I make him wait half a second, maybe longer, with my hand hovering over the lock as my heart pounds against my chest.
I press the button.
He opens the door and slides inside without a word, shutting it with a solid bang that echoes through the small space. The smell of him fills the car, something distinctly Jace.
I pull away from the curb, tires crunching on gravel as we leave the manicured house, the trailer, and his aunt’s judgmental stare behind.
Neither of us speaks.
The tension hums like a live wire neither of us knows how to calm. It crackles in the space where our hands rest—mine on the wheel, his on his thighs—close enough to touch but worlds apart.
I stay focused on the road.
He stares straight ahead, his profile like stone in my peripheral vision.
And somehow, even with the anger still simmering in my veins and the way he hurt me less than five minutes ago, the fact that he got in the car instead of letting me drive away suggests its own kind of answer.
It doesn’t fix anything. It doesn’t erase what he said or how he made me feel. But it’s something, at least. And right now, with everything else falling apart around me, something is all I have.
Chapter Ten
Lola
Idon’t expect to see Sam’s car parked in front of my house.
For a second, I wonder if I’m just hallucinating. Maybe exhaustion and emotional whiplash have finally pushed me over the edge, and my mind is creating illusions now to fuck with me. But no, it’s real. Her blue hatchback, parked crooked against the curb, the way she always does when she couldn’t care less about being straight.
My stomach drops as I slow the car and pull into the driveway, my pulse quickening for reasons I can’t quite name. The house looks the same as it did when I left it last night—curtains drawn tight, porch light still on. The whole place has that abandoned quality to it, that empty feeling of a home that’s forgotten what it’s supposed to be.
Jace shifts beside me when he sees Sam’s car.
He hasn’t said anything since he got in. Not a damn word. Just silence that hangs between us, heavy as a corpse, filling all the space until I can hardly breathe around it. My chest is sore from it, tender and aching in a way that has nothing to do with physical pain and everything to do with the fact that he’s right here but might as well be a thousand miles away.
Sam and Aubrey are standing on the porch facing the door, in a way that shows they’ve been knocking for a while without getting an answer.
They turn at the sound of my engine, and for a suspended second, everything freezes.
They see me, then they see Jace sitting next to me in the front seat.
Sam’s expression shifts from relief to confusion to something sharper in less than a heartbeat. I observe it happening in real time, watching her face cycle through emotions faster than I can follow. Aubrey’s eyes narrow almost immediately, her jaw tightening as she forms opinions, none of which are good.
I turn off the engine and the silence that follows is suffocating.
Neither of them waves. Neither of them smiles.
They just stand there on the porch, staring at me through the windshield with matching looks of “what the hell is going on.” Sam crosses her arms over her chest. Aubrey shifts her weight, her gaze flicking between me and Jace with the precision of someone cataloging evidence.
My stomach knots up.
This is going to be a whole thing. I can already feel it building in the air, that particular kind of tension that shows up right before your best friends demand answers you don’t know how to give. Answers that involve explaining why I’m with Jace Cooper and why the hell he’s sitting in the passenger seat.
I feel Jace’s body go still beside me, tension radiating off him in waves. “I can go if you want,” he says.
His voice is cautious. The first words he speaks are an offer to leave, to make things easier for me by disappearing.
I grip the steering wheel too hard, my knuckles aching from the pressure.
“No, stay here,” I mutter.
