I've Died Here Before novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: It Was Never Serious

Holden ends it at Hattie's door in the middle of the night, the Voice says he rehearsed it, and the morning gossip posts call her dumped; an envelope from Dean shows a photo of her leaving the pier.

Hattie opened her door in pharmacy scrubs with a toothbrush in her mouth.

She took one look at me and spat into her hand.

"Who died?"

"Me," I said. "Eight times, apparently."

She pulled me inside by the sleeve of my cream coat and put me on her couch.

I told her everything.

The pier, the man in the gray coat, the voice, Giselle's hairpin, the Linden Room.

I even told her about the text.

Hattie listened with her arms folded and her round glasses pushed up into her hair.

"So you heard a voice," she said.

"Mine."

"And it saved you from a stranger."

"Yes."

"Then I like the voice," Hattie said. "Can it also pick lottery numbers?"

"Do not encourage me," the voice said in my head.

I jumped.

"What?" said Hattie.

"It talks back."

"Tell it I said hi."

"She says hi," I told the empty air.

"Tell her the left side of the couch has a spring that hates everyone," the voice said, "and that she's promised to fix it for six years."

I repeated it.

Hattie went very quiet, because the spring on the left side had been a secret between her and me for six years.

At 1:07 in the morning, someone knocked on the door.

Three knocks, even, patient, the kind I knew in my sleep.

Hattie looked at me, and I looked at the peephole.

Holden stood in the hallway in his charcoal coat, hair damp, no tie.

I opened the door but kept the chain on.

He did not look at my face first.

He looked at all of me, slowly, from my shoes to my hands.

Then he said, "You got home."

"I'm at Hattie's."

"Good."

His jaw moved.

"Addie, it was never serious."

I laughed. It came out wrong.

"Three years."

"You were fun. That's all it was. I'm sorry you read more into it."

"You came to Hattie's door at one in the morning to tell me I was fun."

"Don't call me," he said. "Your things will be sent over. Don't go anywhere near me, or anywhere near Giselle."

"Giselle gave me a hairpin."

"Then give it back."

He turned and walked down the hall.

He didn't look back, not once.

I shut the door and slid down it until I was on the floor.

"He's lying," the voice said.

"He just ended it."

"He's lying, and he's terrible at it. Did you see his hands? He couldn't put them in his pockets fast enough."

"Is that what an eight-time-dead woman knows about men?"

"It's what I know about him. And did you see how he looked at you?"

"Like what?"

"Like you were a ghost," the voice said. "He wasn't surprised you were alive, Addie. He was surprised you were standing."

I stared at the chain on the door.

"It's past one," the voice said. "Check the clock."

It was 1:09.

"Every other time, the day starts over by now. I wake up in the bed at seven with the gossip posts open on my phone. And this time, it didn't."

"What does that mean?"

"It means we're past midnight and nobody turned the page. It means this is the first life that isn't going to reset." The voice dropped. "Everything from here sticks. If we die now, we're just dead."

I did not sleep.

At seven, my phone showed forty-one missed alerts.

Someone at the Linden Room had filmed me setting the black card on the tablecloth.

The video had four hundred thousand views by breakfast.

Spoiled Girlfriend Dumped in Front of Entire Restaurant, said the caption.

Under it, a hundred thousand strangers had opinions about my coat.

Hattie came out of her room with her hair in a towel, read it over my shoulder, and said a word I won't write down.

"Don't read the comments," she said.

I read the comments.

The top one said, She deserved it.

I put the phone face down on her counter.

"I'm not leaving New York," I said.

"Nobody said you had to."

"Somebody is going to."

Hattie handed me a coffee, and then she froze, looking at the door.

A cream envelope had been pushed under it.

My name was written on the front in a neat, polite hand.

Inside was a photograph.

It showed the pier at night, taken from the far end of the boards.

In the middle of the frame, a woman in a cream wool coat was walking away from the camera, fast, toward the ferry landing.

Me.

A gray sleeve filled the bottom corner of the photo.

The time stamp in the corner read 8:38 p.m.

Under the photo was a card.

My sister would like to apologize for last night. Tea, Saturday, three o'clock, Hotel Courtland. She hopes you'll come. Dean Vickers.

"He signed it," Hattie whispered.

"He doesn't think anyone can touch him," the voice said.

I held the photo so tightly it bent.

"Then we go," I said. "Both of us."

← Chapter 1 · All chapters · Chapter 3 →

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