Chapter 35. She Deserved Better

2024

Amelia’s POV

Did it make me a stalker? That I already knew who Chase Rivers was? Long before tonight?

Maybe. Probably. I didn’t want to think too hard about it.

It wasn’t like I’d set out to learn his name or face. It wasn’t deliberate. It just… happened. Coincidental, I’d tell myself. Though, in hindsight, “coincidental” didn’t quite describe the night I sat in my dimly lit apartment with a half-empty bottle of whiskey at my side, staring at my phone.

It had been one of those nights where the quiet was too loud, where the walls seemed to close in around me. My mind was restless, spiraling down paths I had no business wandering. Paths that led to her.

Amelia.

I hadn’t planned to type her name into the search bar. It just sort of…happened. My fingers moved before my brain could catch up, driven by some desperate, irrational urge to see her. To know what her life looked like now, without me in it.

And there she was.