Chapter 27 #2
It was the sense of self I had to develop just to keep loving him, to keep fighting for a relationship that should have fallen apart a hundred times over.
A self I didn’t know before, because I’d never had the opportunity to meet her, to test her, to see just how extraordinary and stubborn and resilient Victoria Anne Foster was capable of being.
I had to become someone who could stand her ground, who could demand answers, who could hold up the weight of a marriage and a man who couldn’t hold himself. I had to become someone who could survive heartbreak after heartbreak and still get up in the morning.
And maybe I became that woman for him at first, but somewhere along the way, I realized I was becoming her for me.
So, yes. I may have attached myself to Chase Martin in an unconscious, feeble attempt to fill the void inside myself that needed more… that needed a purpose, something to make me feel less ordinary, and also so I could have a person to love.
And, yes, that naive fifteen-year-old girl was so far in over her head when she thought she could save the lonely, broken foster boy from his life of pain and tragedy.
But I did love him. Truly. Madly. Deeply.
I’ll always love him in some way.
I don’t regret loving him. We had some really wonderful times together.
Also, without all the decisions I made in the past, without the pain, the suffering, the heartache… I never would have met myself.
And I’m really, really glad that I met her.
She’s a little bruised, but she’s sharp. She’s the girl who won’t sit quietly when someone dismisses her. The woman who can survive a marriage cracking down the middle. The one who can look at herself in the mirror and recognize both the mistakes and the grit it took to keep walking forward.
She’s feisty, and fun, and apparently goes down on grieving men in copy rooms.
Who knew?
And here’s the thing—old me, the girl who lived to orbit around Chase, would never have done that. She would’ve been too worried about what it meant, what other people would think, what he would think.
She would’ve swallowed down her own curiosity (instead of his cum—ba-dum-tss), her own hunger, and let someone else’s comfort or judgment dictate her choices.
But this version of me? The one who’s met herself in the fire of everything I thought would destroy me?
She doesn’t wait for permission. She doesn’t apologize for wanting, for trying, for getting it wrong sometimes.
That’s what the copy room was. Not just the hottest moment of my life—and God, it was—but a moment where I felt like me.
Not Chase’s girl. Not the dutiful daughter. Not the peacemaker friend. Just me, flesh and bone and nerve endings, giving and taking in equal measure.
Well, until he ruined it.
One careless line, one reminder that even with all his intelligence, Leo Euler has a way of turning vulnerability into a weapon.
And just like that, the high of it—the connection, the electricity, the power I felt—slipped through my fingers.
But I took it back. Because no one, not even a grieving man who deserves a pass because he's hurting, is ever going to make me feel small or undeserving again.
Not even for a second. Not even as a joke.
And I made damn sure he knew that when I spit his own release back in his face and walked out. (I’m fully aware the swallowing joke just fell flat. Leave it.)
I laugh to myself at the memory.
I did that. I fucking did that. flips hair
And then... I think about what Skye and I walked in on. Stephanie, leaning into Leo. His arms wrapped around her. Her lips trembling, voice low. Skye’s jaw clenched so tight she nearly cracked a tooth.
Was Leo comforting a woman who had lost her father? Maybe. Probably. But the picture was messy—faces too close together, sadness that looked more like longing.
Grief rearranges people. It remaps the borders between right and wrong, between comfort and something more reckless. It makes hands roam and words clumsy and touch feel like the only honest thing left.
Skye refuses to see nuance right now. That’s fine. She’s furious and she can be furious for a while. I don’t blame her for how protective she is—that’s Skye.
She loves hard and loud and she sees complications as a threat. She wants clear answers and tidy justice and Leo did something that night that made her want to punch a hole through the world.
I don’t know what happened behind those closed doors.
I only know what I felt when I had him quiet and soft and broken against me a few hours later in that copy room—needed, in the most bone-deep way. I felt useful.
That’s not noble. It’s not holy. It’s human.
