“Yeah.” Sighing, I look up at the navy canvas dotted with tiny stars. “I was sixteen.”
“That’s how old my sister was when she died.”
My heart clenches, muscles locking. I peer over at him again, studying his profile, the tight lines of his jaw and the tick in his cheek. “I’m so sorry.”
“She drowned.” He bows his head, hands dangling between his thighs. “Shewas a swimmer. As professional as you can get at sixteen. It was a big day—scouts were going to be there, college coaches watching. She was practicing before everyone arrived. And then, while I was talking to my parents…” His jaw flexes. “She was floating facedown in the pool.”
A sharp, uneasy weight settles in my chest. “Oh my God…that’s…”
“I was right there. Right fucking there. I jumped in, tried to pull her out, but she was already gone.” His voice is raw, scraped clean of anything but grief. “She was a strong swimmer. The strongest. She trained every day, pushed herself harder than anyone. But she was exhausted. Dehydrated. They said she passed out in the water and…that was it.”
A breeze drifts through the porch, but I barely feel it.
Chase stares past me, lost in something I can’t see. “It kills me,” he says after a minute. “It kills me because she didn’t want to go that day. Said she had a headache, didn’t feel good. But our parents made her go. I could have intervened, could have said something, could have prevented it…but I didn’t. And I have to live with that every day.”
His words strike a chord deep in my chest.
I think of Alex, of the accident, of all the ways I’ve twisted myself into barbed-wire knots trying to make sense of what happened.
What I did. What I didn’t do. What I owe him because of it.
“God, Chase…” A tear trickles from the corner of my eye, carving a pathway down my cheek. “I understand.”
Chase notices the wayward tear but doesn’t call attention to it. Maybe he understands too, that sometimes acknowledging grief out loud only makes it worse. More cumbersome.
He pulls away and leans against the porch beam, tilting his head toward the sky. I follow his gaze, my breath hitching at the sight of the moon, bright and full, hanging low over the trees. It shimmers like it’s been dipped in liquid gold.
“The moon,” I murmur, squinting at the warm, ambrosia globe. “Looks like a floating ball of honey.”
Chase stares at it, a smile flickering as the silence stretches for a handful of seconds. Then he says, “We’re in our honeymoon phase.”
I look at him.
He looks at me.
I blink. Blink again.
And then a burst of laughter escapes. A snort. An unbidden explosion of joy. “Our honeymoon phase,” I echo, barely containing another wave of giggles. “I like that.”
Our smiles linger, scaring away the shadows for a little while. We sit side by side, staring up at the honey moon as the remnants of our losses drift further out of reach, beyond the night sky.
We both shared a piece of ourselves tonight. The most broken piece. The dirtiest piece.
And I guess that should make me feel worse somehow.
Sadder. More burdened.
But all I feel is less alone.
Chapter 15Chase
“It won’t last, you know.”
The voice drags me away from the song. I fumble a chord, the sound dying out as Tag’s lumbering footsteps clomp across the deck. He hands me a beer.
My eyes dip to the sweating can like it might be laced with a pinch of cyanide.
A smirk flickers on his lips, the strap of his Martin fastened around his torso. “It’s just a beer. Hardly the riskiest thing I know you’re considering.”
