Chapter 8: Chapter 8
Chapter 8
Enzo Amato
POV
Some ghosts don’t haunt houses, no they haunt humans, they haunt your thoughts, where you’re constantly haunted by the thoughts of the what ifs. The what could have beens.
I’ve been asking myself, the same question for the last nine years now. What if we hadn’t broken up? What if I hadn’t walked away because all we did was hurt each other. I walked away like I was doing her a favour. I wasn’t a coward? What if I stayed, fought harder for us?, or I’ve been braver to whether the storm that had been us?
I constantly think about what my life would look like if Koah Harbor was still in it. Would we have kids by now? Would she still be dancing?
I leaned against my car, the thoughts weighing down on me more than it usually did. I felt a shamed of how easily I let people leave me. Chase’s words still echo in my head, the ones he didn’t say out loud but was thinking anyway.
I’ll be gone in two weeks. A part of me wants to look for Koah, just to know if she is okay, but another part of me is scared what I’ll find if I look for her. What if she’s happily married with kids and the thought alone stabs at my heart.
I’ll be gone in another two weeks, even when I was out there thoughts of her plagued me at least there I’m not tempted to look for her. I’ve signed my life away because a part of me felt unfinished without her. Like I was waiting for a life that would never happen. Enlisting made sense, my mother was in the air force and so was my dad. It also helped me outrun the emptiness I felt after we broke up back then. It didn’t help, it just stopped me from looking for her. To be honest the emptiness felt so much bigger now than it did before.
Koah used to laugh at how I’d pick her up over my shoulder and walk away with her, when she wanted to start a fight with a this or that girl. Most of the time She loved my calm and quiet nature, where she was loud and always talking about this or that. Most of the time I think she’d start fights so I’d take her away and we’d end up alone and we’d make out or find an empty classroom to, you know...
We were eighteen when we fell apart. We were seniors in high school, we thought we had the whole world figured out. We were too young. Too young to know how to hold on to one another. We were on and off, and we were hurting each other more than we were loving one another. Too proud to admit we were scared of hurting each other any more. I told myself and her, she deserved better than someone who didn’t know where he was going.
What I didn’t want to admit was that I was afraid she’d see right through me. Nine years later, and I still thought about her when the world went too quiet. That’s why I hated staying in one place.
I wondered if she was happy. If she’d found someone steady, I hoped she found someone who didn’t disappear for months at a time, who was gone more than he was home. Someone who could give her the life I don’t even know how to build without her.
I hoped she was safe. That’s the thought that kept me up at night, not the regret of letting go of the most important person in my life. Not longing for what ifs. No the worry about whether she was okay.
Some nights, in places halfway across the world, I caught myself scanning crowds like I might see her face looking back at me. People with the same eyes as hers, but no one had the spark she always held in her eyes. I’d check to see if they had the same stubborn tilt in their chin like she did. As if the universe would ever be so cruel as to dangle her in front of me just out of reach but no I was being cruel to myself.
I exhaled slowly, pushing off my car.
Two weeks. Did I want to make the last two weeks count or not? It was a question I’d have to ask myself for the next two weeks.
In two weeks, I’ll be somewhere else again, another base, another mission, another attempt to convince myself that I was protecting her from myself. This was for the best.
I got into my car and I drove away.
But I couldn’t stop the one thought nagging at me. What if Koah ever needed me and I was on the other side of the world. I wouldn’t even know if she’d call me. That thought alone terrified me more than anything waiting for me overseas.
====
Carly Lewis
POV
Walking up to Chase Jacobs house, the thought came again to me, This house didn’t feel like a house. It felt more like those houses in the movies and something about it was unsettling to me. A part of me was looking for possible exits.
It made me wonder what type of person I was before my accident? Walking up to the house it felt like everything was happening too fast, like I was stepping into a world I didn’t know anything about and it sent chills down my spine.
A woman let me in, I assume she was a housekeeper, she showed me to the guest room. The hallway walls were warm, lived-in. Framed photos of Stella at every age. I didn’t see any of her birth or ultrasounds. I watched her smile changing in the pictures, but her eyes stayed the same, the same dark green eyes as her father’s but hers was bright and held a youthful glow.
I hovered near the doorway of the guest room, suitcase still closed at my feet, if I stepped into the room, I’ll remember something I wasn’t meant to. I was afraid I’ll find something I wasn’t ready to know.
"The room is yours. You can decorate it as you please. This was a room we’ve never used." Chase said gently from behind me. "We cleaned it for you..." He adds.
I nod. "Thank you." I try to smile.
Stella comes into view she tugs on my hand leading me into the room.
"Come on." she said firmly.
She set me at ease. She comforted me in a way I didn’t know I needed.
Once my bag was in the room, she dragged me down the hall toward her bedroom like she was afraid I might disappear if she let go. Her room was soft pastel colours and different sizes stuffed animals and nightlights on her bedside tables, and dresser nothing out of place, everything controlled.
She climbed onto the bed and patted the space beside her.
"You’ll sleep here." she says firmly, like she wasn’t taking no for an answer.
I blinked. "Sweetheart, I.."
"No." she said, shaking her head. "You sleep here." she said again.
Chase leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed, watching us like he was trying to solve a puzzle.
"I usually sleep in Daddy’s bed with daddy, but tonight..." Stella added, then frowned. "But tonight you stay here with me."
I opened my mouth to protest again, but Chase beat me to it.
"Stel maybe Miss Carly doesn’t feel comfortable sleeping here and wants to sleep in her own bed?" he asks gently trying to reason with Stella.
But Stella wasn’t taking no for an answer.
Chase apologizes for his daughter’s behaviour.
"It’s okay." I said, surprised to find that I meant it. She set my nerves at ease.
Stella smiled like she’d just won a battle she’d been planning to win all along.
Once we were all settled, eaten, bathed and ready for bed, we were faced with another dilemma.
The lights were dimmed. The house quieted down and we were the only ones left in the house. Stella curled into the middle of her bed like it was the most natural thing in the world, I laid beside her. Then she frowned again.
"No. Where are you going?" she said, pointing to the other side of her. "Daddy you’re here."
Chase hesitated.
"And Carly here." she added, patting the other side I was laying on.
I froze. I was in a whole new territory. I knew nothing about this. How was I to react?
Chase and I exchanged a look equal parts disbelief and uncertainty.
"She won’t sleep otherwise. We’ll figure something out once she’s asleep." he said quietly. Something in his voice told me he’d already tried saying no. More than once.
So we were all in bed together, fully dressed, stiff as statues, with a four-year-old dictator arranging us like her own chess pieces.
Stella sighed contentedly once we were in place, curling on her side and pressing her back into my chest, her small hand gripping the front of my shirt.
Chase lay on her other side, one arm stretched protectively above her head. As head read her her favourite bedtime story.
Within minutes, her breathing evened out.
I stared at the ceiling, acutely aware of how close Chase was. The warmth of him. The steady rise and fall of his chest. The fact that this, this felt dangerously close to something permanent. Something about it scared me and give me a sense of belonging. It felt almost familiar.
"She doesn’t normally behave this way." he murmured.
"What?" I whispered.
"Trust people. Like this. Something about you brings her comfort in a way I don’t understand."
My throat tightened. "Neither do I." My hair stood on end. I didn’t trust people easily. It’s why I didn’t have any friends.
His breath hitched, just barely. But he didn’t say anything.
The house settled around us, the silence broken only by Stella’s soft breaths and the distant hum of the heater.
I should’ve felt like an outsider. Instead of feeling like an outsider, I was lying there with a little girl who refused to let me go and a man who looked at me like he was afraid to blink, that something would hurt his daughter.
It felt like I was coming home to something I didn’t remember losing and that scared me more than anything.
Why did this family of father and daughter remind me of something I’ve lost? Yet I had no memory of losing anything...
