Chapter Eleven #2
"I am," I agreed. "But this isn't your problem, Chase.
William Davis was a lot of people's problem.
He left a wake of destruction and death behind him.
He was responsible for James and Anna's murders.
He killed Olivia and Hugh himself. He terrorized Annalise, and she's lucky he didn't take her with him when he died.
Leave him to the dead. He has nothing to do with you.
You look like Anna. You remind me of her. "
"I do? How? I know I look like her but—"
"No, not the way you look. I mean, yes, obviously the way you look. Your hair, your eyes, you and Vance and Annalise all look so much like her. But that's not what I mean. I mean the way you show up here with your laptop and work for hours without taking your eyes off the screen.
“I see her in your ambition. Your drive. Your focus. That's Anna. That part of you comes from her. Between the three of you, you're the only one who lived his ambitions from the start. The rest of them all got sidetracked by the past.
"They've made successes of themselves—well, Lise is working on it—but Vance and Gage disappeared. Vance into drinking, Gage into the Army. It took them years to find their way back to themselves. But you—you sound like you hit the ground running in high school and never looked back."
Chase's cheeks flushed a very appealing pink and he let out an embarrassed laugh. "I guess I did," he said. "I've never had a problem going after what I wanted."
There was a flash of intent in his eyes when he said he didn't have a problem going after what he wanted. I ignored it.
"There's nothing in you from him. You don't need to read those letters to prove that. And trust me, if what he wrote to Anna is anywhere close to as creepy as what he did to Lise, you don't want that in your head. You don't need it."
When I mentioned what William Davis had done to Lise, Chase squeezed his eyes shut.
"You were around when it started," he prompted.
"I was. And at first, we thought it was a game.
We thought it was one of the boys in school who had a crush on Annalise Winters and was too shy to say anything.
I'll never forget when we realized it was more than that.
He left her a note. I don't know how to explain it.
It wasn't so much what he said. I can't remember word for word, but it was basically that he loved her and someday they'd be together, but the tone of it was off. Creepy.
"We knew this was no teenager. We hadn't told anyone until then.
It was a fun little secret. And then it was scary.
It was a cat and mouse game to him, I think.
It still seems like yesterday when she left.
She was so in love with Riley and so heartbroken, knowing she was the reason he'd almost died. "
"It wasn't her fault," Chase said. "She wasn't responsible for that."
"She wasn't," I agreed. "But she felt like she was. They were both dumbasses. If he'd told her he wasn't really a college student—"
I shook my head in disgust. "True love and the two of them fucked it up for over a decade. But Davis had her head screwed on backwards after so many years of messing with her.
"She wasn't thinking straight. I don't think she got it together until she came home. Until she had to deal with Riley again." I studied Chase's face, the set of his chin, and the roil of emotion in his blue eyes.
My voice gentle, I said, "I haven't known you that long. Only a few weeks. And maybe you're a really good liar. But I don't see that in you. I never thought Davis was her stalker, but he always creeped me out. The stiff, old guy who was always telling us what to do.
"He was a square peg in a round hole, you know? I always put it up to being ridiculously rich and out of touch with the rest of the world. Instead, it was that he was a sociopath."
Chase laughed, the pain wiped from his eyes by amusement and the line of tension in my shoulders relaxed. He looked down at the box again.
"I don't know what to do with this," he confessed. "I feel like I can't throw it away, but I don't want it. I don't want anything to do with him or his letters."
"Leave it here," I offered, without even thinking about it.
"What?"
"Leave it here," I said, knowing it was the right thing.
"Stick it on one of the shelves in what used to be my living room.
Hide it behind a bag of flour or sugar. It won't go anywhere.
If you ever decide you want it back, I'll give it to you.
It shouldn't be at Winters House, and you don't want it in your new place when you finally move in.
Just leave it here. Leave the past in the past."
Chase stood picking up the box and looked down at me. "You're a good friend, Annabelle Woods."
I stood, smiling up at him. "I know." I took the box from his hands and carried it to the storage room, shoving it in a corner behind a giant bag of sugar. "Brownie to go?" I asked.
Chocolate couldn't fix everything, but it didn't hurt.
"Always," Chase said.
I felt his eyes on my ass as we went down the stairs and tried to ignore the little flutter in my belly I got when I knew he was looking at me, not as a friend looked at another friend, but as a man looks at a woman he wants.
I was doing so well on my dating ban. I was finally getting my life back on track. I did not need to turn it upside down by falling into bed with my new friend.
I needed to keep doing what I was already doing.
Working my ass off and saving money.
Not dating.
Even if a part of me really wanted to. But only if it was with Chase.