Page 105 of Grace

I look away, hurt, because he doesn’t want to hear what I’m saying.

He suddenly slams on the brakes, and the car jolts. Chase looms over me, his lips barely brushing mine. He whispers against my mouth. The taste of his kiss, burned into my mind, makes my skin go hot.

“Let’s play a game.” My brows furrow in confusion. “Let’s pretend yesterday never happened. As if you and I were just an ordinary boy and girl.

“We can’t sweep things under the rug. We can’t live in an idyllic bubble while everything is falling apart around us, Chase.”

“If things fall apart around us… we’ll pick up the pieces and build something new out of them.”

“You know we can’t do that. If that lunatic hadn’t sent me those ‘gifts,’ I wouldn’t be sitting next to you.”

Chase leans back in his seat and says something that makes my breath catch in my throat, my heart feeling like acid rain is falling on it.

“It must be a real uplift, crying after sex. Although I think sex should be enjoyable—something that takes mutual attraction or love to the next level.”

“You have no right to do this!” My anger erupts like a volcano, making my body and heart shake. His words are sharp talons digging deep into my flesh. “Don’t forget there was a time when I was with you and cried afterward. This isn’t fair—it’s emotional blackmail. You’ll end up getting yourself into the same bad spot you want to get Cyrus into.”

My fury’s a roaring flame, scorching Chase’s skin and abhorrent mind. He looks at me—his irises darken, but he doesn’t even apologize.

“My offer still stands. We can pretend. You could act as if nothing bad had happened to you and you were only enjoying life.”

I force a laugh and wipe my tears. “Enjoy life? When someone wants to make me his sex slave, a piece of meat he can use and abuse whenever he feels like?”

I look into his dark eyes defiantly. I’m dead serious.

Chase looks back at me with wildness, danger, and bloodthirst in his eyes.

“The skin of that guy will look great nailed to the wall of the barn,” he counters. His words make my stomach turn. The darkness and power in his voice sweep me up and bury me deep underground. I was wrong when I said I knew him. Chase is much, much crazier than I could ever imagine. He’s merciless.

“I’ll think about it,” I whisper.

“Think about what?”

I close my eyes and take a long, deep breath, then exhale.

“Pretending.”

He nods and looks at the road in front of us.

Grace

Mandeville, Louisiana

A camera isn’t the only thing that can preserve a moment.

A scent, a song, a movement, or a feeling can also be infused with memory—something the mind can summon at any time and recognize amid the countless stimuli the world keeps bombarding it with, 24/7.

These moments can resurface by accident at the most unexpected times, making us smile and filling our hearts with happiness—or doing the opposite, bringing tears to our eyes and submerging us in sadness.

Moments can be uplifting or destructive, beautiful or ugly, happy or sad.

When I’m with Chase Baker, it’s a whirlpool—every emotion in me, tearing through me in turns. One moment I’m ten feet off the ground… the next, I’m deep underground, trapped in a prison built from his sins—and my self-pity. These emotions are destroying me, pushing me away from him. But when it’s the pleasant ones that are swirling in the icy waters of my confused soul, I want to curl up against him. To get lost in his arms and pretend. To recreate the past in the laboratory of my mind. The moment he bandaged my wound in the van, and this time I don’t hold back. I kiss him and he kisses me back, then takes me home, and comes for me the next day instead of watching from behind a tree, skulking in the darkness…

I need to go back to the past to understand the present. The memories, the scorching heat, and the sweat sliding down my back will help me pretend. The truth is, that day I wanted to climb into Chase’s lap and kiss him feverishly. My heart wanted nothing more than his hands exploring me, his skin pressed to mine, his lips sealed to mine. But my mind stopped me, because I didn’t want to be that kind of girl. However… the truth tastes bitter, because in the end, I was just like everyone else. I was dating Billy because it was the right thing to do, but I was secretly fantasizing about Chase in my room—and I did something that was more than enough reason for my sister to hate me. I showed people only half the truth and kept the other half to myself, because I didn’t want them to think I was crazy.

I fell head over heels for Chase Baker the first time I saw him. And the fire of that “childish” love never burned out. Its embers are still there under the ash. I never doused them with water or sand—I only let time bury them, but I kept them alive beneath the thick ash. I fed them. Because there was so much good mixed in with the bad. Chase didn’t hurt me all the time, didn’t rape me every day. God, he did awful things to me. He kidnapped me and locked me up, but he loved me with the adoration and devotion that naive, dreaming girl craved. Chase wasn’t a knight in shining armor, but an evil prince who kidnapped a girl who wasn’t a princess—just a girl who also had some real issues in her head. But people aren’t purely good or bad. We all commit sins—some of us worse ones, some of us smaller ones.

I should’ve been more careful back when I was secretly daydreaming about Chase—when I’d sneak a glance at my diary before falling asleep, when his eyes were the last thing I saw that day.