead drops to hers. “I’m scared,” I admit, just a whisper.
“I can’t play. Can’t build. Can’t drive.
I miss steps. I hate the dark. And sometimes…
sometimes I wonder if it would’ve been easier if I’d never met you.
At least you wouldn’t have to carry around this burden of falling in love with a dying man. ”
She pulls me to her, wraps me up in warmth and begging, until my face falls against her shoulder. “You don’t get to lie down and wait to die, Chase. Not when I’m right here, telling you to fight. Not when there’s still hope.”
“I don’t want that. I can’t carry the weight of someone else’s hope. I’m barely surviving my own reality, and I refuse to let you be tied to a walking death sentence.”
She grabs my face. “You idiot,” she breathes. “You beautiful, broken idiot. I’m not tying myself to a man. I’m loving him.”
The breath stutters out of me, sharp and broken.
I close my eyes.
My forehead slides against her as I cradle the back of her head. “My sister,” I say, chest heavy. “She didn’t just drown.”
Annie pauses, then pulls back. “What do you mean?”
“It’s what we believed,” I say. “What everyone believed, even though she was a strong swimmer. We thought she was just dehydrated. Sick. Tired. That it was a tragic accident.” I pause, swallowing hard.
“But after I left town, my cousin started getting brutal headaches. He got checked out, and they caught it. Same tumor, low-grade, in his optic pathway. His is treatable due to the tumor’s location. He’s still alive.”
Annie doesn’t speak, doesn’t move.
“My parents had Stella’s autopsy reexamined. Brought in someone new. And this time…” My throat tightens. “They found it. A tiny mass. High-grade glioma, buried deep. It was missed the first time, but it was there. And it wasn’t benign. Likely caused a stroke or an aneurysm.”
Her voice is barely audible. “So…she didn’t drown?”
“She did,” I murmur. “Her lungs were full of water. She was still alive when she went under, but she couldn’t swim. Couldn’t scream for help. She probably seized or lost consciousness, and no one saw it happen. So the cause looked obvious. No one thought to look closer.”
Annie sinks back on her heels, wiping at her face as the full weight of it lands. “When did you find out?”
I exhale, the memory bitter in my mouth. “That last night in Vegas. My parents told me after the show.”
I’ve tried to forget everything about that night.
The way I tore into her.
The way I used my sorrow like a weapon.
Looking back, I see it now—the edginess, the way I’d go from managing to miserable without warning. I thought it was just the pain.
But it was the tumor. Pressing in the wrong place, disrupting hormone levels, scrambling signals that were never meant to get crossed. I wasn’t just angry; I was chemically off-balance.
And I tried so hard to hide it from her.
Then I scared myself enough to walk, believing that a volatile, dying man had no place in Annie’s life.
But she’s still holding me. Still hanging on to whatever pieces I have left.
Gently, she reaches for my hand, her fingers threading through mine like a lifeline. “You should’ve told me. Because I wouldn’t have run. I would have stayed. I still want to stay.”
My heart squeezes. “I don’t know how to let you.”
“Start here. Start right now. Because I’m not going anywhere. I will never leave you.” Her voice collapses on the words. “And maybe there’s still hope. We can fight this. You and me. Just tell me what to do.”
For once, I don’t have an answer.
Only this unbearable ache in my chest that says I can’t let her go.
Not now. Not ever.
My voice breaks as I look at her, drinking in her blurry borders, beautiful shape, and purple stripes. “Just…hold me.”
She doesn’t hesitate. Annie pulls me in like she’s been waiting to do it since the day I left.
Arms around my shoulders. Fingers in my hair. Her cheek against mine.
I fold into her. Every jagged edge. Every broken part.
We end up on the bed, curled together in the dark. The room is filled with the sound of her breathing, steady and strong, anchoring me to something real.
Toaster finds us moments later, weaving into our two-person cocoon.
My family.
A life I want more than anything.
Then, as the minutes stretch and the light drains from the room, Annie begins to sing.
Holy doves and marble arches.
Kings and thrones and beauty and moonlight.
Secret chords.
“Hallelujah.”
Her voice trembles through the verses, cracking on the lines that cut too deep. More breath than melody. More prayer than song.
By the time she reaches the chorus, my tears spill freely.
I grieve.
Everything I’ve lost.
Everything I’ll never live to see.
She holds me through it, arms wrapped around me like she’s trying to hold the world together.
She cries too.
And somewhere between the weeping and the war, her voice becomes the only thing that doesn’t hurt.