Chapter Fifty-Five #2
“Chase…” I can’t look at him when I speak. “That same day, after you dropped Jade off, she dragged this outside with us before we started getting ready for the night. I had no idea what she was doing, she’d never touched the keys here before.”
Chase sounds reluctant to ask, “Did she add anything to it?”
When I turn to look at him, I notice the way his dark eyes seem to be almost begging for something. Something his sister, and my best friend, may have left behind.
Tears well in my eyes. I nod.
He drops his chin to his chest, and I listen to him sniff and I know this is breaking him.
He jerks his chin to the keys. “You remember it, Laik?”
I reach for his hand, and he takes mine, cupping it so tightly. He brings it to his mouth, and something wet touches my skin when he drags it back over his cheeks.
“Yes,” I whisper.
“Show me.” His voice is broken, and I feel myself whimper through a crackled cry when he pushes a kiss to the top of my hand and lays it over the dusty keys. “Please, show me.”
My body is racked with cries, quivering violently, though I suck back a breath, find the strength.
Chase stands and steps away, takes a seat on the coffee table. His elbows to his knees, his hands fisted at his mouth, his eyes bloodshot and bleeding when he nods.
I turn away, and even though my hands are riddled in cuts, I play the pieces of herself that Jade had left behind, and when I’m done, I let the final note ring out and turn to Chase.
Tears roll down my face. I push off the seat and step into his arms. He reaches for the back of my thighs, drags me between his legs and settles me over him until I’m straddling his lap.
He’s not crying outwardly, but he buries his head into my thumping chest, and I hold him, breathing over the top of his head.
“She left this for you, Chase.” I reach for his face, cup his now wet cheeks, bringing his deep brown eyes to mine. “What are you going to do with it?” I ask, lips quivering.
Chase bites into his bottom lip, reaches for the lock of hair laying over my eyes. He curls it behind my ear, lets his thumb trace down my throat, right where my vocal cords sit.
“I’m going to make sure everyone hears it,” he whispers.
And I press my lips to his mouth, more tears rolling down my cheeks. I sob quietly, “I think that’s exactly what she would want.”
But something silent and invisible presses down, tugging between us. A dark cloud.
Chase doesn’t kiss me back, and I furrow my brow, watch him take my hands from his cheeks.
“But there’s something I need you to hear first.” Chase’s voice sounds soft and reassuring.
I shiver, violently. “Wh-what?”
Chase closes his eyes, inhales, and on his exhale slowly peels them open. And the way he trembles now, terrifies me.
My eyes oscillate frantically between his, my spine turning hot, sweaty.
His hands are still at my wrists. He wets his lips, starts to speak.
“Leaving you, disappearing on you, the way I did, hurt me just as much as it hurt you.” He pauses, to flip my wrists over, to press his thumbs to my pulse.
“But, what I did, I did to protect you. From me. From what I’ve become.
I need you to believe me, to believe that, okay?
” He’s tapping his fingers to the beat of us.
A tear drips from my eye, down my cheek, off the ledge of my chin. I don’t move to palm it away, but he does. He reaches upward, catching it on his thumb.
“I’m so fucking sorry for the hurt that brought you, Laik.
So. Fucking. Sorry.” Chase sucks down a sharp breath, wets his lips, and does it again.
And I hold on my own when he slides his fingers into the side of my hair.
“But I can’t promise I won’t fuck up again.
I’m a fucking mess. I’m not who I used to be.
” He chokes on his words, tumbles over them.
“But I will chase you, Laik. When I fuck up again, I’ll fucking chase you.
And I will do everything I can to earn your trust back. ”
I’m trembling in his hands. I bite the inside of my bottom lip. I try to find words, try to make sense of what I want to say before saying it, but something unbridled and vulnerable is already tumbling off my tongue, “I’m so…so fucking…scared. You…you…scare me, Chase.”
Chase bows his head, rolls his shoulders, then twitches his neck, and I bring both of my hands up to bracket his cheeks.
I wait for his eyes to reach mine. And when they do, when they hold on mine, I tell him, “But I promise to work on trusting you again. To stop throwing the past three years in your face. Because I meant what I said.”
