I grabbed my basket of vegetables and turned toward the house just as Chase pushed the screen door open. He held his hand up to shield the sunlight and for a moment I was taken aback by the sight of him. He was golden in every sense of the word. Tan and blond and pure hearted.
“Your garden is lookin' good,” he said, eyeing the beds behind me. I followed his gaze and tried to see it all from his perspective. My garden was having a good year so far. The raspberries hadn't come in yet, but everything else was doing well.
“Thanks. Let me put some of these tomatoes in a bag so you can take them to your dad,” I said, walking up the back steps to the stack of folded grocery bags I kept in a basket near the back door. We both reached down for one, but he beat me to it. He whipped it open and held it out so I could drop the tomatoes inside.
When it was filled up, I folded the top down and gave him a small smile.
“You didn't really give me the chance to talk yesterday,” he said.
I swallowed and shoved my hands into my back pockets, praying he wouldn’t try and rehash the argument. It’d only been one day; we hadn’t even given the dust time to settle.
“You and I need time apart,” he said, holding my gaze.
I tilted my head and stared up at him, confused by his change of attitude.
“Not because I don’t love you and not because we won’t end up together. No. You see, you and me, Lilah, we’re a done deal.”
“Are we?”
He crossed his arms confidently. “I’d like to think so.”
I glanced away, trying to get a grip on the tears before he noticed them. I didn’t want to cry. We weren’t fighting or breaking up or screaming; that part was done. Even still, I couldn’t stop the sadness from welling up inside of me.
“But even if you don’t come back to me, I think we’ll be okay,” he continued.
I focused on the side of the porch, biting the inside of my cheek to keep my protests inside, but it didn’t work. They spilled out anyway.
“I thought you said you wanted to give me a happy ending?”
He smiled a sad smile that never reached his eyes. “Maybe instead I have to be satisfied with a happy middle.”
I shook my head, confused.
“Think about it. Does the ending even matter? Shouldn’t the middle be the happy part? It’s the biggest chunk of our life, and yet no one ever asks if two people had a happy middle. They care too much about the ending.”
I shook my head and wiped my nose, trying to keep the sadness hidden away. I didn’t want a happy middle. I wanted Chase forever. I wanted him until the very end, but he was leaving. He was agreeing that we needed space and if I wasn’t going to fight, and he wasn’t going to fight, then we were truly finished.
“It’s the middle that counts,” he affirmed, stepping forward and wrapping me in a hug.
My cheek hit his chest and I closed my eyes, gripping the back of his shirt so he couldn’t leave. I inhaled the scent of him and tried to memorize how warm it felt to stand there in his arms. I wanted to cling to him forever, to beg him to be my hero, but my lips wouldn’t move. I was paralyzed by the end of us.
“I have to go make lunch for my dad, but I left something on your bed that I think you should look at. It doesn’t have to be today, but you need to look at it soon,” he said.
I nodded and he stepped away like he was ripping off a bandaid. In one step, he stripped me of his warmth and from that moment forward, we weren’t Chase and Lilah. We were Chase and Lilah.
I stood on the porch as he headed for his truck. The air swirled with remnants of his body wash and I told myself he’d come back and fight for us. I told myself we weren’t over, but he disappeared around the corner of the house and a few minutes later I heard his truck rumble out of the driveway. I thought I’d crack, and maybe I did, but I still dropped that basket of vegetables on the porch and bolted upstairs.
I needed to know what he’d left me.
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Chase
A small part of me feared Lilah would never come back to me, but I didn’t have a choice. She needed space, and I was giving her that. I had to let her go with the hope that one day she’d come to realize that for her, I was home. We'd break out of Blackwater and start fresh somewhere without bad memories weighing us down.
I gave her space and I survived each day the same way a soldier survives war: keeping my head down and clinging to better times. As I changed my dad's bandages, I thought of Lilah in her garden. As I cooked my dad dinner, I daydreamed of sleeping with her out in the abandoned field. As I drove him to and from his hospital appointments, I resisted the urge to drive down her street to check if she was home.
“Do you want to stop at the store on the way home?” I asked as I helped him into my truck after the doctor had casted his arm. They'd had to wait for the swelling to go down before doing so.