Chapter 14 #2
As soon as he leaves, I step into my old, dark, scary room.
The sight of my bed and those grim walls brings it all back—memories piercing my soul like a blade left in the fire until it burns, to hurt even more.
A chill runs down my spine as my fingertips brush the damp, moldy wall.
My lips tremble. I can’t hold back the hot tears spilling down my cold skin.
In that moment, nine years of pain and grief devour me, tearing my heart out as it barely keeps beating through the anguish.
I take another step inside.
The dirt—built up over the years on the cold concrete, layer on layer, the way pain built up in my heart—grits against my bare feet.
I never thought I’d come back here. Here, where the walls muffled my screams, where the concrete drank my blood.
Where my innocence and purity were taken from me by force.
By him. The one who lashed my back with his belt, cutting burning, bleeding lines into my skin. The one who tore out my teeth.
The memories make me shiver. A phantom ache flares in my jaw.
I glance over my shoulder and take in Chase’s chiseled features, my gaze gone cold.
His face is gorgeous and monstrous at the same time.
Raw. I can’t even be angry with him for the horror of the past, because he never had to peel off a pretty mask to show me who he was.
From the first second, he never pretended to be one of those guys who asks your parents for permission to take you out, then walks you home.
I never doubted he was complicated—like an equation only a few people can solve, and even then, only with effort.
My stomach clenches as disgust and anger churn together inside me. Fire spirals through my veins, filling my chest. Chase meets my hard stare, defiant.
My eyes sweep over the drawings plastered on the walls like posters, adding another layer of horror to what happened here.
Every sketch is a perverted, distorted version of me.
They’re lifelike, but they have no life.
Chase didn’t use color. But even if he had, he couldn’t have given my eyes the riot of colors that makes them alive.
“Go away, Chase. I want to be alone.”
It’s been a long time since I last wanted to be alone, but now I need solitude. To think about my life. To see things clearly. To pray for my family and beg their forgiveness—especially my sister’s, whose murder I played a role in.
Chase doesn’t leave me alone in this nightmare. He steps closer and threads his fingers into my hair. He pulls me against him and takes a deep breath, inhaling my scent. He was never a man of words. He loves in silence, healing with his touch, caressing me with his eyes.
I wrap my arms around his waist and cry everything out against his shoulder.
“Why? Why me? You never answered that. I want to know. I want to understand. I’ve been thinking a lot about what Nikky said—I keep replaying the exact words she threw in my face.
I’ve been searching for an answer for a long time, but I haven’t found one.
Maybe you can tell me why it’s me everyone wants.
This sounds a little arrogant, but it’s true.
“Maybe people love what they can’t have. They become obsessed with it. They’ll chase it until they get it—or give up before they do, because they get tired. It isn’t just in your case. The same thing can happen with dreams, desires, or even simple everyday things like cars.”
He wipes away a fat tear with his thumb and tucks my hair behind my ear.
“Logical, yet inconceivable.”
“Look deep inside yourself, Grace. Go back in time and picture us there—can you imagine our first date? What would we do? Where would we go?”
I get lost in the endless whirlpool of his flat, dark eyes.
Finally, I can get an answer about what’s happened over the past few years.
But if I want answers, I must search my soul.
I drink in every one of his words, every pause, because I can feel him opening up.
He wants the bright riot of colors to return to my eyes, to replace the rotten black butterflies in my stomach with living ones.
He wants the nightmare to end—for good. Chase…
wants to give me back my life—the life he took from me nine years ago.
I close my eyes and try to imagine our first date, but nothing comes. Going to the movies, getting ice cream, taking an afternoon walk—none of it works. He’s simply not that guy.
I can picture both of us in those places, but not together.
I stay at that point in time. What comes to mind is this: if I hadn’t gone on that date with Billy, I would’ve been trying to get Chase’s attention.
I’d have wanted him to see me. To see “little Grace,” moving through the world like a shadow.
