Chapter 59 Annalise
Annalise
There’s a question at the forefront of my mind the next morning as I change into a knee-length sunflower dress and comb a brush through my shower-damp hair. It’s been sitting there for a few days, poking, festering, too petty to say aloud.
But as Chase wanders into the bedroom in a pair of sweatpants, his chest bare, I swallow my pride and blurt it out. “How come you sent all the guys a custom guitar?”
What I really meant to ask was, “Why didn’t you send anything to me?”
I watch him stall behind me in the mirror, mid-bend as he reaches for a stray T-shirt.
“What?” he says.
“Tag told me you sent him a guitar. That’s how he found you.” Swallowing, I go back to brushing my hair, distracting myself from the lump in my throat. “He said Rock and Zach got one too. They just never thought to trace the return address.”
Faltering, he scoops up the shirt and flings it over his shoulder, pivoting to face me. “I planned to send you one.”
I blink into the mirror, then set the brush aside. Swiveling around, I lean back against the edge of the dresser. “You did?”
“I, um…” He scratches his head. “I never got to finish it.”
A curious frown bends. “Oh.”
“I was taking my time with it. It was more…involved,” he says softly. “Then my vision went to shit and I couldn’t focus. Couldn’t see anything clearly.”
My eyes water. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to assume—”
“Don’t apologize, Annie. I should have sent it anyway. I never wanted to leave you with nothing.”
An ache spreads across my chest because I know what leave you implies. More than walking away. More than a tepid goodbye.
Something permanent.
I push off the dresser and take a step toward him. “Can I see it?”
Hesitation grips him for a heavy beat. Then he nods. “Yeah. It’s in the shed.”
He tosses the shirt aside and leads me out the back door, past the brittle patch of wild grass and down the uneven stone path toward the shed. Morning sunlight filters through the trees, dappling his shoulders in gold.
My pulse thunders with every step, unsure of what I’m about to see.
When Chase swings open the shed door, I’m hit with the scent of cedar shavings and dust, the kind that clings to forgotten projects.
Everything is neat but worn, tools lining the wall, paint cans stacked like a timeline of lost plans.
He crosses to a workbench, not needing clear vision to know where to go, and kneels near the corner of the shed.
He lifts the sticker-covered case that’s marked with memories from all the places we’ve toured before popping the latches and flipping it open.
Inside sits a guitar unlike anything I’ve ever seen.
The instrument is deep, dusky purple, somewhere between bruised violet and midnight blue. The finish gleams across most of the body, except where the carvings begin. There, the wood is raw. Unsealed. Not quite completed.
And then my breath catches. The world tilts.
Because etched into the body are…lyrics.
My lyrics.
Curving in and out like constellations, each line carved with intention. No pattern, no order. Just raw feeling.
My words. My heart.
“I don’t need light if your voice is the spark.”
“Even the moon envies how you pull the tide in me.”
“I’d become the night if it meant reaching you.”
Tiny silver stars are inlaid around the sound hole. Along the neck, the fret markers shimmer with mother-of-pearl crescents, a different phase at each one. At the twelfth fret, a single full moon gleams like liquid honey.
“I wanted it to feel like you,” he says quietly behind me. “Like your voice after dark. Calm. Haunting. A little magic.”
My fingers hover just above the strings, too stunned to touch. “You built this for me?” I whisper.
He nods, swallowing. “I started building it after you left your notebook on the bus. Thought maybe if I couldn’t find the right words…
yours would be enough.” He shrugs like it’s nothing.
Like it didn’t just undo me completely. “Didn’t get to finish the carvings or the final coat.
There was a lot more I wanted to add. But, yeah. It’s yours. Always was.”
I study it, and this time, I see it for what it is.
A love letter I never expected to receive.
My throat tightens, eyes burning. I stare down at the guitar, overwhelmed.
Then I set it gently back in the case, close the lid, and launch myself at him.
Chase stumbles a step before catching me, wrapping those strong arms around my waist, his chin tucking over my shoulder as he leans back against the workbench for support.
“You didn’t leave me with nothing,” I murmur through the tears. “You never left at all.”
He squeezes me tighter. “Annie…”
“No. You never left. Never.” My breathing kicks up, pulse doubling in speed. “You can’t leave me. You—you can’t…” The tender emotion shifts into something uglier as panic overtakes me. “No, no… Chase, you can’t ever leave—”
“Whoa, hey.” He takes my chin between his thumb and finger and tilts my head up. “It’s okay. Shh, don’t cry…”
Everything hits at once, a comet to my core. I’m shaking, breaking in half, my heart splitting down the middle.
