CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

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2018

          I'd always been an anxious person.

          There had never been a proper diagnosis, no, but it was something that had been with me ever since I could remember. It had started off as an unnerving tendency to second guess everything I did, said, or even thought, and people just passed it off as an inability to make up my mind. After it started evolving into constant worry and uneasiness, an attention to details that could very well not even be a possibility, I'd lost my ability to stay focused on the task at hand. My grades plummeted, the first red flag around my parents, and they had been notified of me snapping at teachers and classmates and falling asleep in class, seeing as I wasn't getting much sleep at home, unable to turn off my brain.

          I couldn't stop thinking. I couldn't understand why everyone else around me could do it just fine, once again reminding me I was the problem everywhere I went, and all I wanted was for it to stop. I wanted to stop worrying about things no one else was concerned about; I wanted to not constantly picture the worst-case scenario in every situation. Most of all, I wanted someone to take a good look at me and realize I wasn't okay and tell me that I could stop pretending to be. As the years went on and I started growing more independent and distant from my parents, I'd gotten a little bit better; at least, I was no longer falling asleep where I shouldn't. My grades were okay, adequate, even, and I was successfully fooling everyone.

          To them, I was okay. To them, there was no inner turmoil eating me alive with each step I took. As long as I appeared normal, no one would ever know about the fist permanently wrapped around my heart or about my struggles with the recurrent feelings of inadequacy and fears my mind would explode from all the worrying and overthinking. It was like drowning on dry land—the silent killer, made only that much more unstoppable with the lack of means for it to do so, but powering through it and leaving me helpless, with no lifeline to turn to.

          That was how I currently felt.

          I didn't know how to tell Chase about Stephen. Nothing in my life had ever prepared me for such a conversation and I had no previous knowledge or experience to fall back on, so it was every man for himself, but I still had to be extra cautious when I chose to approach the subject. If this were any normal relationship, it wouldn't be nearly as difficult to come up with a solution, but our circumstances were far from normal.

          We had never set the boundaries for our relationship, nor had we ever given it a name. Things had moved on incredibly quickly and we hadn't known each other for that long, which would be a red flag for anyone else, but I wanted to believe it was different for us. It was then that I stopped to think about all the excuses I built in my head to justify all of this—the secrecy, the sneaking around, the things that didn't seem quite okay—but maybe they weren't excuses. They could very well be rational explanations, maybe even emotionally-fueled justifications, but I was coming to terms with it all being a product of my fearful imagination. Maybe things had moved too quickly for comfort, maybe that had been the first mistake, but I had already given it so much of myself I couldn't turn my back and pretend it meant nothing.

          Realistically, I knew no one ever had fallen this hard, this fast for someone else, yet there I was, living proof of what going all in truly meant. It was mortifying just how dependent on him I was, even more so when I was so hyper aware of that fact, second guessing everything I did, everything I said just so it wouldn't be that obvious to him—and, most importantly, to other people—and I was filled with sheer horror at the realization that it could easily pass off as obsession. The second he thought I was just an obsessed little girl, the second he realized I simply was not good enough, it would be the end of us. It would be the end of the one thing I couldn't afford to lose, the one person who knew me, and how did one come back from that?

          "You okay over there?"

          A familiar voice pulled me out of my torturous mental monologue and my neck snapped to the side to follow it like a moth to a flame. Ingrid made her way towards me, holding two cardboard cups, and the smell of scorching hot coffee undulated my way.

          "Yes," I replied, wondering if the tremors in my voice were, too, in my head.

          "Would you kill me if I said you don't look okay?" I shot her a nervous smile to avoid answering her verbally. Any other answers probably wouldn't satisfy her, and I didn't have the mental energy to come up with a plausible excuse, so I could only hope she'd assume I was still rattled from the frat party and its repercussions. I was, so it wouldn't be a complete lie, but I didn't like the person I was turning into. "What's up?"

          "Just trying to catch up on all the coursework I missed. How did you know I was here?"

          "Just a hunch." She pulled the chair in front of me and settled into her new seat, pushing one of the cups towards me. "This is a peace offering from Savannah. She asked me to ask you when you'll finally talk to her again."

          "I'm not mad at her."

