Chapter 29
Jul 18, 2025
Chase didn’t say anything when I slid into the passenger seat. He just started the engine and pulled away from the curb, eyes forward, hands steady on the wheel. The silence between us wasn’t awkward—it was heavier than that. Like something sacred, breakable, and still bleeding.
The afternoon sun filtered through the windshield, casting pale gold across the dashboard. No music played. No idle comments filled the space. Just the sound of tires on pavement and our shared breaths—slightly off rhythm, like we hadn’t figured out how to move in sync again.
I didn’t look at him. I watched the trees blur past instead, green and gold and too soft for how raw I felt inside. His profile was calm, almost unreadable, but I caught it—the way his thumb tapped the steering wheel. The way his jaw tensed every few seconds. He was nervous. Or maybe he was just trying not to say the wrong thing.
When we hit a red light, he finally spoke. “I didn’t mean to make today worse.”
My throat tightened. I stared at a cracked sticker on the window, some leftover reminder from a life before either of us knew how to bleed this way.
“You didn’t.”
“I just—I saw what she posted. And I couldn’t stay quiet anymore.”
“You didn’t have to defend me,” I said quietly.
“I wasn’t defending you.” His voice was low but certain. “I was defending the truth.”
My hands curled into my sleeves, hiding the way they trembled. “Truth’s messy.”
“Yeah,” he said. “But I like messy.”
We didn’t say anything for the next few blocks. The world moved around us—bikes speeding past, birds cutting across the sky, other lives happening without knowing ours were in ruins. It was strange how normal it all looked. Like heartbreak didn’t ripple past the windows.
I leaned my head back against the seat and closed my eyes for a second.
“I’m tired.”
He didn’t ask what kind of tired.
When we pulled up outside my house, neither of us moved. The engine idled. The air conditioner hummed. We just sat there, surrounded by things we couldn’t fix in a day. Or maybe ever.
Chase tapped the steering wheel again. “I thought being honest would make things feel better.”
“It doesn’t,” I said.
“No,” he agreed. “It just makes it harder to lie to yourself afterward.”
The words hung there like smoke—bitter, true, lingering too long.
“I meant what I said earlier,” he added. “About the rules. About trying.”
I nodded, even though he wasn’t looking. “Me too.”
He ran a hand through his hair, fingers threading through the curls like he could untangle what was still knotted between us. “I can’t promise I won’t break again.”
The confession hit deeper than I expected. He didn’t say it like a warning. He said it like a surrender. Like someone who’d stopped trying to be indestructible.
He turned to face me, and for the first time since the hospital, his eyes didn’t look hollow. They looked terrified. Human. Alive.
“I’m scared of messing this up,” he said. “Of hurting you again.”
“You might.”
His lips twitched—somewhere between a grimace and a smile. “And you’re okay with that?”
“No,” I said. “But I’m more okay with that than pretending we’re fine when we’re not.”
The silence that followed was the kind that held weight. The kind that came after honesty and before decisions. He stared at his hands, then at the keys in the ignition like they might give him answers.
“You saved me today,” I said.
He shook his head. “You saved yourself. I just showed up for the final act.”
My chest ached, but not in the way it used to. Not with betrayal or doubt. Just the ache of old wounds stitching themselves into something newer. Scarred, but stronger.
“I don’t want to go back to who I was before,” I said. “The girl who stayed quiet. Who smiled through humiliation. Who made herself smaller just to survive.”
“You’re not her anymore.”
“No,” I said. “I’m not.”
The sun dipped lower, casting shadows across the dashboard. My house stood silent in front of us, the porch light already flickering on. A signal. A question. An invitation to step back into a version of life that suddenly felt too small.
I reached for the door handle, heart thudding against my ribs. But before I could open it, Chase leaned slightly closer. His voice was soft, uncertain, like he was walking a tightrope he’d built himself.
“Are we okay?”
