He still cared.
Still wanted to know if she was okay, if she was happy, if she had found whatever it was she had been looking for when she walked away. And for the first time in a long time, he let himself admit it—maybe, just maybe, he had been waiting for her to come back.
But she hadn’t.
And she wouldn’t.
Savannah Monroe had made her choice, and no matter how many times he replayed that night, no matter how many ways he tried to rewrite the past in his mind, the outcome never changed. She left. And he stayed. And that was that.
He was moving forward. That’s what he told himself, anyway. But forward didn’t mean forgetting. Not when every inch of this damn place was still tangled up with her memory. Not when his bed still smelled like her for weeks after she left. Not when he found strands of her hair in places they had no business being—woven into the fabric of his favorite hoodie, clinging to the bathroom tile, caught in the bristles of his damn toothbrush.
Not when he still caught himself scanning a crowded bar for her, knowing damn well she wouldn’t be there.
Chase let out a slow breath, staring at the whiskey glass in his hand. The ice had melted, the liquor watered down and lifeless, but he wasn’t drinking it anyway. He wasn’t sure when the house had stopped feeling like home—maybe the second she walked out the door, maybe long before that. Without her, it was just walls and floors and furniture, just echoes of what used to be.
Which was why he was selling it.
The realtor was coming next week to take photos. Soon, someone else would live here, someone else would sit on this dock and make new memories, rewriting the ones he had been holding onto for too damn long. And maybe that was a good thing. Maybe it was time.
Pushing himself to his feet, he pocketed his phone and stepped inside. He moved through the house on autopilot, past the couch where she used to curl up with a book, past the kitchen where she used to steal sips of his coffee before making her own. He stopped in the bedroom doorway, staring at the empty bed, at the hollow space where she used to be.
Then, he turned.
Walked to the desk.
Grabbed a sheet of paper.
Picked up a pen.
The dock was quieter when he stepped back outside, the world slipping into the hush of night, the water smooth as glass beneath the moonlight. He sank into the chair, stretched his legs out in front of him, and stared out at the horizon.
And then—he started to write.
Not a text. Not an email. Not something easy, something he could delete before he ever had to send it.
No, this was real.
A letter.
Something she would never see. Something she would never read.
But he wrote it anyway.
Because even after all this time—after all the silence, after all the nights spent trying to forget—
She was still the only person he wanted to talk to.
Dear Savannah,
I don’t know why I’m writing this. Maybe because it’s easier than saying it out loud. Maybe because putting it down on paper makes it feel less like a confession and more like a release. Or maybe—
49
Written Regret
Ithadbeennearlya month since Mallory told Savannah she had spoken to Chase. Since she had told her everything—the house, the fact that he wasn’t dating, that he was thinking of selling, that he was coming to Asheville.
A month, and yet, the conversation still played in Savannah’s head like a broken record.
