The instrument is deep, dusky purple, somewhere between bruised violet and midnight blue. The finish gleams across most of the body, except where the carvings begin. There, the wood is raw. Unsealed. Not quite completed.
And then my breath catches. The world tilts.
Because etched into the body are…lyrics.
Mylyrics.
Curving in and out like constellations, each line carved with intention. No pattern, no order. Just raw feeling.
My words. My heart.
“I don’t need light if your voice is the spark.”
“Even the moon envies how you pull the tide in me.”
“I’d become the night if it meant reaching you.”
Tiny silver stars are inlaid around the sound hole. Along the neck, the fret markers shimmer with mother-of-pearl crescents, a different phase at each one. At the twelfth fret, a single full moon gleams like liquid honey.
“I wanted it to feel like you,” he says quietly behind me. “Like your voice after dark. Calm. Haunting. A little magic.”
My fingers hover just above the strings, too stunned to touch. “You built this for me?” I whisper.
He nods, swallowing. “I started building it after you left your notebook on the bus. Thought maybe if I couldn’t find the right words…yours would be enough.” He shrugs like it’s nothing. Like it didn’t just undo me completely. “Didn’t get to finish the carvings or the final coat. There was a lot more I wanted to add. But, yeah. It’s yours. Always was.”
I study it, and this time, I see it for what it is.
A love letter I never expected to receive.
My throat tightens, eyes burning. I stare down at the guitar, overwhelmed.
Then I set it gently back in the case, close the lid, and launch myself at him.
Chase stumbles a step before catching me, wrapping those strong arms around my waist, his chin tucking over my shoulder as he leans back against the workbench for support.
“You didn’t leave me with nothing,” I murmur through the tears. “You never left at all.”
He squeezes me tighter. “Annie…”
“No. You never left. Never.” My breathing kicks up, pulse doubling in speed. “You can’t leave me. You—you can’t…” The tender emotion shifts into something uglier as panic overtakes me. “No, no… Chase, you can’t ever leave—”
“Whoa, hey.” He takes my chin between his thumb and finger and tilts myhead up. “It’s okay. Shh, don’t cry…”
Everything hits at once, a comet to my core. I’m shaking, breaking in half, my heart splitting down the middle.
There. Here. Him. Me. The past. The future.
A future I was just getting a glimpse of before he left, now I can’t see it without him.
I don’t want it without him.
Agony rockets through me as I tremble hopelessly in his arms. Everything becomes too real. Too doomed. Too over.
A strangled sob escapes. “Please don’t leave me, Chase. Please stay. Please be okay.”
Absolute devastation glitters in his caramel-colored eyes. Because he can’t calm my fears. He can’t erase my sorrow. He can hardly see me. All he can do is hold me.
But it’s not enough.
