He nods and pats my face.
“I know ... but she’s gone. Noah, everyone’s gone. And it’s just me and you.” My head drops as I almost buckle to the ground, but he forces it up again. “I care about keeping you around, motherfucker. So yougotta put one foot in front of the other and help me do that, because I’m not leaving my best friend out here alone. If you stay, I stay. And then we both get hypothermia.”
I give no reaction to the words he’s saying other than closing my eyes and nodding. Because I can’t. She took my heart, ripped it out of my chest, and ran away with it. I’ve got nothing left.
There is no recovery from the loss of her. My Goldie.
“Put your arm over my shoulder,” he breathes out. “Help me get you home. Let’s start there.”
He drags my arm over him, urging me to walk, so I do, but I’m on autopilot, reliving my last moment with her on a loop.
“Only if you tell me whether I’m marrying Noah Adler or Davis Keller ...”
“Please ... I can’t lose you.”
“I will never forgive you. And I will forever hate, Noah.”
The cold slices over my face as we walk, and my eyes stay trained to the cobblestone street. I don’t know how far we’ve gone when Chase breaks the silence.
“What the fuck happened, Noah?”
I’m watching my feet, concentrating on putting one in front of the other like he asked, hyperaware of the ache in the center of my chest as I answer.
“I happened.”
I drag my arm away from him as we near the house ... my house now. But I can’t seem to get my foot up the first step. I stare down at the stoop, holding the rail, dreading having to walk inside. She’ll never be inside to smile at me ever again.
“Dude, you can’t stop here.” He pushes me gently. “We need to get you inside—you’re fucking freezing.”
I drag my foot up the stair, slowly, only lifting my head to look at the door when I land on the last step.
It takes me a minute, but my heart jump-starts, beating a mile a minute, as I pull from Chase’s hold and blurt out, “Is she here?” because the door’s cracked open.
I slap it with the palm of my hand, letting it bounce off the doorstop as I tear inside, calling for her.
“Killer!”
My voice echoes around the emptiness, but I still scan every room, looking only for her face. Nothing around me registers as I run toward our room, desperate to see her. Praying she’s had a change of heart, that I’ll be able to explain and tell her the whole fucking truth.
Just one more chance to do this shit right. Please.
The moment I make it through our bedroom door, I grind to a stop, and cold washes over me as my mouth goes dry. The room is in disarray, shit everywhere.
But she’s not here.
I feel like the wind’s been knocked out of me.
“Dude, your place is destroyed,” Chase bellows from the other room. “They didn’t even steal anything.”
I reach for the wall and use it to help me back up three steps before I turn and walk into the living room. My eyes land on all I missed—glass has been shattered into infinitesimal shards all over the kitchen floor, and the chairs have been crushed. It’s as if someone beat them onto the counter over and over in a full rage, leaving splintered wood scattered across the floor.
Books have been ripped apart, pictures thrown from the walls; even the television is cracked.
There’s nothing left untouched. It’s all been demolished.
“This wasn’t her, right?” he says cautiously. My eyes land on thick slash marks across the couch, the stuffing billowed out. “What did she use, a machete?”
I circle the room, taking it all in as he keeps talking, and all my panic and fear begin to morph into rage. I can’t speak, but I can feel myself trembling as my eyes land on the front door.
