I Was Already Gone novel · Chapter 21 of 24

Chapter 21: Another Chance

Laney held the mic with both hands, and for a long moment she didn't say anything.

I had seen her talk to forty people at a birthday party without blinking.

Now her hands were shaking.

"I'm Laney," she said. "Most of you know that, because I was on a live stream."

Nobody laughed.

"I told all of you that Elliott was jealous. I said it in a dining hall, and I said it in this theater, and I said it to his face. I told him to sit down."

She turned and looked at me.

"I laughed once, at the wrong joke. Tonight I'm the one who has to stand here and be laughed at, if you want to."

Her voice cracked.

"He'd been waiting for me his whole life, and I laughed. I was wrong about him, and I was wrong about the person I thought I loved. I'm sorry, Elliott."

She held out the mic to me.

I took it, and for a second the whole theater was just her face.

"Thank you," I said.

It came right away.

I put the mic back on the stand.

I picked up the guitar, and the room was so quiet that I could hear the stage lights humming.

I sang the rest of the bridge.

"And when you came to find me, I was already gone."

When the last chord rang out, I didn't need to keep my hand on the strings.

Six hundred people stood up.

They didn't cheer at first.

They just stood.

Then the applause came, and it rolled over the stage.

Brecken was gone.

At some point while I was singing, he had walked off into the dark, and no one had stopped him.

← Chapter 20 · All chapters · Chapter 22 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend