Chapter Fifty-Five
I’m aching all over.
They say you get what you ask for, and there was no denying that I’d asked for this.
Hot water rushes around me, I recline my head, push my hair from my face, taking a deep breath.
Chase and I had always been at each other's throats. If I had told him I was a virgin, he would have seen me as fragile, something tenuous, breakable, he would have forced himself to be gentle with me.
I had a problem with that, because you see, three years ago, Chase hadn’t been kind or gentle or caring when he shoved the knife in. And yesterday, I needed him to twist it; to carve the agony he pierced inside of me out. I needed Chase Keller to leave me in pieces, the way only he knew how.
My muscles are on fire, and I’m bruised down there, tender and swollen, and something deep inside of me relished that the pain was inflicted by the only boy I’ve ever felt equal parts love and hatred for.
And I wonder for a moment what Jade would think if she saw us now.
It had been no secret between me and my best friend how I felt about her brother. There were times I thought perhaps she had hoped that one day he would feel the same way, too. Only back then, Chase had kept his distance.
I reach for the lavender body wash, foam it in the palm of my hands, and take the suds to my trembling limbs when teeth nip my shoulder, followed by the soft press of his tantalizing lips.
Chase’s hands slide from my hips, and across my obliques. Goosebumps shiver over my skin, pebbling beneath his mouth. He spins me around, pins me against the wall, his large, veiny and strong hand on my jaw.
I reach for my next breath; let it fall heavy from my chest.
His deep eyes lift to mine beneath wet lashes, water dripping from the bridge of his nose and on to my mouth. A flicker of emotion darts through his eyes. It strikes me like a blow.
There’s an unarticulated disquiet lying in a whisper between us, and I needed to know what it was.
I press my fingers against the water-slickened tiles, tilt my chin upward, unblinking. “Say it.” I tremble, breathless.
A small vein swells at Chase’s temple. His jaw is stiff. “You’re going to regret loving me.”
I bite into my bottom lip and when a tendril of hair slips into my mouth, Chase reaches for it, smooths it away.
Something cold and something so overtly warm leaches through my chest. I lean into him, press my lips against the sharp bone of his jaw when I speak, “I already do.” My voice croaks and it has him placing his forehead against mine, sucking back a shuddering breath.
If I didn’t know Chase the way I did, I would have missed it, but I catch the way something similar to fear flicks in the golden flecks of his eyes, a current of truth.
He squeezes his eyes shut, opens them again, diverts them away. His stubbled cheeks flush a very subtle shade of pink, and I reach for them, bringing his gaze back on me.
“Talk to me.”
Chase’s hands are so cold when he wraps them around my wrists, pressing his forehead into mine harder.
He moistens his lips, his tongue unintentionally catching my mouth. He isn’t looking at me when he says, “When I told you that I wasn’t a good person, that I would kill…” He swallows his words. “I meant it. I’m gonna lose you.”
My heart slams in my chest, and he feels it, because his does too.
I tilt my chin, press my lips to his jaw softly. “What’s your name?” I ask, dragging my teeth across the chiseled bone.
Chase furrows his brow, confusion evident in the warped line.
My mouth rests on his. “Just humor me, okay?”
He tugs at my bottom lip with his teeth, his hands sliding to my hips. “You know my name; you were screaming it yesterday when—”
I smack his chest, and he bites a grin from his lips.
“Say. It.” My words are a whisper over his mouth.
He flicks his nose to mine. “Chase.”
I begin nodding, then I lick my lips. “Do exactly that…when I run…” I swallow, aware of the tremble in my tone. “Chase. Me.”
Chase reaches for my cheeks, and I let my fists rest on his chest. He threads his fingers deep into the soaking wet hair at the side of my head, sucking on his front teeth.
My eyes sting with tears, and I watch Chase’s throat dip, deep-rooted emotion mushrooming between us.
He nods, then lifts me into his arms, pressing himself between my legs, and even though I’m so sore, even though I’m unsure I can take any more, I open for him, knowing there will only ever be one boy that can blur my lines between pleasure and pain.
“I’ll chase you, Laiken,” he promises himself, pushing into me so slowly I shiver.
He’d hurt me so badly, so why does he feel so good?
His mouth is against mine, then he trails his lips down to my neck, a guttural moan leaving my throat when he buries himself inside me completely.