There. Here. Him. Me. The past. The future.
A future I was just getting a glimpse of before he left, now I can’t see it without him.
I don’t want it without him.
Agony rockets through me as I tremble hopelessly in his arms. Everything becomes too real. Too doomed. Too over.
A strangled sob escapes. “Please don’t leave me, Chase. Please stay. Please be okay.”
Absolute devastation glitters in his caramel-colored eyes. Because he can’t calm my fears. He can’t erase my sorrow. He can hardly see me. All he can do is hold me.
But it’s not enough.
I need more.
Crying my heart out, I take his face between my hands and pull his mouth to mine. Our lips crash together, tongues colliding. Safe, warm, alive.
Still here. Still mine.
I moan and weep and beg, taking everything I can before it’s gone.
Tears track down his cheeks, mingling with my own. We’re both wet, soaked with pain and need. My hands grab at anything tangible—his hair, cheeks, neck, shoulders, chest—then sweep down his body until I’m fumbling with his waistband.
He croaks out a sound, clamping a big palm around my wrist. “Annie, wait.”
“No, please, God, I need you,” I sob. “I need this.”
His forehead falls to mine, head angling back and forth as he locks up and pulls back. “Annalise.”
My voice cracks, and I stumble away from him. I shake my head, dragging my hands through my hair until I’m squeezing it by the roots.
Then I bolt from the shed.
“Annie,” he calls out.
I hear him following me, somewhere between my skipping pulse and thudding heart. When I glance back, I see him misjudge the doorway, his shoulder clipping the frame hard enough to make him stagger. He blinks, nearly losing his footing in the grass before he pushes on.
The sight guts me.
Rubble and prickly grass gouge my bare feet, and I slip and slide as I run for the door, part of me hoping the bear jumps out and devours me whole. Swallows all this pain in one gulp.
I tear into the house, hardly breathing, barely standing.
A moment later, Chase reaches for me, pulling me to him, his breath ragged like he’s sprinted through hell. “Please don’t run,” he says, one hand curled around my waist, the other braiding through my hair. “Please. We can’t both run.”
He holds me like he’s terrified I’ll slip through his fingers again.
But it’s he who’s slipping through mine.
“I’m sorry,” I whimper. “I’m sorry. I just thought—”
“You have no idea how much I want you.”
His breath shudders against my hair as I tip my face up to his, grief running wild down my cheeks. “Then let me in. Let me love you,” I plead. “While there’s still time.”
Eyes squeezed shut, he clenches his jaw so tight it looks like it hurts. “I’m scared,” he rasps. “I’m scared of me. Of how I touched you that night. How far gone I was. I was angry, and lost, and I didn’t care about anything as long as I still had you.”
“I wanted it,” I whisper. “Every second of it.”
He looks at me, and I see all of it: the fear, the guilt, the grief that’s been sitting behind every word he’s spoken since I came back. A quiet kind of torment.
I move closer, slow and deliberate. When I lean in, his hands twitch upward, almost like he might catch me, but they falter, dropping back to his thighs.
Still, I press my lips to his. Soft, patient. Begging him to believe me.
He exhales, forehead falling to mine, lips unmoving. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
“You won’t.” My voice cracks, but my hand is steady when I cup his cheek. “That’s the difference, Chase. That’s why you’ll never be him. Because you care too much. Because the thought of hurting me rips you apart.”
His eyes close tight.
“You don’t need me to absolve you,” I finish, my thumbs brushing over his skin. “You need to forgive yourself.”
The dam breaks.
He melts into me like he’s drowning, and I’m the first breath he’s taken in years.
His hands slide into my hair, down my back, anchoring me with a desperation that’s both tender and hungry.
The kiss deepens, tasting of every sleepless night, every unsent message, every regret we’ve been trying to strip away.
His erection strains against cotton pants, growing full and heavy between us.
We stumble backward, collapsing onto the couch without breaking apart. Our limbs tangle as he pulls me into his lap, as if he never wants me anywhere else. His hands roam my thighs, hips, waist, rediscovering places he thought he’d never be allowed to touch again.
I straddle him, and he stills, breath lodging.
Our mouths meet again.
No frenzy. No fury. Just longing, unraveling in reverent touches and shaky breaths. He peels my dress down inch by inch, a gift he’s afraid to open too fast. His hands drift across my skin, relearning every curve, every scar—lyrics he forgot how to sing.
The momentum builds.