          "Well, she thinks you are. I'm not getting involved in this any more than strictly necessary." I bit my tongue so I wouldn't say exactly what was on my mind—both of them had involved me in their feud against my will more times than I could count, and it was frankly ironic that she had the nerve to tell me such a thing. "She also wants to know if you've already made a decision about the housing situation. Well, I want to know more than she does, but you know. It affects all three of us. Neither of us want to go forward with this plan without you."

          I had to admit I'd had much more important things to think about besides that.

          Two full weeks had passed since I first met Stephen Delaroux and the only thing on my mind had been how to explain that whole situation to Chase, so I hadn't had much time to think about moving in with two people who could barely stand each other. This was also the longest I'd gone without uttering a word to Sav, who still sat next to me in all our classes, but I had yet to hear a proper apology that didn't revolve around herself. I wasn't sure I'd ever get something like that and maybe I was waiting this long for something I wouldn't get, but I didn't want to lose hope that at least one good thing would come out of this.

          "I don't know," I eventually replied.

          This hardly felt like an appropriate conversation to have in a library, especially when I'd just told her I needed to catch up on coursework, but I doubted Ingrid cared. She skipped lectures more often than anyone I knew, something my parents would be horrified by if they found out about it—or if they found out someone like that was someone I was friends with—and sometimes I found myself wondering why she was still in college when she didn't appear to like it that much.

          There were times when I wasn't sure whether we were actually friends or not, if she just kept me around for convenience. It wasn't something I could talk to her about or even think about doing it without obsessing over all the ways it could go south, so it was yet another thing I kept to myself.

          She'd been so alluring to me at first, both before I met her and right after I did, but we were far too different to even complement each other. I never knew what she was thinking, if she had my best interests at heart or if she was trying to save face—or if she even cared about saving face—and I hated the uncertainty of not knowing where we stood. I wanted to trust her, desperately so, and it was mortifying just how dependent on her I felt, but there was something holding me back.

          "At least come see the apartment," she offered. "It's huge. We'll all have a room of our own. I know you like your privacy."

          I scowled, glad I had a cup of coffee to hide behind. If she truly knew how much I valued my peace and quiet and constantly regretted opening up to people, then all this insisting was meant to rile me up. If that were true, it just made me wonder why I still bothered pretending not to see it.

          "I'll think about it."

          "Please do and let me know. You don't have to commit to a decision yet; I'm just asking you to come check it out for yourself."

          I couldn't stop thinking about how she'd even apologized to me the last time we had this conversation—she apologized for having put me in this situation, where I constantly had to choose between her and Savannah. Now that I had chosen neither of them, she was antagonizing me instead. Maybe I was reading too much into her words and her tone, but I didn't know how to wire my brain into working differently. It was an exhausting and depressing way to live, constantly second-guessing people's intentions, and all I wanted was to be able to fully trust someone.

          I trusted Chase, though, which had broken all my rules, over and over again, and I hadn't regretted it for a second. I was far more concerned with breaking his trust, something I never considered to be possible just a few months ago. A few months ago, I would have been caught dead before placing myself in my current circumstances, but there were moments I wouldn't trade for the world. All my foundations had been demolished in an instant by this wrecking ball of a man and I knew it should have rattled me a lot more, shipwrecked me a lot more, but it was like my mind had molded to this new reality on its own, like it had always known it was meant to happen.

          I'd never felt more alive than I did when I was with him—though one could blame the exhilarating adrenaline of sneaking around—and maybe it was thanks to the novelty of it all. That only terrified me about what was to come, once we settled into a routine, albeit strange considering the secrecy and all the rules that definitely couldn't be broken, and I didn't want him to get bored or sick of me. I got sick of myself on a quasi-daily basis and wouldn't wish such a thing upon anyone, let alone him.

          There wasn't much I could offer him, at least when compared to the other way around, and I was just nineteen, just a college freshman who had little to no life experience. My parents' lives and everything that entailed aside, I was painfully, undeniably average.

          Once it dawned on me that I wouldn't be able to focus on anything besides Chase and Stephen, I gathered my belongings, threw out my now empty coffee cup—drained in record time, even for me—and made my way out of the campus library. I'd been spending a lot more time there than I ever had, now that midterms were approaching, and it was unsettling how lonely that place could be, even while surrounded by so many people. Though I enjoyed spending time by myself, there was a difference between that and plain ugly loneliness, which felt more like a demon clawing its way inside me.

