“You talk about ghosts?” I continue, fighting through the misery. “Ibecameone. And now you want to stand here and tell me you still love me like that makes this okay?”
His face crumples as he takes another step forward. “I wanted to tell you. Every goddamn day, I wanted to call. To explain. But I couldn’t find the words that wouldn’t break you.”
“So break me,” I demand. “Tear me apart. Rip out my heart and stomp on it, because at least then I wouldn’t be walking around with this hollow, useless thing rotting in my chest where our story—ourfuture—used to be.”
“Annie…” He moves toward me, gait intensifying.
But then he stumbles.
Not on something small. Not on a loose shoe or some stray cord.
A whole-ass coffee table right in his path.
His shin slams into it hard, and he grunts, catching himself on the wall.
Something cold licks down my spine.
He doesn’t curse. Doesn’t laugh it off. Doesn’t even look at the table like it betrayed him.
He just…freezes.
I study him, brows bending. “What’s wrong?”
My gaze zips around the room again, taking in the half-completed guitars, covered in a thin layer of dust. Enough for me to know he hasn’t touched them in weeks. Maybe longer. The workbench is messy but undisturbed. No fresh sawdust. No wood glue scent. Even the soldering iron is cold.
That’s when it clicks.
He hasn’t been working.
Not even on the one thing that’s always saved him when his world fell apart.
Chase wipes a hand down his face, cups his jaw. “You need to go.”
“Absolutely not.” My eyes widen as I peer back at him, head shaking with disbelief. “I drove fourteen hours to get here. I’m not leaving until you talk to me. Until you explain yourself.”
“It’s better if you go. Live your life.” Pain streaks through his voice, splintering the edges. “Pretend you never met me.”
Agony breaches my bones. Digs a hole in my chest.
“You don’t mean that,” I breathe out, finally unlocking long enough to move forward. My eyes drink him in, his twitching muscles, his hand braced on the wall like it’s the only thing keeping him standing. He’s pale, brittle, and breaking. And I don’t know how to slip through his cracks. “Chase, please. I’m right here, begging for you to talk to me, toseeme—”
“That’s the goddamn problem,” he snaps, shoving off the wall, his hand tearing through his hair like he could rip the pain out by the roots.
I still, my breath hitching.
His eyes meet mine.
Frantic, haunted.
“That’s the problem, Annie,” he says. “I can’t.”
Chapter 56Chase
Six Months Earlier—June
“This is lovely, Chase. I think it suits you.”
My mother floats around the old cabin, assessing every cobwebbed corner. It’s far from lovely. It’s a goddamn prison cell, dressed up in pine, hardwood, and a picturesque background of canopied trees and roaming black bears.
