21
He would never befree of Larke. That was the conclusion Chase came to, after he’d spent another night lying awake in bed replaying the sound of her voice the last time they spoke.When I made her cry. Again.
He hadn’t meant to. Chase hadn’t wanted to make her cry. But hurting Larke had been necessary. She needed to stay away from him—despise him, as she should’ve done from the very beginning. Which she probably did now, he thought, while waiting outside a house in a suburban neighborhood not too far from where Larke lived. Chase checked his watch, hoping any minute now the man’s car would appear down the street.
It had taken a while but Chase was able to see himself for what he truly was. Knew himself to be messed up with the dirtiest kind of blood muddying his veins. Stalking Larke and now her new boyfriend–if you could call watching her a couple of times stalking–was the least of his issues.
After Trevor’s death on the same night he and Larke had broken up, he’d been able to keep himself busy. He’d had to arrange the funeral while figuring out how to contact that son Trevor had mentioned. Despite Trevor’s non-existent relationship with his son, Chase knew the man had a right to know his father was no longer alive.
With his stepfather buried and gone, Chase figured he could now tackle the most important issue at hand. Larke. Mainly, the best way to tell her he was sorry and that she was right. Had been right all along. He’d never claimed to be smart, but even he should’ve known his expectations of Larke were unreasonable. And he had. Hours after he’d returned home from her apartment, Chase had been flooded with regret and remorse. But there was no way he could’ve gone to her right away.
He had to do the right thing, the only thing and make a clean break with Lee’s Fortress and Antebellum Resistance. Eventually, he had. But in doing so, Chase came to realize how deep the cycle of hatred ran inside his family. This also made him realize how despicable he truly was.
How Larke could have ever found it in her to treat him so wonderful. That she could love him, left Chase stumped. He’d thought about his ignorance, the racist ideology he used to believe in. Used to, because fuck it, he was completely over hating people for being born a different race than himself. That shit was out of anyone’s control and he could no longer justify any of the other white supremacist beliefs. Not when he was in love with Larke and everything about her had blown their idiotic values to dust.
As awful as it was, facing and owning up to his wrong doings, and as much as he’d wanted to plead with Larke to take him back, Chase knew it was impossible. She would never want him again. Chase knew this because there were two specific things that broke him. Made him realize with certainty that he wasn’t even fit to be in the same room as the woman he loved.
After deciding to find Trevor’s son, Chase had searched through the office in the small single story house used as headquarters. He’d been hoping to come across an address or phone number. He had, but he’d also stumbled upon letters and old newspaper clippings that led to him finding out a lot of things he wished he could erase from his mind.
His grandfather had written to a friend and in those letters the two men had reminisced about the people they’d attacked, harassed and pushed out of towns. They lives they’d destroyed. It had made him sick. Chase had even vomited when he’d seen the name of his father mentioned. His own father had been a filthy animal just like his twisted grandfather, participating in all kinds of violent activities.
It had taken days before he could look himself in the mirror. His entire life was a wreck. Even the ship he now owned had mostly belonged to Joseph Butler. Chase had only been able to go in on it sixty-forty with him. That meant he was profiting off the pain his grandfather had caused other people. The thought hit him hard. Especially since he couldn’t do anything about that. It was his only livelihood.
And that guilt had led to even more. The weight was so heavy that the next day Chase found himself inside the sheriff’s office. This was the same man who’d pulled him and Larke from the sinkhole. Chase told him about the reporter and apologized for waiting so many years to come forward with information.
“We’d always suspected your grandfather was involved. I went over there a time or two but couldn’t find any solid evidence.”
They wouldn’t have. The Chinese man’s car had been driven far away and left along the wayside. When the sheriff thanked him for the information, telling Chase the victim’s widow and children would be able to put their minds to rest, he’d lost it, breaking down in front of the older man. He didn’t deserve gratitude. If anything he should be locked away for withholding information.
