Chapter 27
JULES
Istood there as the sound of the door clicking shut echoed in my ears.
Tears streamed down my face, but I didn’t move.
It felt like the end of something, even though I wasn’t even sure what we’d started.
For one stupid, fleeting minute, I’d let myself believe this could work.
I’d let my guard down, cracked open the walls I’d spent years building, and dared to hope.
I should’ve known better.
But, God, I wanted this. I wanted him. So badly.
For so long, I felt like a ghost in my own life.
I moved through the days, surviving but not really living.
Most emotions barely touched me, like I was watching them happen to someone else.
But with Chris, everything was sharp and bright.
When I was with him, I wasn’t numb. I was awake and present.
My body, my mind, and my heart had woken up for him.
And now he was gone.
My brain could barely process that we were supposed to meet. That one moment—one terrible, defining moment—had thrown my whole life onto a different path. It wasn’t John Grauber’s hands on me that haunted me anymore. No. It was the moment I could pinpoint as the one that made me lose him. Chris.
What if we had met back then? Would we have had the life we’d dreamed about all these years?
Maybe. Maybe not. I was a mess in my twenties.
More than likely, we would’ve crashed and burned, like now, only sooner.
But what if he was right? What if we somehow could’ve made it work?
Would we still be together? Would the kids be—
No. I couldn’t let myself go there.
The world around me tilted, my vision blurring as the tears kept coming. My breathing hitched, my chest tightening as dizziness slammed into me.
Oh no. Not now.
The walls bent and twisted, the kitchen shifting, and the edges of reality slipping through my fingers. I could feel myself falling into the pull of the other world. The vivid colors, the strange warmth of memories that didn’t belong to this life.
I couldn’t stop it.