His voice slides through me like a memory that never learned how to fade. I turn, and there he is, hands shoved into his jacket pockets, jaw tight, eyes darker than I remember.
“You don’t have to chase me.” My voice comes out quieter than I mean.
He huffs a laugh that doesn’t sound amused. “Wasn’t gonna let you walk off thinking I didn’t feel that.”
My pulse jumps. “You shouldn’t have.”
“Yeah?” He steps closer, stopping just shy of touching me. “Then why didn’t you pull away?”
Because I couldn’t. Because I’m an idiot. Because I still want him, even when I shouldn’t.
“I didn’t think,” I lie.
He studies me like he can see through every defense I’ve ever built. “Neither did I.”
For a second, neither of us moves. The hum of traffic fills the silence, distant and low, the smell of rain thick in the air. When a drop hits my cheek, I almost laugh, it figures the sky would open up now.
“Guess we’re still a mess,” I say, half-smiling.
Jace’s mouth lifts at one corner, but it fades fast. “You ever think about what it could’ve been? I still think about you sometimes.”
“Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Make this sound like something it’s not.”
He shakes his head. “You think I don’t know what it is? You think I don’t wake up some mornings and still—” He stops, swears under his breath. “Forget it.”
The rain starts to fall harder, and I should turn back, find Emma, go home, do anything but stand here waiting for him to say something he can’t take back. But I don’t move. When his handlifts, fingers brushing a strand of wet hair from my face, I forget why I was supposed to.
“Jace,” I whisper, a warning that doesn’t sound like one.
He answers by closing the last inch between us. The kiss hits fast, hard and hungry, the kind of collision that burns. His hand finds my jaw, his other gripping my hip, pulling me flush against him. The taste of beer and rain and everything we shouldn’t be, spills between us.
I gasp when his tongue slides against mine, when his body crowds me into the brick wall behind me. The sound that leaves me isn’t polite. It's desperate. My hands fist in his shirt, pulling him closer, needing more.
“Tell me to stop,” he breathes against my mouth.
“I can’t.”
Instead, I let him guide me backward, deeper into the shadows of the alley behind the bar, away from the light, away from reason, where no one can see how far we’re about to fall.
That’s all it takes. His hands are everywhere, under my shirt, on my skin, tracing the path he remembers all too well. The rain slicks my hair to my neck, and the sound of it hitting pavement mixes with the broken rhythm of our breathing.
When he lifts me, I wrap my legs around his waist without thinking, the scrape of the wall against my back grounding mein the chaos. He groans when I roll my hips, the sound raw, wrecked, like he’s been starving.
“God, you still—” he starts, but the words dissolve into another kiss, deeper, slower this time. His mouth smooths down my throat, and I tilt my head back, letting it happen.
He sets me down hard enough that my back hits the wall, his mouth never leaving mine. My fingers clutch his shirt as his hands slide lower, finding the edge of my jeans. The sound that slips out isn’t planned, it’s raw, caught somewhere between a gasp and a plea, as he unzips and pushes them down just far enough, his body pinning mine, heat rolling off him in waves.
He spins me before I can catch my breath, my palms hitting the wall as his hands grip my hips, dragging my jeans down just enough. The sound that leaves me is half shock, half need. Behind me, there’s the rough slide of a zipper, the sound sharp in the quiet rain. Then he’s there, pushing into me in one hard thrust that steals the air from my lungs.
The stretch burns, sharp and perfect, and I bite down on a gasp as his hips slam into mine again. It’s rough, fast, desperate, the kind of need that feels more like breaking than breathing. His fingers dig into my skin, holding me in place, and all I can do is take it, meet it, lose myself in it.
He curses against my shoulder, voice ragged, the sound spilling into the rain. It’s over almost as quickly as it started, a blur of heat and motion that leaves my heart racing and my body trembling.
We fit together too easily. Every push, every pull, every shudder between us feels like remembering. Like falling back into something we never really left.
