I puff out a quiet laugh. “Am I too suffocating?”
He pulls back, and his eyes land on mine.
“No. Having you here is just… a lot.”
I forgot how visually arresting it is just tolookat Chase. Everything about his body is impossible to ignore, and my eyes don’t even know where to start with him.
He has new tattoos.
I can only see the edges of a couple of them. One peeks out at the top of his chest and it looks like the edge of a crescent moon, and the other is at his wrist, and I only see purple ink inside black lines and I can’t make out the rest. A gemstone, maybe? An amethyst?
I can’t remember if his lashes were alwaysthisfull and dark, but I’m sure they always were, and I’m just stunned to witness it again in person instead of in memory.
And his hair.
That’s exactly how I remember it.
The waves that fall around his face, framing him, only add to the feeling that he’s a living painting, a jolt of striking color in a world that can feel so monotone.
“How are you and your one true love?” he asks.
I lift an eyebrow. “What?”
“Single-malt Scotch.”
I drop my head for a moment. “Oh. I’ve been laying off the Scotch. I have wine sometimes, but not even close to daily. No hard liquor, really. Definitely no cigarettes.”
He nods. “Same. I haven’t drank or smoked or done anything since last year. How is LA?”
He says it so casually, like he’s just reporting a change in his wardrobe.
But it hits me like I just missed a step on the stairs.
“You quit drinking?”
He casts his gaze down toward the floor. “It might shock you, Logan, but I really don’t want to fucking die. I wasslowly killing myself with that shit. I have too much I want to do.”
“I’m proud of you,” I tell him.
“Save it.”
“No, Chase, I’mreallyproud of you. That’s amazing to hear.”
He stares at the ground for a while and I feel like I’m two seconds away from pulling him into a hug again.
Before I move, though, he digs into his pocket and pulls out a little piece of paper. It’s square-shaped and looks like it was printed at home, but it’s clearly a business card. The background is printed with neon-colored line art, and at the center, it says his name.
Chase Cameron Fine Arts.
There’s a QR code and a link written below it.
“This is the only thing I’m proud of,” he tells me. “Quitting everything else was the easy part, even though I felt like absolute shit for a while.”
I take out my wallet and slide his card into it. “Thank you.”
“No problem.”
He stands there for a while looking at me like there are a thousand tiny explosions going off beneath his surface.
