Love at Last Sight

Chapter Eleven

            “But since I’m your boyfriend you can’t get those nasty thoughts out of your head?” he finished for me.

            I gaped at him. “No! I was thinking anything like that.”

            He grinned, sliding off his bed and heading toward his closet. “Sure you’re not.”

            “Just put a shirt on,” I grumbled.

            Laughing, he slipped on a thermal shirt before plopping down next to me again. “Okay, back to being serious again. My parents got their divorce a year before my mom died. At that point, we didn’t know she had leukemia. I think things would have been different if we did know though.”

            “Why did they get a divorce?”

            “They just weren’t in love anymore. And then my dad decided to move here for work, and because my mom couldn’t afford to take care of both herself and me, I was forced to go with him. The part of him blaming me for their divorce is true though. He actually blames me for her death and their divorce. Saying if they hadn’t gotten divorced then she wouldn’t have died…”

            My breath caught in my throat. What kind of father was Jack? Not a very good one from the sounds of it. Who in their right mind would blame their son for his mother’s death? Especially when it was because of a disease they had no control over? “Chace,” I started, placing my hand on his arm. “You’re dad’s a dick.”

            Caught off guard by my response, his mouth dropped open and he stared at me. After a few fruitless moment of struggling to find words, he finally began laughing. “You can say that again.”

            “There’s no way it was your fault your mom died!”

            He nodded. “I know this now.”

            “Now?”

            “Well, I was two years younger back then. I was sixteen when she died, and sixteen-year olds aren’t exactly the most levelheaded people, are they? I guess the grief just built up over the next year. I lost interest in basically everything. Stopped hanging out with people. Noah was really worried about me. My father kept blaming me for everything. It just got to be too much, you know?”

            Not sure of what to say, I just nodded.

            Chace’s eyes wandered to the window. “You know how I did it? I jumped off that waterfall at the end of your street. It’s such a pretty place. I went there a lot, so I figured I’d do it somewhere I liked. No one ever really mentioned the fact the bottom was littered with jagged rocks.”

            “There’s a sign,” I pointed out. “By the road.”

            “Is there?” he mused. “I never noticed it. You can imagine my surprise when I hit the water and a rock went straight into my spine.”

            A shudder ran through me.

            “You know how they say your life flashes before your eyes when you’re about to die? It’s true. Very true. I think I went through my whole childhood in two seconds. The drop is long, but the fall is quick. I can still remember the air rushing through my hair, whistling in my ears. All I was thinking was, no one would miss me. Typical of a suicidal kid, right?” A breathy chuckle left his lips. “I guess I shouldn’t have left a note. Maybe someone might have thought it was an accident. It would have saved me some counseling.” Pausing, he forced a laugh.