46. Chase
Chase
Iwait until she’s halfway through her pasta before I say anything.
She hasn’t been her usual happy self tonight. I’m not sure if she’s lost in her music, writing out notes in her head, or if it’s something else entirely. Leaving Ocean Grove. Deciding what she’ll do with the house.
“Beetle’s ready.”
“What?” Summer’s head snaps up from her plate. She beams. “Mom’s car?”
“Yep.”
“Really?”
“Really, really.”
She stares at me for half a second. “When can I see it?”
I lean back in my chair and chew the inside of my cheek to keep the grin off my face.
“She’s parked out front,” I tell her.
Her cutlery hits the plate before I finish the sentence.
“What?”
I lift my brows. “Go see for yourself.”
She reaches across the table and swats my arm. Then, she’s moving. Her chair scrapes back, and her hair flies in a mess behind her. The front door bangs shut before I’ve even set my napkin down.
I drove it over from the shop this evening.
She was on the phone with the real estate agent when I pulled in—something about organizing a property valuation and the current timeline—all the logistics of tying up loose ends.
I didn’t want to interrupt so I parked it in the driveway and waited.
When she finally came to the table and sat across from me with that crease between her brows that she gets when she’s been thinking too hard, I figured having a few bites of pasta first couldn’t hurt.
I follow her outside. She’s standing beside the car in the early-evening light, one hand covering her mouth while the other trails along the freshly touched-up curve of the door.
The old duck-egg blue has been fully restored.
It’s deep and rich and exactly as it would have been all those decades ago.
The chrome finishes catch whatever’s left of the sun, reflecting a stream of light back at us.
When she turns, her eyes are wet. She releases a sound caught somewhere between a laugh and a sob. She pulls the door open and collapses into the driver’s seat. Her palms find the wheel, smoothing over the reupholstered leather wheel, stitched in cream.
I lean against the doorframe and watch her.
She tips her head back against the headrest and closes her eyes for a moment. I wonder what she’s seeing, what she’s thinking.
“It’s beautiful,” she says finally, opening her eyes to find mine. “Really, Chase. You and Simon have done an amazing job. Thank you.”
I shrug. “She just needed some love. It wasn’t much.”
She shakes her head gently. “No, don’t do that. Don’t make this out to be a small thing. This is …” She expels a breath. “Everything.”
I look at the ground for a moment, and she leans across the center console, swinging the passenger door open. “Get in.”
“What?”
“Get in.” She pats the passenger seat. “I want to take her for a drive.”
I round the car and fold myself into the seat, which is considerably more compact that I’m used to. My knees almost hit my chest. Summer glances over at me, a bright laugh bubbling out of her—my favorite sound.
She turns the key, which I left in the ignition, and the engine hums to life.
She pulls out onto the street. I roll down my window as we drive without talking for a while, but it’s a good quiet. With Summer, silence is always comfortable.
The last of the honeyed sunlight cuts long and golden across the road ahead of us. Summer drives with one hand on the wheel and her elbow resting on the door, smiling to herself.
“We always did this,” she says. “Whenever we had time and the sun was setting, she’d buy us ice cream and we’d lick the waffle cones as she drove along the coastline, soaking in the ocean waves and the squawk of seagulls.
She’d turn the radio up as loud as it could go and sing her heart out, whether she knew the words or not.
It became something we did.” She chuckles. “She never knew the words.”
“You sang with her?”
Summer’s eyes cut to mine before returning to the road. “Every time.”
I grin, turning back to the road.
“My mom used to do the same thing,” I say. “Minus the ice cream. We’d be eating whatever came out of the oven that afternoon. But the singing—” I shake my head. “God, she was terrible. I used to tell her to stop.”
Summer giggles. “You didn’t.”
“I did. All the time. I thought it was embarrassing.” I peer out the window. “Now I’d give anything to let her keep going.”
“It’s about the time,” she says gently. “I think that’s all it ever really is. Not what you were doing. Just that she was there with you—she was present. That’s what she’ll hold on to.”
I know she’s right, but knowing and making peace with something are two very different processes. I haven’t quite managed the second one yet.
Summer turns into the lookout above the cove and cuts the engine. For a few minutes, we sit there with the ocean spread out ahead of us while the sky shifts from pink to violet.
She turns to look at me. I pick up on that expression she gets when she’s feeling too much.
“What is it?” I ask.
“Nothing.” She shakes her head. “Just—” She looks out at the water. “I used to think coming back here would destroy me. All I wanted was to sign the papers on the house and get out … But now …” She doesn’t finish.