I’ve. Always. Fucking. Loved. You.
Chase looks at me, and I look at him, and something quiet and warm presses between us. What I just said meant something to him, and the look on his face tells me he wasn’t expecting it, that he doesn’t believe he deserves it.
A knock behind us has us both turning toward the metal door.
“Chase, you here!?”
Harlen.
Chase buries his head against my shoulder, drags his eyes over the fabric, letting go of his breath.
I slide off his lap and on trembling legs make for the kitchen.
There’s shattered glass everywhere still, and I make sure to tiptoe around the larger chunks before reaching into the cupboard to grab for a glass.
“Laik,” Chase calls.
I look over my shoulder, and when our eyes lock, he whispers, “We might never be okay again, but at least we have each other, right?”
I smile sadly, nod, then turn back to the cupboard. He is right, at least we have each other…finally.
I’m at the sink flicking on the faucet when Chase opens the door and I hear three voices, not just the two I’d expected.
Looking over my shoulder, I see both Rusty and Harlen join Chase in the living room.
Harlen’s hands are raking through his golden curls, his chest rising and falling like he’s just ran a marathon.
And I hadn’t known I was holding my breath until he turned and punched a clean hole into the wall beside him.
I flinch, the glass in my hand slipping, cutting another gash in my palm. I bite into my bottom lip to stop it from trembling. Spinning around, I take a step toward them noticing how Harlen’s gaze looks stripped raw, emotion naked in his deep blue eyes.
He jerks his chin at the two of us and asks, “Our pact, you guys remember it?”
Chase flicks his gaze over his shoulder, his hollow eyes catching mine, and I know he remembers it.
We’d never be able to forget the look on Jade’s face when she pitched it.
The excitement that glimmered in her blue eyes was unmatched, the longing she had for the buzz of the city that was passionate and manic and so alive.
A promise that we’d get out of Devil’s Peak and move to the city that never sleeps.
New York.
Three years.
The timing was right.
But there was something else to this, something much darker.
Something out of our control.
My bottom lip trembles, my heart shaking in my chest. “I’m not safe here anymore, am I?” I ask on a croak, shifting my eyes to Harlen, then to Rusty and back again. “Wha—”
Harlen is quick to cut me off, “Tomorrow, we’re leaving tomorrow.”
Rusty adds, “Everything is in place. You don’t have to worry about anything, okay?”
Chase brushes the hair back off his forehead, and exhales a sharp breath. The silence in the room is deafening when he asks, “Are you going to tell us what the fuck is going on?”
No one says anything, and the quiet elongates. So, I speak up. Even though I don’t know for sure, I know it in my bones, in the bruised clouds of urgency looming over us, in the very way my stomach knots over itself, that he has struck again.
“Him?” My question freezes everyone in the room.
A tear trembles down my cheek. I feel dizzy, the room is too small, too hot, too claustrophobic. I can hardly breathe.
I squeeze my eyes closed when my knees become weak, then I whisper, “Our time is coming, Laiken.”
The room is eerily quiet when his promise echoes off my tongue.
“Wh-what are you talking about, Laik?” Chase stutters.
I touch my fingers to the scar on my arm, feel the way my spine snaps at the violent memory.
I sound like I’ve swallowed gravel when I tell Chase the secret I’ve been keeping from him, “That’s what he said to me, the promise he made to me; before I ran.”
Chase is silent, he doesn’t say anything, but he watches both Harlen and Rusty carefully, because he is smart, and he knows that they know. It is the only logical reason why their reaction, demands, booked flights and arrangements made sense.
Rusty’s once bright blue eyes are so murky I can’t see past them.
Harlen sends his fist into the wall again, and I flinch harder this time, my heart pounding out of my chest.
I expect Chase to fly off but instead he reaches for my waist, and drags me into him. He holds me so tightly that the shiver I’m suppressing gives way beneath his hands.
If Harlen notices our closeness, the shift between Chase and me, he doesn’t say. Instead, the same murky blue eyes that match his father’s flick back and forth between ours, settling on mine when he says, “He left a note for you.”
Time stands still.
Silence hangs.
Then, he finishes, “Along with another body…on your Nan’s doorstep.”
To be continued…