Chapter 27
TWENTY-SEVEN
TORI
Christmas in Grand River doesn’t feel like Christmas.
The streets are quiet, shops closed, half-hearted strings of lights clinging to telephone poles. It’s the opposite of the Christmases I grew up with, when silence was a sin and noise meant you were doing it right.
Back then, the house was full every year—people from church, neighbors with nowhere else to go, my parents insisting Christmas wasn’t Christmas unless it was bursting at the seams with bodies and voices and casseroles lined up on the counter.
Mom would crank carols from the old CD player until the speakers crackled, Dad would launch into Luke 2 like the living embodiment of a Christmas Eve pageant, and as the only kid in the house, I was the built-in entertainment.
“Play us something on the piano, Tori.”
“Tell us your favorite Bible verse.”
“Show us what Santa brought you.”
There was never any hiding. No excuse strong enough to keep me from the center of it all. Every eye on me. Every voice pushing me into the spotlight whether I wanted it or not.
And then came Chase.
For someone who claimed to hate Christmas, he had a way of thriving in it.
All that attention I used to drown under?
He soaked it up like he’d been starving for it—and maybe he had.
The boy who spent so many years in foster care, who never really had a family Christmas after his parents died, suddenly became the shining star of mine.
He slipped into those loud nights like he’d been rehearsing his whole life. He laughed at the right moments, teased my uncles about football, let my mom fuss over his plate until it was stacked high. He and my dad got along famously, which still feels strange to remember.
My dad never gave his approval easily, but with Chase, it wasn’t just approval—it was admiration. They’d sit shoulder to shoulder at the table, trading stories like they’d known each other for decades, my dad laughing so hard his face turned red while Chase played the role of charming prodigal son.
And the strangest part was how much I liked it.
For the first time in my life, people weren’t doting on me or asking me to play carols on the piano.
The spotlight shifted, and I was grateful.
Chase fit into my family’s holiday chaos so easily, it almost made me forget he’d sworn up and down that he hated the holiday.
Maybe that was the irony of him—he hated Christmas until someone handed him the microphone, and then he loved it.
Looking back, I see it for what it was. He wasn’t faking it, not really. He was hungry. Starved for attention, for belonging, for a seat at a table where people actually cared what you had to say. He took up the space because no one had ever given it to him before.
And I let him, relieved to fade into the background for once.
But now, sitting in this little apartment in Grand River, with the streets outside silent and my own living room still, I realize this is the first Christmas I’ve ever spent without noise. Without the performance. Without my parents, without Chase, without anyone.
It feels… right.
No casserole dishes. No CD player skipping on O Holy Night. No awkward piano solos.
Just the hum of the fridge, Betty Boop ticking away on the wall, and the faint whistle of wind against the windows.
Dexter, Alis, and Skye packed up yesterday morning, heading to Moraine to spend the holiday with their families.
Skye argued, of course. She hated leaving me, hated the thought of me being here alone. It took everything I had to push her out the door, to look her in the eye and say, I’ll be fine.
Because I will be. I want this—need this.
There’s no pressure to perform happiness for my parents. No arguments with Chase about where we’re going and what time. No pretending everything is picture-perfect when my whole body is unraveling under the surface.
I want the quiet.
I spend most of the day cleaning the apartment.
Wiping down counters, vacuuming under furniture that hasn’t seen daylight in months, finally tackling the sweaters stuffed in that plastic bin under my bed.
I pull them out one by one, shaking out any folding lines embedded from months gone by, and hang each sweater in the closet.
A neat row of color-coordinated warmth right next to my jeans.
Organization sparks so much joy in my heart.
One box waits in the corner of the closet, half forgotten. The one I shoved full of random clothes from my old closet when I left Moraine. I never sorted it—just dragged it here like baggage I wasn’t ready to unpack.
Today, I open it.
On top is a tangle of shirts I barely remember owning, a pair of jeans that don’t fit anymore, a cardigan with a hole in the sleeve.
And then I see it.
The dress.
Black, short, snug in all the right ways. At least, it was when I was twenty. Now it probably fits more like a sausage casing—these hips don’t lie.