          Outside, I huffed in relief, glad to get some fresh air for once. It was cold already, even though the temperatures would keep dropping as fall gave way to winter, and the frigid wind burned my nose, but it beat suffocating with disappointment inside.

          In the distance, I spotted Savannah and her other friends—minus Paul and the other one, the protagonist of many of my nightmares—and most of them looked somber. Even when I hunched forward to try and make myself smaller so none of them could detect my presence, I was worried I was still attracting unnecessary attention, especially now that I'd been called to the station to give yet another statement.

          They had a solid case in their hands, they'd told me, while I sat there and attempted to figure out whether that was an empty promise or not. I'd been helpful by pushing them to investigate—that had been mostly Chase's doing, not mine—and other girls had come forward with vital information. The DNA evidence had been a great piece of evidence. The dean himself had issued an official declaration about how it was an ongoing investigation and no predatory and/or inappropriate behavior on campus would be allowed, with frat parties being suspended for the rest of the school year, but this had been going on for years and no one had raised a hand to help those girls.

          I found it hard to believe things would go anywhere, but I wanted so bad to be wrong. I wanted justice, not just for myself but for them, too; there were influential families on the board, hush money on the table, and I was a nobody when compared to some of my classmates. What could I possibly do to help when all those pleas had gone unheard for so long?

          I lowered my head on instinct just when I turned to enter my destination building, which didn't necessarily mean I was watching where I was going. My lack of awareness about my surroundings only made me walk face first against someone who had the perfect reaction time to keep us both standing on two feet by holding me by the elbows. Had we been depending on my skills to behave like a normal human being, we'd both be sprawled out on the cold floor.

          "Careful," he said. "We wouldn't want people to think you're following me around campus."

          His eyes, still so blue, were filled to the brim with amusement. Meanwhile, all I could do was pathetically stare up at him, my skin sizzling and burning where he had touched me—over my clothes, even—and everything I wanted to tell him completely dissolved on my tongue.

          "Sorry," I blurted out. Apologizing was the only good thing I was good at these days. "I should have—"

          "I was joking."

          "Yeah. I know." I exhaled through my mouth, glancing at Savannah's group one last time. When Chase followed my stare, his shoulders instantly stiffened. I doubted he'd ever forgive her for her involvement in what had happened at the frat party and, in a dark, twisted way, part of me was relieved by that, by the guarantee that there was someone unconditionally on my side. "Listen, I—"

          "Meet me in my office in five minutes." I nodded, clutching my bag's strap for additional grounding. "If anyone asks . . ."

          "I'll be discreet."

          Chase's thumb brushed against my hip bone, under my coat, then he spun on his heel to walk the same path he had before running into me. I waited, giving him a head start that I hoped would be convincing enough for anyone who could be watching, then made my way towards his office, heart skipping in anticipation. I was nauseous now, too, which made things far more difficult than they should be, even though I knew the best course of action would simply be to be honest with him.

          In his office, I found him standing by the window, talking on the phone, and he gestured at me to close the door behind him. I couldn't quite decipher his facial expression, though his brows were furrowed, a crease forming in between them, and his jaw was clenched tight as he stared at the fog engulfing the campus. I didn't want to overstay my welcome by pulling a chair and sitting down, so I waited by the door for my turn to speak.

          "Yeah," he said, to the person on the other side of the line. "It's great to hear from you, too. I'll see what I can do."

          I shifted in my place.

          I didn't want to be the type of person to get jealous over a phone call I was eavesdropping on and getting no context about, but my insides coiled around themselves. What comforted me was that he was no longer in the good mood from before and all that had happened between those two moments was that phone call, which meant I'd successfully avoided doing something wrong. The selfishness of it all sickened me and I tightened my hold on the back of an armchair to help root myself in reality once more. I'd rather have him not be upset at all.

          When he turned to me after hanging up the call, I suddenly felt a lot smaller than I actually was. He held the room together just by standing there, hands stuffed into the pockets of his jeans, and it made it so much more obvious how dangerous this game we were playing was. In here, I would never be his equal, no matter how hard we pretended, no matter how desperately I tried to fake not being bothered by that.

          "So, that was Stephen Delaroux," he told me, voice dry, and I could barely get a breath past my lips. "We'd lost contact a few years ago because he fell off the face of the Earth, but you knew this. Imagine my shock when he told me he'd met you through your parents and that you said you'd help us find each other again." I held the chair so tightly that, if I were any stronger, I would have shattered it into a million little splinters. "Penn, what the hell? Do you not understand the danger you've put us both in? The danger you've put my career in?"