“You were just a child,” Sheriff Williams told him. “Your involvement was coerced.”
Chase knew that but it didn’t make him feel a single ounce better. In fact, he’d decided to be as honest as possible with the sheriff, warning the man that if he saw smoke over Lee’s Fortress early in the morning, there shouldn’t be a rush to put it out. Just an empty building that needed to burn. The sheriff had stared at him then gave a single jerk of the head before returning to his paperwork.
And so early the next morning, Chase had set the building on fire. As the fire blazed, he’d kept a distance, watching the flames spread to Trevor’s house as the firefighters arrived and extinguished it. At one point he heard one of the firefighters say, “About fucking time this place went down in flames.”
And that was that. He’d used the last of the money in the group’s account to pay the IRS. Chase sold all the valuables he’d found inside the office, luxury items that Trevor had had no business buying in the first place, including a Rolex watch. He felt even more ignorant for not having taken notice of Trevor’s expensive tastes.
That money along with some of his own, was used to send out the last of the stipend checks. Then he’d made the announcement, letting everyone know the experiment was over and had been a mistake and failure. He gave them instructions—stop being so terrified of the government and minorities. And then he’d left. Just like that Chase packed his pickup and drove to the lake house without sparing a single glance at the place he’d called home.
Today was no different than every day of his life spent obsessing about Larke. Who she was with and what she was doing. Twisted as he was and knowing full well that he’d never be good enough for her, Chase had driven down, all because he could no longer pretend he wasn’t dying inside to have his girl back. That he wouldn’t do whatever it took to have her forgiveness and trust.
He’d come to this conclusion after seeing Larke for the first time in two months last week. She’d been leaving her building wearing a black blazer over a skirt with dark tights underneath. The skirt had hugged and clung to her rounded backside and she’d left the top buttons on her blazer open, no doubt because it was too tight across her breasts. Chase bit back a groan, even now, recalling how perfect her breasts used to feel inside his hands.
At the time, she hadn’t recognized him because he’d switched his red pickup for a black one with tinted windows. He’d noticed that her hair was also different. The braids were gone and as the October wind blew, her puffy curls had gathered and whipped across her face. His fingers had itched to help her tuck the unruly mass of dark coils back into place and his cocked had shot so hard, wanting to thrust into her again. Thrust home. Because nothing would ever be right again unless he had her.
But he’d kept low, not alerting her to his presence. The next days had been spent carving. Working his fingers to the bone, making matching hair combs for Larke’s pretty hair. After completing them, Chase returned, intent on giving the set to her, hoping she’d see the care he’d put into this gift. See that he couldn’t have truly meant to hurt her or make her cry over the phone.
And that led to him waiting here, outside her new boyfriend’s house. The combs, he’d ended up leaving outside her apartment door. He hadn’t been able to see his plan through to hand them to her because Larke was done with him. Chase saw that he’d been beaten to the punch yesterday, after catching sight of the girl he loved coming out of her building to meet another man. A man with skin color as brown as her own and also one who apparently made her smile instead of cry then ask her to lose his number and hang up because he was a coward. A man so unlike himself.
Chase knew he only had himself to blame. But goddamn it. That fucker had his girl. Had what belonged to him. The worst was, he couldn’t do a single thing about it because Larke looked happy. He wanted her happy even it meant living with the pain of having a piece of his heart missing.
Still, Chase was no saint and had easily found the boyfriend’s address and now it even looked like he was rounding the corner in a sleek silver Jaguar. As soon as the man pulled up in driveway, Chase exited his truck. He was wearing a long-sleeved shirt and had made sure to make himself look real presentable, no outward sign of the white supremacist he used to be. He didn’t want Larke any angrier than she would be, if the fucker went back and told her about their ‘talk’.Can’t say I look like the hell I’m living in without my angel.
The man, Raymond, as Chase had figured out, stopped as he saw Chase approach.
“Can I help you?”
“You can,” Chase said, standing inches from him.