And when he used his smart mouth like a scalpel, when he turned our moment into selfishness, it stung. Hard.
But here’s the thing—I don’t need him to be flawless to want him.
Wanting someone and sanctifying them are separate things. I can want him and still stand up for myself. I can take the good and set boundaries on the bad.
That’s growth talking, loud and unfiltered.
And while part of me still wants to storm into his house and read him the riot act line by line, another part—the one that’s quieter and less indulgent—knows he needs space.
So do I.
He needs to be with his family. He needs to spend the holiday break, this next week, with Linda, Stephanie, their family, and whatever grief looks like when it wakes you up at 3 a.m. and won’t let you sleep again.
He needs to grieve without me making it about us. He needs to grieve without me taking it as evidence that he’s choosing someone else. He needs to be their son and brother first, and whatever he and I are second.
Because no matter what history lies between the two of them, the reality is that Leo and Stephanie shared George as a father, and Linda is still their mother.
They will always be family.
I promised Skye I’d be okay here by myself. More than that—I promised myself I’d use this time to be honest about who I am and what I need.
Part of being honest looks like writing things I can’t say out loud without devolving into an argument or crying or both.
So I grab a notebook. A pen that writes well and won’t smear. Skye’s bookstore candle because everything feels more official with a little dramatic light. And I sit at the kitchen table and write to Chase.
It’s not ugly. It’s not a rant. Just, a closing. A gentle but firm ending of a chapter.
I write like I’m explaining something to someone I once loved and still respect enough to want them to walk away with their dignity intact.
Dear Chase,
I’ve tried a dozen times to figure out how to put words to the ending we never managed to give each other.
You were my first love. And for a long time, I thought you’d be my only.
We grew up together in all the hardest ways, filling holes in each other that we never admitted out loud.
I thought if I was steady enough, patient enough, strong enough, I could be everything you needed.
Maybe I even thought saving you would prove I was worth saving, too.
But the truth is, we broke ourselves even more while trying to hold each other together.
I don’t regret us. Not one bit. I don’t regret the nights we laughed until it hurt or the quiet mornings when it felt like maybe we’d finally figured it out. I will carry those memories with me always. They’re stitched into my heart, forever.
But I can’t carry them and keep carrying you, too.
You’ve been weighed down with so much pain since you were a boy.
Pain you never asked for and didn’t deserve.
The parents who should have protected you left scars that never healed, and then they were taken from you.
You and Trent were left to figure out survival in a world that wasn’t kind to either of you.
That wound has lived in you all these years, telling you that you weren’t enough, making you angry at yourself and everyone close enough to love you.
And for too long, I stood as the primary target and outlet for that anger and pain, letting it chip away at me while I told myself it was my job to absorb it.
You used to come back to me because I was your home.
I used to cling to you because being yours made me feel like I mattered.
But I’ve learned that home isn’t supposed to hurt like that.
It isn’t supposed to cost you your peace.
And I finally know I can be whole without being your safe place to land.
So this is me letting go. Not because I stopped loving you, but because love shouldn’t feel like drowning. Not because you don’t deserve love, but because you deserve to find it without the weight of my expectations, and I deserve to live without the weight of your projections.
I hope you get help, Chase. Real help. The kind that can sit with the broken parts of you that you keep trying to bury under anger and bravado.
Therapy. Counseling. Something that lets you name the pain instead of deflecting and allowing it to ricochet onto the people who love you most. You don’t have to keep living in survival mode.
You don’t have to keep proving or posturing.
You can heal. I believe that. I always have.
I hope you love your brother well. I hope you build something that lasts. I hope you give yourself the chance to stop running and finally rest in yourself. Because you are worthy of both love and healing.
This isn’t hate. This isn’t even goodbye with bitterness in it. It’s just the last page of our story. And I’m choosing to close it with gratitude for what we had, and with hope, for both of us, that we’ll be better for letting go.
Take care of yourself, Chase. Please.
All my love, Tori