To pick me out of the crowd. To show me that even a decent, ordinary girl could be worth something.
In my mind, I step out of the school and see Chase standing by that tree, watching me, waiting.
Waiting for me to walk into the park. To climb into his van and touch his soul. To kiss—while he does nothing indecent.
Oh my God.
I was such an idiot. If I hadn’t been chasing a future I didn’t really want deep down, things wouldn’t have happened this way.
But I wanted to resist the spell Chase had put me under—even though I’d been caught in that whirlpool from the moment I first saw him.
I can see that now. Back then, I made the right decision when I followed my parents’ advice.
They wanted to protect me. They only wanted what was best for me.
That’s why I’d do the same thing if I could go back.
I would give that white van a wide berth.
It wasn’t my fault. It’s not my fault!
My eyes fly open. Chase is watching me, impatient.
“Where did you see us?”
“Everywhere… and nowhere. We wouldn’t have gone on a single date.”
He gives a measured nod.
“I was good, Chase. And you corrupted me on purpose. You broke me. But you only did it to change the way I see the world—to make me able to accept you.”
“You did accept me, Grace. You just kept fighting me, the way you’re fighting me now. You wanted to follow in your parents’ footsteps. I saw the writing on the bench.”
“Every normal kid with parents as good as mine would want to follow in their footsteps.”
He strokes my face.
“I know you blame me—and yourself—for everything. We made this huge, chaotic mess… but what if we’re the ones who can clean it up?
Have you thought about it, Grace? I can’t be a good person.
I can’t change the past. And when I think about the times we made love, I wouldn’t change a thing for myself—I’d only change things for your sake.
To make the sadness in your eyes disappear.
Maybe I can’t erase it completely, but I might be able to ease the pain.
Your parents didn’t die because of you. The investigation found the car’s brakes were faulty.
They were racing toward you when it happened, but the accident would’ve happened eventually anyway.
I’m sorry that cop didn’t tell you. He wanted a piece of you—like the other ones who took one.
But I never wanted just a piece of you, Grace.
I wanted all of you. Is it really too much to ask for you to accept me like this? ”
“You are not a good person.”
“No. But that doesn’t mean I can’t be good for you.”
I shove him away and collapse into the corner, my back sliding down the wall. The corner that used to be my spot. This is too much.
I go there without thinking, on ingrained instinct. It’s automatic—just like I never shut the door in my mind on him. It was always open, so he could reach me anytime I needed him.
Sand crunches under Chase’s boots. He crouches in front of me and pulls me to his chest. He doesn’t flinch when my tears and spit smear across his gray T-shirt. He strokes my back and kisses my hair.
It’s not the truth that makes me cry—the truth is liberating.
I cry because I’ve always been drawn to someone like Chase.
I’ve always felt more than hate, and I was ashamed of it—ashamed of my feelings, ashamed of what an idiot I was for falling in love with my captor.
But I know I’d fallen for Chase’s bad-boy edge even before he kissed me.
Back when Nikky made me meet him. When our eyes locked for a long moment and my stomach knotted.
When I saw those dark, mysterious eyes beneath the hair falling into his forehead.
I don’t want to be an idiot. I don’t want to be ashamed of loving him despite everything he’s done. And I’m tired of running from myself.
“You should’ve asked me out on a date,” I moan, then get a grip on myself, wiping my eyes and face. “That investigation doesn’t change the fact that they were looking for me when they died. And Jamie and Nikky had to die so young because they got mixed up with your brother.”
“No one forced them to. It was their choice.”
We stand up.
He tucks my hair back and pins me into the corner.
The wall is cold against my back. Goosebumps rise over my skin and my nipples harden.
My breasts grow heavy, and an aching desire curls low in my belly.
His hand slides beneath my T-shirt. He looks deep into my eyes and doesn’t say a word. Because he doesn’t have to.
And I accept my fate.
I am his.