Page 140 of Keep Me Never
I drop onto the first bench I find, staring out at nothing and thinking about everything.
Forty-eight hours.
I can make it through forty-eight hours without losing my damn mind.
After that?
Who the fuck knows.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Chase
I watch her move around the room, darting from the dresser to her suitcase making sure everything is in perfect order. She’s so damn excited, and it’s painful to see. The look in her eyes when she talks about her trip, the happiness and freedom, it’s everything she deserves. And I’m about to take it away from her. The thought hits me like a punch to the gut.
I can’t tell her. Not now. Not when she’s so happy, so ready to leave and just be.
When’s the last time she’s taken a trip?
Never. She’s never really had that. Her dad got sick when she was in high school, and then he died when she got to college, and she’s been here working her ass off ever since. Trying to build a life where she can have these things, but the world is cruel and had to take from her again.
The eagerness in her voice, the way she talks about spending time with her grandfather, how she has family again and she’ll get to learn about her mother—it kills me. My insides literally ache.
I should have done this sooner, and I don’t know if that’s why the guilt is eating at me or if it’s a bit of everything. I should have handled this before she even packed her bag, the moment I walked out of that damn office after I handed them that blood money.
Do it now. Rip the fucking Band-Aid off. Tell her what’s going on.
She smiles at me over her shoulder, and the sledgehammer comes down on my chest.
Can’t do it. I can’t ruin this for her.
Or maybe I’m just a coward.
The words feel like they choke me, the weight of everything pressing in, making it harder to breathe.
I want to groan, to bury my face in my hands and yank on my hair, but I don’t.
I keep it all in, something I’ve gotten really good at over the last couple of years.
It’s all I can do to hold on to the pieces of this that still make sense, but at the end of the day, she doesn’t need me to ruin this for her.
My gaze is glued to her, following as she bounces around, double-checking things she’s already checked just in case she forgot anything. It’s torture.
It takes everything in me to keep my emotions in check, to lock that wall and put up that barrier so she can’t see what’s happening inside of me.
“Oh!” She snaps her fingers, and a small chuckle manages to slip from my lips as I watch her drop to her knees and crawl half under her bed, pulling out a little box full of what looks like hair stuff. She starts digging through it, quietly humming to herself, and I force myself to look away, the sight too precious, too painful.
Only, when I do, my gaze lands on something I’ve never seen before.
I slowly push to my feet, reaching out for the photo on her dresser, and I feel my lungs squeeze. It’s the first time I’ve let myself touch something that belongs to her since I walked in, and it just so happens that not only does the photo belong to her but so does the man that’s in it.
Me.
It’s a photo of her and me, one that I’ve never seen and didn’t even know existed, and now that I’m looking at it, I wonder if I have one of us together at all.
My fingers skate across her pretty face and I bite the inside ofmy cheek to keep myself in check. With a small peek back at her, I slowly slide it into my pocket.
I’m well aware I have no right to take this. I shouldn’t. But it may very well be the only thing that keeps me going the next few weeks. I have to have it.
