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Chase stilled, the moon now fully on him. It played off the strong features of his face, making him seem scary to anyone else. But I knew he wasn’t. I’d seen that face in pitch black. I knew the anger wrinkling his brow and turning his lips down was real.
“I don’t feel shit for you?” His voice was hard and edgy, rough and thick with emotion. “That’s what you think?”
“Yes! You don’t get it, do you?” I wanted to tug my hair out. My skin tingled. my entire body was alive, and it was all adrenaline, beat after beat of it flooding through my veins.
Chase stepped forward. “No, Rae, I don’t. I don’t get it. Tell me now how I never loved you and how I don’t feel a damn thing for you right now and if you’re right, I’ll walk off this beach and never talk to you again.”
“You’re right. You don’t get it. The store, Chase. It’s always about the store. My ideas, my dreams, my plans. You took the one thing I had left in my life at that point and you took it from me!”
“You had me!” A vein bulged in his neck. “You had me, and you didn’t even remember it.”
“You idiot! My parents left, my aunt was dying, and I had an entire business on my shoulders! What did you want me to do? Tell you to wait until I had my shit together again?”
“No.” He took a deep breath. “No. I would have done it even if you’d told me not to.”
I wrapped my arms around my waist, watching him as he came closer and I walked backward.
“I loved you, Rae. Did you think I’d leave you, too? You were wrong. Fuck—I screwed up, okay? I can never apologize for that. Nothing I do will ever make my choices right. It will never excuse or justify what I did. But you pushed me away at the same time. You have to take responsibility for your choices, too.”
He kept walking to me.
I kept stepping back.
Until I tripped on a rock.
Chase caught me, his hands circling my wrists. I fought him for a second before he let me go and I staggered back, barely able to breathe.
Everything hurt.
It was all a swirling mass of emotion and confusion, and I said the one thing I’d wanted to say for so long.
“You don’t ruin the person you love!”
Now that—that was poison. It was the poison that’d run through my veins since I’d seen him open his store. It was the one that kept my hatred and hurt alive every day since.
And now it was tangible. It was real. He could hear it for himself.
“You don’t ruin the person you love,” I repeated, hugging myself once more. “If you’d really loved me, if you’d loved—”
“If I’d had half a brain cell I’d never have let you go at all!” He threw his arms out. “I’d have called you ten times a day. I’d have shown up whether you wanted me to or not. You don’t know that I took your aunt soup until the day before she died. You don’t know that I worked wood with your grandpa until we were done on the project. You don’t know that I gave you all the space in the world because I thought that was what you wanted.”
“So what are you saying? That it’s my fault? That all of this is because of me?”
“Fuck, and you think I’m stupid.” Chase rubbed his hand down his face then met my eyes with an intensity that sent shivers rippling all over my body. “No, Rae. I’m not saying that. I’m saying everything that I did was because I loved you, no matter how fucked up it all was. No matter how wrong it was. No matter how misjudged my decisions were. And if I have to spell it out for you now—”
“You do. Go ahead. Write it in the sand. Say it.” I didn’t know what to do with my hands. “Spit it out so we can both move on.”
“Move on? You think that’s what this is? I’m still in love with you, you stupid woman!”
I froze, and before I could make another move, he was right in front of me. His body was right there. His words were still sinking in. I couldn’t move, and I couldn’t breathe.
Chase hesitated, then he cupped my face with his hands, coming even closer to me. “I don’t care if you hate this. I don’t care if you hate me,” he breathed, dipping his face so his mouth was close to my ear. “I know you do, but I want you to listen to me. I know you hate me. I know what I did to you was unforgivable, but that doesn’t change how I feel about you. I love you, Raelynn. I never stopped. And if you want to move on from this, then, fine. You do that. But not before I do this.”
