“Yeah. I know a spot.”
We took an taxi up to Kerry Park, and the view was exactly what I remembered—the Space Needle rising up against the skyline, Mount Rainier visible in the distance even through the clouds, the city spread out below us like something out of a postcard.
We stood at the railing and just looked.
“It's weird,” Jace said after a while.
“What is?”
“This. Being here with you. Feeling... normal.” He glanced over. “I keep waiting for something to go wrong.”
“Nothing's going wrong.”
“Not yet.”
His shoulder brushed against mine as we turned back to the view, and we both froze.
Neither of us moved away.
“We're being ridiculous,” he said quietly.
“Yeah.”
“We spent last night with your cock inside me, and now we're flinching because our shoulders touched.”
I felt my face heat. “When you put it like that?—”
“It's absurd.”
“Completely absurd.”
We looked at each other, and suddenly we were both laughing.
A couple of tourists glanced over at us, probably wondering what was so funny about the view, and that made us laugh harder.
“Jesus,” Jace said finally, wiping his eyes. “We're a mess.”
“Yeah. We really are.”
But for the first time in days—maybe weeks—it didn't feel like a bad thing.
We madeit back to the hotel not long after that. The team was scattered around—some guys playing cards in the corner, others on their phones, a few arguing about where to get dinner.
Rook looked up as we passed and nodded once. No questions. No judgment. Just acknowledgment.
We headed up to our room, and the silence felt heavier the moment the door clicked shut behind us.
I spent the next hour answering emails and reviewing footage at the desk, but my mind kept drifting back to the day. To the way Jace had looked at the waterfront. To the sound of his laugh in the bookstore. To the warmth of his shoulder against mine.
Jace was sitting on his bed scrolling through his phone. He'd been quiet since we got back from our day in the city.
“Can we talk?” he asked quietly, setting his phone aside.
I closed my laptop. “Yeah. Of course.”
He stood and moved toward me, and there was something different in the way he walked. Purpose. Intent. He stopped in front of where I sat at the desk, close enough that I could smell his soap from the shower he'd taken earlier.
“What happens when we get back?” he asked. “When we're back under cameras. Back under rules.”