I hold it up, and the memories crash over me before I can stop them.
That night. The party. Lexi zipping me up, telling me I looked hot. Armed with red lipstick, my game face, and a plan.
I walked into that baseball house knowing exactly what I was doing, knowing Chase would hear I was there and he’d come running back the second I cast the bait.
And he did. I played that boy better than the piano at a Christmas party—and I’d been taking lessons since age four.
I wore this dress the night I pulled him back for the last time. The night I decided I was done waiting for him to choose me and went out to force his hand.
I baited the hook with Aaron Taylor, and Chase bit like I knew he would. He always came back, because I was his home, his constant.
And also because Chase Martin can’t stand for someone else to play with his toys.
That’s what I’d always been—his. He knew it, I knew it. But that last time we broke up he took his sweet time coming back to me, so I changed the rules. He wasn’t allowed to leave anymore without consequences. If he walked away, I’d stop waiting.
So he stopped fucking around and then never had to find out.
I smooth the fabric over my lap, remembering how confident I felt slipping it on.
How determined. How… desperate?
Because looking back, I see that it wasn’t just Chase who kept coming back to our relationship as his foundation, his constant.
I did the same thing.
Every time we broke up, I felt unsteady.
What if he doesn’t want me anymore? What if he doesn’t need me?
Being Chase Martin’s girlfriend gave me a purpose—something more than just being the girl who was good at math or the sweet deacon’s daughter at church.
I didn’t play a sport, I wasn’t popular. I wasn’t the crazy and wild one in my friend group or the one with the super cool older sister.
I was always just… Tori.
And there’s nothing wrong with that. Nobody had ever made me feel like there’s anything wrong with that.
But I think somewhere, deep down, at the core of every person, is a desire to be something… more.
Not just ordinary, but extraordinary.
Like we’re born with this ingrained sense of not being enough, and we spend so much of our lives thinking we need to do or be something different, something more, to fix it.
To exceed the unrealistic expectations we put on ourselves—or, in many cases, that others have put on us without ever asking if we wanted them.
I can’t say that my parents ever put those kinds of expectations on me. Mom has always been proud of me, in her own way, though her pride often came wrapped in platitudes and soft, church-approved smiles.
And my father… I guess I never considered his expectations unrealistic because, until now, I’d always met or exceeded them.
Good grades, good behavior, a clean reputation polished enough to reflect well on him at every church gathering.
I never tested the limits of his patience or his disappointment.
I was surprised, honestly, that he didn’t have an opinion or a comment when I never became pregnant during all those years with Chase.
That probably had more to do with him being too self-involved to care about when or if Chase and I ever reproduced.
He only would have cared if it disrupted his image—if it had forced him to step down from his role at church or explain away something that didn’t fit his picture of a tidy, respectable life.
Mom never asked either. She’s not one to pry. But whenever I’d talk to her about it—about the silence in our house, about the ache in me she also felt but never acknowledged—she’d give me a hug and whisper the same thing every time:
All in God’s time, Tori. All in God’s time.
Not helpful. Not actually comforting.
Reflecting back on my upbringing, on the way my parents never really took the time to go deeper than surface-level, faith-based answers and manipulated Bible verses, I can see why I was so drawn to Chase Martin.
In my fifteen-year-old brain, if my perfect, God-loving parents never had to fix me or themselves, then we must have been the perfect example of a stable, loving family.
That’s exactly what Chase needed, right?
A boy who had no parents, who had been passed around in foster care, who carried scars he never admitted out loud but showed in every reckless decision he made—he needed someone steady.
Someone pure. Someone who could play savior.
And if I was solely focused on what Chase needed, then I never had to look too closely at myself. I never had to acknowledge how hollow and weak an entire life of perfection and Christian platitudes had left me.
The truth is, Chase didn’t necessarily make me small… because in so many ways, I already was.
And what Chase couldn’t handle—what I refused to let go of once it took root in my soul and started to grow—wasn’t a reclaiming of anything I had lost because of him. It wasn’t about winning myself back. It was about discovering something I didn’t even know I had.
It was strength.