“Say. It.” My words are a whisper over his mouth.
He flicks his nose to mine. “Chase.”
I begin nodding, then I lick my lips. “Do exactly that…when I run…” I swallow, aware of the tremble in my tone. “Chase. Me.”
Chase reaches for my cheeks, and I let my fists rest on his chest. He threads his fingers deep into the soaking wet hair at the side of my head, sucking on his front teeth.
My eyes sting with tears, and I watch Chase’s throat dip, deep-rooted emotion mushrooming between us.
He nods, then lifts me into his arms, pressing himself between my legs, and even though I’m so sore, even though I’m unsure I can take any more, I open for him, knowing there will only ever be one boy that can blur my lines between pleasure and pain.
“I’ll chase you, Laiken,” he promises himself, pushing into me so slowly I shiver.
He’d hurt me so badly,so why does he feel so good?
His mouth is against mine, then he trails his lips down to my neck, a guttural moan leaving my throat when he buries himself inside me completely.
Another shiver racks my body, I spear my nails into his back, holding onto him as tightly as I can.
“I’ll. Chase. You,” he groans.
We were beneath each other's skin now, and the only way we’d be able to run from the other was if we tore our own flesh from our bones, and left them in blood-stained ribbons behind us.
The blast of my hairdryer whirls in my ears.
I flip my head over and hit it from beneath, and when the strands at the base of my neck are dry to touch, I flick it back and thumb the switch, returning the heated metal to the open drawer beside me.
My fingers are hot and pulsing, bright red from stroking them through my hair. I fluff the strands into a middle part, leaving the front pieces loose, clipping the rest back.
The bathroom is warm and stuffy and claustrophobic. I’m clasping at the window, propping it open when I hear the ping of a single piano key. I almost freeze in place, holding out for the reverb, the ghost of an echo that doesn’t follow. The sound was clipped, like the note was never meant to be played, let aloneheard.
I let my hand slip from the edge of the window, rubbing the dust that catches at the tips of my fingers over my brightpink New York T-shirt when the key is hit again, this time with sustain.
I listen to it dissolve as I slip out of the bathroom, pausing to rest my shoulders against the wall.
Chase is sitting at the keyboard across the small room, his head between his shoulders, his long brown hair a blanket,a shield, around his face.
I don’t have to move through the room to see that his hands are trembling when he spears them through the top of his head, and I don’t want to creep up on him and startle him, so, I choose to shuffle into the kitchen, snatching up the kettle and when I hold it beneath the faucet, pulling the top away with a pop, Chase swings his gaze over his shoulder, quickly finding mine.
His eyes drag down to my shirt, his irises downcast, shadowed. He swallows before he speaks, and the way his throat muscles tighten tell me it’s pure agony.
“She used to have one just like that.” He pauses to swallow again.
I lick my lips, feeling how dry they are, setting the kettle down beside me and taking a step away from the bench, away from the kitchen, toward him.
I cross my arms to my chest. I nod.
“I know. We got them together,” I whisper softly.
He turns back to the keys, and I swallow past the brick in my throat, not knowing what to say, hoping Chase will lead the way.
“The day Jade was…” he chokes, and it breaks my goddamn heart, and when he chooses not to finish, it snaps it clean in half. “I was working on this five-chord riff, and I couldn’t work out what the fuck was missing.” Chase laughs, his chin to his chest. I press toward him, take a seat on the coffee table, placing my hands between my legs, clutching at the edge. “Jade had a way of hearing music for what it was and what it strived to be.” He turns to look at me, gnaws on his bottom lip. “One note, that wasall it needed, and she didn’t even blink when she found it.” He sucks back a breath. “You know what she told me after that?” He wasn’t looking for me to answer him, so I kept quiet, I listened, the way he needed me to. “She told me to feel it in here…” He presses his fist against his heart. “Because if I didn’t, I would never find what I was looking for.”
I feel myself holding my breath, it pinches at my lungs, because what she did here, that same night, now made sense to me. In all the years I had known Jade she had never touched our keyboard, but on that same day, she had.And now, I knew why, what she had been working on,and who it was for.
My fists are around the edge of the table, my voice a croak. “Can I hear it?”
I can’t see Chase’s face, but the way the muscles in his back strain, cording beneath his black T-shirt, tells me that there is more to this.
