Page 64

Chapter forty-four

Every piece of you belongs with me

Chase

T he second the door slams shut behind her, I follow. I don’t even think, I just run. Out the door, down the steps.

Into the storm.

Rain lashes down in heavy, relentless sheets, soaking through my hoodie, plastering my T-shirt to my skin. The pavement shines wet beneath the low daylight, reflecting the mess of a city I couldn’t give a single fuck about right now.

I don’t feel anything except the splash of my shoes hitting the pavement, the rush of blood in my ears, the thunder of my own fucking heart screaming go .

Because she’s walking away again, and I can’t let her.

Not with her shoulders curled in, her arms wrapped around herself, holding everything together with sheer fucking will. Not with the way her chin trembles, or the way she’s forcing herself to walk away from me and pretend she’s not breaking apart.

I catch up to her halfway down the block.

“Zoe.”

My voice catches, but she doesn’t stop.

“ Zoe. ”

I reach out and touch her shoulder. Not hard, just enough for her to pause.

She whirls on me, rain dripping from her lashes, fire burning in her eyes. Her cheeks are flushed and wet, but it’s not just the rain. Dark hair sticks to her cheeks, clinging to her throat, and I want to push it back.

I want to do so much more than that.

She glares at me. “What are you doing?”

“I love you.”

It bursts out of me, just like that. No hesitation, no taking it back.

Her lips part, and everything stops. The rain, the street noise. The whole fucking world.

“Don’t,” she chokes out. “Don't say it yet.”

Her voice breaks, and that’s when I realize she’s not mad because I followed her. She’s mad because she doesn't think she's ready to feel this, to accept the love I want to give her.

She tries to pull herself away from me, but I don’t let go. I take a step closer, my heart in my goddamn throat, the rain falling harder.

“You don’t get to run from this,” I rasp. “You don’t get to pretend I don’t mean something to you when you know you mean fucking everything to me.”

Her brows draw tight, and her lower lip wobbles. She looks away fast, blinking hard, trying to hold the pieces together.

But I can’t let her, not this time.

“I love you,” I say again, tilting her chin up to make her look at me. “And don’t you dare stand there and think you don't deserve to hear it.”

Her breath shudders out, and she shakes her head, hands fisting into my soaked hoodie.

I cup her jaw, let my thumbs brush against her cheekbones, against the tiny scattering of freckles I haven’t seen up close in weeks.

“I’ve told you a hundred times,” I murmur. “In a million different ways.”

She clenches her eyes shut, turning her face like she can dodge the words. As if hearing them will break her open.

“You can’t say things like that,” she says on a sob. “Not to this version of me.”

“So you think I’d just let you go?” My voice is raw, scraped from the inside out. “That I’d just stand there and let you walk out the door again?”

She stiffens, and I see it. The truth, bleeding through the cracks she’s trying to cover with anger.

“You should,” she says, voice sharp but breaking. “You should let me go.”

Liar.

She’s a goddamn beautiful liar.

My hands slide from her cheeks to her shoulders, holding her there. “Say it like you mean it.”

She blinks hard, her chin lifting.

“Chase—”

“Say it like you fucking mean it, Zoe.”

She doesn’t, because she can’t. Because she knows what we have isn't nothing, and never will be. We’ve been endgame since the start.

Rain trickles down her face and catches in her lashes, and I swear I can see the war inside her. Her mouth trembles and her fists tighten, her entire body is coiled with fight and fear and longing, and I feel her about to break.

So I do it for her.

“This thing between you and me? It’s fucking everything , and you know it. And I want it, Zoe. I want it so bad.”

My voice catches, but I don’t stop.

“I want every version of you,” I rasp. “Not just the fun Zoe. Not just the magnetic, smartest-person-in-the-room Zoe. Not just the one who makes everyone laugh and commands attention without even trying.”

Her breathing goes shallow, and I let my fingers thread into her wet hair, making sure she can see me clearly as I lean in closer.

“I want the sad Zoe. The unsure Zoe. The Zoe who watches videos of dads dancing with their daughters and doesn’t say a word but I know exactly what she’s feeling. I want the Zoe who drags me through the most insane scavenger hunt I’ve ever been on in my life . ”

A soft sound breaks out of her—half-laugh, half-sob—and it shatters something in me.

“I want the Zoe who panics when things feel too big. Who runs when she’s scared, but comes back every time because she’s brave as hell. The Zoe who has spent her whole life thinking she has to carry everything alone.”

She crumples, and I catch her face in my hands again to brush away a tear—or maybe it’s rain. I don’t know anymore.

“You don’t,” I whisper. “You don’t have to do any of it alone, baby.”

Her eyes are wide and brimming, locked on mine like she’s trying to believe me.

“I want every single piece of you,” I say. “Even the broken ones. Especially the broken ones, because—”

My voice cracks and my eyes fill, but I don't care. I let her see every single part of me, because they already belong to her anyway.