Another shiver racks my body, I spear my nails into his back, holding onto him as tightly as I can.
“I’ll. Chase. You,” he groans.
We were beneath each other's skin now, and the only way we’d be able to run from the other was if we tore our own flesh from our bones, and left them in blood-stained ribbons behind us.
The blast of my hairdryer whirls in my ears.
I flip my head over and hit it from beneath, and when the strands at the base of my neck are dry to touch, I flick it back and thumb the switch, returning the heated metal to the open drawer beside me.
My fingers are hot and pulsing, bright red from stroking them through my hair. I fluff the strands into a middle part, leaving the front pieces loose, clipping the rest back.
The bathroom is warm and stuffy and claustrophobic.
I’m clasping at the window, propping it open when I hear the ping of a single piano key.
I almost freeze in place, holding out for the reverb, the ghost of an echo that doesn’t follow.
The sound was clipped, like the note was never meant to be played, let alone heard.
I let my hand slip from the edge of the window, rubbing the dust that catches at the tips of my fingers over my bright pink New York T-shirt when the key is hit again, this time with sustain.
I listen to it dissolve as I slip out of the bathroom, pausing to rest my shoulders against the wall.
Chase is sitting at the keyboard across the small room, his head between his shoulders, his long brown hair a blanket, a shield, around his face.
I don’t have to move through the room to see that his hands are trembling when he spears them through the top of his head, and I don’t want to creep up on him and startle him, so, I choose to shuffle into the kitchen, snatching up the kettle and when I hold it beneath the faucet, pulling the top away with a pop, Chase swings his gaze over his shoulder, quickly finding mine.
His eyes drag down to my shirt, his irises downcast, shadowed. He swallows before he speaks, and the way his throat muscles tighten tell me it’s pure agony.
“She used to have one just like that.” He pauses to swallow again.
I lick my lips, feeling how dry they are, setting the kettle down beside me and taking a step away from the bench, away from the kitchen, toward him.
I cross my arms to my chest. I nod.
“I know. We got them together,” I whisper softly.
He turns back to the keys, and I swallow past the brick in my throat, not knowing what to say, hoping Chase will lead the way.
“The day Jade was…” he chokes, and it breaks my goddamn heart, and when he chooses not to finish, it snaps it clean in half.
“I was working on this five-chord riff, and I couldn’t work out what the fuck was missing.
” Chase laughs, his chin to his chest. I press toward him, take a seat on the coffee table, placing my hands between my legs, clutching at the edge.
“Jade had a way of hearing music for what it was and what it strived to be.” He turns to look at me, gnaws on his bottom lip.
“One note, that was all it needed, and she didn’t even blink when she found it.
” He sucks back a breath. “You know what she told me after that?” He wasn’t looking for me to answer him, so I kept quiet, I listened, the way he needed me to.
“She told me to feel it in here…” He presses his fist against his heart.
“Because if I didn’t, I would never find what I was looking for. ”
I feel myself holding my breath, it pinches at my lungs, because what she did here, that same night, now made sense to me. In all the years I had known Jade she had never touched our keyboard, but on that same day, she had. And now, I knew why, what she had been working on, and who it was for.
My fists are around the edge of the table, my voice a croak. “Can I hear it?”
I can’t see Chase’s face, but the way the muscles in his back strain, cording beneath his black T-shirt, tells me that there is more to this.
A shiver racks my body, and my heart shakes in my chest. “You haven’t played since that day, have you?” I whisper.
He nods, then exhales a sharp breath. “I don’t know if I can.”
I push from the table, take one step until I’m sliding onto the fake leather seat beside him. Our feet touch when I reach for the sustain pedal, and I can feel Chase’s curious eyes watching me at his side.
“Was it this?” I ask, pressing down on the sustain and playing out the riff I’d heard Jade drill more than a hundred times that same day.
He draws breath.
“Ye-yeah, how do you…what the fuck, Laik, you play?” Chase can barely hold on to his surprise, and he can barely string his words together, too.
Shaking my head, I drag my sweaty palms over my thighs, sucking back air.
“No.” I leave it at that, because I don’t, my mother loved the piano before she lost herself to the drugs.
She had taught me little pieces here and there, tried to get me into it before my father died, but after his death, she lost everything—her music, her will to teach me, her entire vibrant soul.
Devil’s Peak took that from her, and the town took her from me.