“Now?” I push carefully, my tone light.
“I like it here.”
“Have you decided what you’ll do with the house?” I ask.
“I think I’m going to keep it.”
My heart gallops in my chest. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
She’s coming back.
“What will you do with it?”
She looks away. “I’m not sure yet. Maybe come back if I want to write—when I want to write. There’s something about it, kind of like a good-luck charm. It lights my creative spark.”
I nod slowly, letting that settle. I try not to read too much into it and fail completely.
She’s keeping the house. She’s coming back. I know it isn’t a promise and I know better than to treat it like one, but the constriction in my upper back releases, the way it does when you prepare for a fall that ends up being a soft landing.
“The label loved the demo’s,” she adds. “Tim, my producer, said they’re the best I’ve written in years.”
“That doesn’t surprise me.” Her gaze flicks to mine and I continue. “You’ve been writing like someone’s lit a fire under your ass.”
A smile splits her face, and it’s like the first ray of sunshine after a long winter. It warms me.
“Whatever’s been happening here, it suits you. The work shows it,” I tell her.
“Being here turned into something I didn’t know I needed.”
I reflect on my conversation with Steele the other day. I want her. For keeps this time.
“I’m glad you came back,” I say simply.
Her eyes hold mine. “Me too.”
Fuck. How do I bring it up? How do I tell her that I want her to stay. That I’d follow her to the ends of the earth as long as it meant calling her mine. Every future I imagine has her in it, and the ones that don’t are just gray.
I’m still working out how when she starts the engine.
When we make it back to hers, I climb out of the Beetle and round the car. I open her door and offer her my hand.
She takes it without looking at me.
The drive back was silent. Every now and then, I’d catch the tension in her throat. See her swallow thickly or tighten her jaw.
Whatever that expression means, I need to fix it.
When Summer steps out, she smooths down her shirt and drops her eyes to the ground.
“Hey.” I dip my head, trying to catch her eye. “Where are you?”
She shakes her head. “Nowhere.”
“Summer.”
She looks up, and whatever she’s been holding in since we left the lookout threatens to spill over the edges.
My pulse kicks into overdrive as my arms fall uselessly to my sides. I can feel the words building in the way she’s fighting for composure.
“I can’t do it,” she whispers.
A weight lands on my chest. “Can’t do what?”
She takes a small step back, wrapping her arms around herself.
Everything inside me turns cold.
“Summer—”
“This.” She gestures between us. “Whatever this is. I can’t—” She stops to suck in a breath.
“I leave in a week, Chase. And then what? We text? We FaceTime? We spend months missing each other across three thousand miles and pretend that’s enough—that’s what we both want?
” She licks her bottom lip. “I can’t do long distance. I can’t do it to you.”
“Baby—”
“I’ve thought about it every day, and I can’t.”
Every day? After everything we’ve been through, this is what she’s thought about every day?
Not the smiles or laughter. Not the way she curls into me at night like she was made to fit there.
Not the morning with coffee turning cold on the counter because we forgot about it, or the piano at midnight or the beach at sunset or her fingers threaded through mine on the way home.
Not any of it.
Every day she’s been sitting across from me—with me, on me—quietly planning her exit.
Fuck. I can’t determine whether I’m angry or gutted. Both, maybe.
I stare at her. “Why are you only saying this now?”
She closes her eyes briefly. “Can we please go inside?”
My brows stitch together. “Yeah.”
She moves through the house, and I follow her into the living room. She stands over by the far wall with her back to me, head bowed.
“Talk to me.”
“It’s been on my mind and I—” She spins to face me. “I’m trying to protect you—”
“Protect me? From what?”
“From the fallout.”
“Of what? Us?”
“Yes,” she whispers.
“So that’s it?” My words come out hard. “You’ve decided? Just like that, without even asking me what I actually want?”
“It’s too difficult, Chase.”
“Which part? The distance or the relationship?”
“Both,” she says, her voice quiet.
My vision blurs. “I won’t lose you again. I won’t.”
A muscle feathers in her jaw. “Chase—”
“No. We didn’t go through all of that just to become strangers again.”
She flinches. “How will it work? No matter what we do, someone misses out. Someone gets hurt. Someone’s left waiting, and I won’t have you wait for me—I can’t do it.”
“Ten years, Hayes.” My voice drops low. “I’ve loved you every day for ten years. I was here. I was always right here.”