“Because every version of you, every fucking piece of you, Zo? Belongs right here.” I thump my fist over my chest. “With me.”

***

Zoe

I suck in a sharp breath, my throat tight, my heart a fucking battlefield. The rain lashes down, soaking into my skin and my bones, into every broken, jagged part of me that I swore I’d never let anyone have.

And yet here he is. Fighting for all of it.

Goddamn him.

I shake my head, half laughing, half crying. “You always have to win, don’t you?”

He lets out a humorless laugh before his jaw clenches, his whole body practically vibrating with restraint as his eyes drag slowly over my face.

“Not this time, Zo. This isn’t a game to me. It’s not a bet around a pool table, it’s not a joke in front of our friends. This is you and me. It’s us.”

“Chase,” I let out a wet sob. “You absolute menace.”

His lips twitch, but I see the wrecked look in his eyes as he waits.

I swipe at my face, but it’s useless with the rain and the tears.

“I hate you,” I whisper, the words a shaky, breathless lie.

Chase steps so close I feel the heat of him even through the cold. His hand comes up, sliding along my jaw, thumb pressing against my pulse like he needs to feel me alive beneath his fingers.

“No, Zoe. You fucking don’t.”

His eyes are a storm, pleading with me to agree with him. To let myself agree with him just this once, to prove to him this whole thing hasn’t been a lie. That I want this life, this wild, insane, crazy life with him just as much as he wants it with me.

“I don’t know how to do this,” I admit, voice barely audible over the rain. “I don’t know how to be loved by someone like you, how to be seen like this.”

My voice breaks as his eyes hold mine, a small crease forming between them as though he thinks I’m preparing to reject him.

“But I want to try…”

His breath shudders out, like he’s been waiting his whole damn life to hear me say it.

I step into him, grabbing onto the collar of his soaked hoodie, forcing him to look me in the eye. “If I do this, Walton—if I jump, if I fall and give you every piece of me— even the ones I don’t like —you better fucking catch me.”

His hands move to frame my face, palms warm against my wet cheeks.

“Try and fucking stop me, baby.”

I pull him down and close the distance, kissing him hard. And when he kisses me back, it’s like the rain itself bows to us.

His lips meet mine, desperate and unyielding. There’s nothing careful about it, nothing hesitant. Just mouths colliding, breaths tangling, hands gripping tight like neither of us ever plans on letting go.

The cold, relentless rain beats down around us, but I don’t feel any of it. Not with Chase’s body pressed to mine and his hands threading through my hair. Not with the way his mouth moves hungrily against mine, making up for every second we wasted denying this.

He tastes like rain and promises, and groans into the kiss, the sound going straight to my chest. My fingers fist in the wet fabric, pulling him closer, desperate to feel him.

Chase tilts his head, lips parting to let me in, to let me have him however I want. Our tongues slide together, and his grip on my hips tightens, memorizing the shape of me.

I gasp against his mouth, and he swallows it, turning us and pressing me against a rain-soaked wall in the middle of the street.

Water drips from his jaw, and I have no idea if it’s the rain or his tears or maybe both, but I barely register it, too lost in the way his hands roam over my wet clothes, mapping out the places he’s already claimed as his.

When I finally break away, we’re both breathing hard, foreheads pressed together.

His thumbs brush my jaw, gaze searching mine.

“Tell me you don’t regret any of it.”

I shake my head, fingers still tangled in the collar of his hoodie, refusing to let go while my stomach drops at the reminder of what I said to him weeks ago.

“I don’t.”

“Good.”

I gulp and lean back in, my lips ghosting against his. “So, what do we do now?”

Chase laughs, a little broken, a lot in love.

“We make the play, Zo.”

I inhale slowly and close my eyes. Exhale. Let go. Make the play.

“I love you.”

The words spill out of me breathlessly, the rain swallowing them as soon as they leave my lips, but I know he hears them, because his whole body stills.

His hands tighten at my hips, and when he speaks, his voice is nothing but gravel and rain and a lifetime of wanting.

“Fuck,” he murmurs, barely audible over the storm. “Say it again.”

II reach up and bracket his face with my trembling hands. “I love you.”

Chase’s eyes slam shut like he’s trying to memorize the moment, engrave it into his soul as a core memory. When they open again, they burn with something wild and unrestrained.

His mouth crashes against mine again, messy and desperate to claim me.

“I love you, too, Zoe,” he rasps, the words fierce and sure. “I love you so fucking much.”

I let out a shaky breath as my tears fall, and then I’m kissing him again because I have no other way to show him just how much I mean it.

He hauls me up to him, laughing into the kiss, broken and hoarse and the happiest fucking sound I’ve ever heard.

“You’re all mine, Zo Face,” he murmurs against my lips.

A smile curls my mouth as I keep kissing him, my heart a flood of light in the middle of the rain.

And I realize, that’s all I’ve ever needed—someone who sees the storm and chooses me anyway.