Your Rival Saw Me Naked

Chapter 142

His mother lingered in the doorway. Looked between us like she was trying to decode a language neither of us spoke anymore. Her coffee steamed in a paper cup that said "World's Best Mom" in faded letters.

"I'll be in the waiting room," she said. "If you need anything—"

"We're fine," Chase said. Voice flat. Mechanical.

She nodded and didn't believe him. Left anyway because sometimes loving someone meant giving them space to fall apart in private.

The door clicked shut and the silence was suffocating. Not the comfortable kind we used to share. The kind that pressed down on your chest and made it hard to remember how breathing worked.

I sat in the plastic chair. He stared at the ceiling tiles. The machines beeped their steady rhythm like they were the only ones who knew what to say.

Finally, I couldn't take it anymore.

"What happened?"

He didn't look at me. Just kept staring at that ceiling like it held answers written in water stains and institutional paint. "Drove off the road. Down by the ravine near the old mill."

The ravine. Where the drop was steep and the trees grew thick and people didn't survive unless they were lucky or protected by something bigger than physics.

"Accident?"

His jaw tightened. I watched the muscle jump. Watched him choose his words carefully or maybe choose whether to lie.

"Does it matter?"

"Yes."

The word came out harder than I meant it to. Desperate. Like if I just demanded the truth loud enough, he'd give it to me.

Long pause. So long I thought he wasn't going to answer. That we were just going to sit there in that suffocating quiet until visiting hours ended and I had to leave without knowing.

Then he spoke. Voice flat. Detached. Like he was reporting facts about someone else's life.

"I wasn't trying to crash. But I wasn't trying not to."

My breath caught. Stopped completely. The room tilted sideways.

"What does that mean?"

He finally looked at me. Eyes hollow. Haunted. "It means I took the curve at sixty. Knew it was too fast. Didn't care enough to slow down. Thought maybe if I just... let go of the wheel... whatever happened would be an answer."

"Chase—"

"I stay in this town because leaving feels like abandoning Eli." The words tumbled out now. Like a dam breaking. Like he'd been holding them back so long they'd turned toxic. "Like admitting I moved on from getting him killed. So I build buildings and tell myself I'm honoring his memory. But really?"

He laughed. It was the worst sound I'd ever heard.

"I'm just scared that if I leave, I'll have to admit he died for nothing."

Tears streamed down my face. Hot. Immediate. I didn't wipe them away. Just let them fall while my heart broke for the boy who'd been carrying this alone.

"He didn't die for nothing."

"Yes, he did." His voice cracked. "He died because I was too much of a coward to confess. Because I let him take the fall. Because I thought my future mattered more than his freedom. That's not nothing. That's everything."

"Chase—"

"He was nineteen. Had his whole life. And I took it because I was scared of losing my scholarship. My perfect trajectory. My carefully planned future." He was crying now too. Silent tears that made the cuts on his face glisten. "So yeah. He died for nothing. For my cowardice. For my ego. For absolutely fucking nothing."

I stood up. Moved closer to the bed. My hand found his uninjured one. Held it like maybe contact would transfer all the things I couldn't say.

"You don't have to carry it alone."

He looked at our joined hands. "Don't I? You left five years ago because I was too much. Too broken. Too guilty. What's different now?"

The accusation landed. Not because it was cruel. Because it was true.

I did leave. Did run from the weight of his grief and guilt. Did choose my own survival over staying in the wreckage with him.

"I'm different." My voice shook but held. "I'm not running."

"Yet."

The word was quiet. Final. Like he'd already written the ending and this was just the part where we pretended it could go another way.

"I'm not," I insisted.

"You leave in four weeks."

"That's not running. That's going back to my life."

"What's the difference?"

I didn't have a good answer. Because maybe there wasn't one. Maybe leaving was always abandoning, no matter how you framed it. No matter what excuses you built around the exit.

"The difference is I'm not leaving because you're too much." I squeezed his hand. "I'm leaving because I have a job. A lease. A life I built somewhere else."

"And I'm supposed to what? Wait around hoping you'll come back?"

"I don't know."

"That's honest at least."

The machines kept beeping. The fluorescent lights kept humming. And we kept sitting in the ruins of something that could've been everything if the timing had ever been right.

"I fucked up," he said quietly. "At the fundraiser. Should've warned you about Amber. Should've stood up for you. Should've chosen you over keeping the peace with my mom."

"I fucked up too. Should've trusted you. Should've talked instead of walking away."

"We're both disasters."

"Yeah."

"So what now?"

I looked at him—at the cuts on his face and the sling on his arm and the way he was staring at me like I was simultaneously the problem and the solution.

"Now you heal. And I stay. And we figure out what four weeks looks like when we're actually honest about the expiration date."

"That sounds depressing."

"It is."

"You want to do it anyway?"

"Yeah. I do."

His hand tightened around mine. Not much. Just enough to mean something.

"Okay."

"Okay?"

"Don't make me say it twice. I'm concussed."

I laughed. It came out broken. Relief mixed with grief mixed with something that might be hope if hope came with a countdown timer.

"Four weeks," I said.

"Four weeks," he echoed.

It wasn't forever. But maybe it was enough.