“Stay.”
“In the room, or . . . ?” In your life? I couldn’t breathe. I needed to breathe, but it was hard when I pinned all my hopes momentarily on his answer.
“In the hospital. Where I can find you.”
He looked so deliriously wrecked, with black-rimmed eyes, his skin hanging onto his cheekbones, like he’d lost weight overnight. I’d always wondered how you knew if you loved someone. I got my answer when he looked at me. I knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that I loved Chase in that moment.
“I’ll stay.” I put my hand on his.
His eyes were half-closed, his throat bobbing like he was struggling to swallow. His lips looked dry, and I wanted to press mine against them. Crazy, crazy thoughts.
“You asked if I’m over Amber,” he croaked, his eyes drifting shut. The rest of him too. “I am. I don’t think I ever loved her. Not really. Not like I could love you.”
Thud. Thud. Thud. My heart was rioting in my chest.
“I didn’t cheat, but I wanted to. I fucking wished I could, Mad. Because you were there, and you were real, and if the bullshit with Amber, whom I didn’t even love, hurt like a thousand bitches, you had the potential to totally detonate my life. You were a weakness. I was so . . .”
So? I held my breath, waiting for him to continue. But he never did. His breaths grew more labored, until they curled into soft, drained snores. I put my hand on my heart to keep it from exploding.
I closed my eyes, willing myself to stop what I was doing. Romanticizing what we were. Forgetting every moment I’d loathed him. I heard Layla scoffing in my head about returning to my old Martyr Maddie patterns. Putting other people before myself.
A flash of Boyfriend Chase flickered on the screen of my closed eyelids like an old film.
Him leaning his hips into mine, his whiskey breath caressing my neck at a party. “Let’s dip. Everyone’s a loser, and you’re the only person I can stand, which is funny.”
“Why is it funny?” I whispered thickly.
“Because what I want to do to you has nothing to do with either of us standing.”
I opened my eyes. Closed them again.
Chase with his back to me, watching Manhattan from his floor-to-ceiling window.
“You’re a wolf,” I groaned. His back was so broad, so corded with muscles I had to remind myself he was mortal like me.
“You’re the moon.” He grinned, tipping his head back to look at the white crystal-like ball. “You drive me fucking crazy.”
I opened my eyes, feeling tears stinging my nose, clogging my throat. I closed my eyes again.
Chase and me lying on the grass, staring at the starless New York skies.
“I want to go somewhere else. Somewhere where you can see the stars at night. Somewhere pure,” I said.
I could hear Chase’s smile when he answered. “Weird that you mention it. I bought a telescope the other day for that exact reason. I can’t see the stars, and it is driving me nuts. But I don’t want to give up city life.”
It was classic Chase to dislike something about his life and bend it to his own will. It was classic Maddie to dislike something about my life and give up, throw in the towel, and start over.
Another tear slid down my cheek. I couldn’t help it.
Chase and me in my bed, Daisy at our feet.
“Ever feel like you’re changing?” he asked.
“Always,” I answered. “We’re always changing. We just don’t notice it because we’re on the move.”
“I don’t want to change.”
“I don’t think you have much choice,” I said softly. “If you don’t change, you don’t live.”
“Maybe I don’t want to live.”
“You know you do.”
He got out of the bed and started dressing.
My eyes fluttered open again. It was us he’d been talking about. I’d been changing him.
Chase and me on the Cyclone roller coaster. Coney Island. It wasn’t a romantic getaway. I’d convinced him to come with, because I felt like having an old-school candy apple.
“You’re not scared of anything, are you?” He grinned at me. Our car was the first one. It went up painfully slowly, an inch at a time.
“Almost.” Our car was shaking. So was my heart. I looked down to take his hand, but he clasped his fingers together in his lap. Closed off to me in ways he didn’t even know I wanted him to open up for me. “Almost anything.”
I opened my eyes for the fourth time, frantic. I remembered what had happened next.
We’d both fallen.
I spent the next hours trying to get as much information as I could from Grant. Dawn broke on the horizon when Grant finally said we should go home to regroup. I texted Sven I’d be working from home and went to check on Chase. He was sitting on the hospital bed, frowning at his phone. He’d been out cold for nearly seven hours.