          "I've been meaning to tell you, but I didn't know how. I wasn't trying to hurt—"

          "The rules are in place to protect you, not me. You'd be able to bounce back if anything happened, but this is my personal life that's being thrown into the mix, and I can't let this interfere with—"

          "Am I not part of your personal life, too?" I was embarrassingly close to tears at that point, which softened him the tiniest bit, but the damage was done. I knew I had screwed up by letting things go as far as they did—I never should have given my parents an opportunity to consider inviting Chase over—but I'd always had the best intentions. I didn't know how to not ruin everyone's lives, regardless of how much time I spent worrying about not doing it. "I was trying to get to know you. I was trying to get to know your mentor for you, for me, to see what he could teach me. He taught you. That's valuable knowledge to have and I need to make connections for the future. It seemed like a good place to start. I tried to do this one thing, this one good thing for both of us, and I'm sorry if it came out wrong. I'm sorry if it got messed up along the way, but I just wanted to help. You always look so happy when you talk about him, when you talk about everything he taught you and the moments you shared, and I wanted so badly to meet the person who makes you feel that way. I'm trying my hardest to be that person for you, too, and I can't. I'm doing my best and it's just not good enough."

          He huffed, running his hands through his already disheveled hair. "You could have told me. You could have fucking told me. I could have gotten you in touch with so many people from the industry, but you didn't say a word to me and you're expecting me to guess. This is my goddamn life, Penn, and I don't know how to look at you when you're just throwing it all away when I trusted you to keep things a secret."

          Had anyone else been talking to me that way, had I had any semblance of a backbone, were I a confrontational person, maybe I would have found the strength to turn my back on them and leave the room, seething, but something grounded me where I was. Behind his anger, I sensed disappointment, which was far worse than rage.

          Deep down, I knew he was right. It didn't matter if I had good intentions or not when everything kept breaking in my stupid little hands. Those good intentions had been tossed out of the window the second I started overestimating them.

          "My parents were the ones who pushed the invite," I muttered, in one last attempt to diffuse the blame. "I didn't want them to. It was mostly my mother; my father was worried about claims of favoritism and didn't want to put either of us in an awkward spot, but then Stephen agreed with her, and I didn't know what to do. I should have tried harder. I shouldn't have done anything at all. I'm sorry, Chase. I'm sorry."

          Chase dropped his hands and, for a second, I feared I'd broken him, too. All my trust was in his hands and, if he didn't trust me back, if he no longer did, then there would be no future for us. What kind of reality would that be?

          "You are part of my personal life," he said, "but it's different. It's complicated. You know it is."

          I swallowed the lump in my throat, finally releasing the chair. "I know."

          "We can try. I can go there, pretend I'm just there for Stephen, and see where it goes, but if anyone suspects a thing . . ."

          "They won't," I said, too quickly for it to be comforting. "I'll be on my best behavior. I'll be a model student."

          He relaxed his shoulders. At least, he tried to. When he stepped forward, his face was all sharp edges and defined lines, but his eyes were warmer. "We do try a lot, don't we?"

          "I do. Everything with you just feels so . . . effortless. It's like you don't even have to worry about the consequences of anything. Things just work out. With me . . ." I looked away, wiping a tear from my cheek with the heel of my hand. This time, he didn't reach out to comfort me like he'd done in the past. Even if he didn't notice that, I did. I was always the one to notice these things, the one to agonize over it and whatever it could mean. "Can you trust me? Just this once? Everyone will be busy focusing on you, they won't even notice me."

          Chase sighed, sitting on his desk, fingers laced between his knees. "I'll notice you."

          I dared to crack a smile. My lips were so chapped by the cold weather I mentally winced. "No one ever does. I don't mind. It's better that way."

          "Well. Guess we'll see."

          "Guess we will."

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the funny thing about this chapter is that it's been chopped in half because it's so stupidly long i figured no one would want to read it. oops.

double oops: i know i've been neglecting this book. and i'm sorry!!! i was focusing on finishing knee pads for the wattys, then the creators program came along and i needed to start working on final room, and then my personal life got in the way, and blah blah. we're back now! hopefully with a steadier updating schedule