He releases my hand immediately, dropping it back to the wheel, his jaw clenched as he looks out the window. As if he’s afraid he just revealed too much to me.
The driveway comes up fast, too fast.
I can’t remember the last few turns. My mind is a blank slate except for the ghost of his heartbeat under my palm. The solid, steady rhythm that, for one damn second, made mine seem less erratic.
I pull in and kill the engine and the car falls silent.
He unclips his seatbelt, the metallic snap breaking the silence. I watch him, my eyes following the lines of his back as he leans down and picks up the bags from between his knees. He lifts them with both hands, cradling the plastic bag on top to prevent anything from spilling out.
He opens the car door and gets out into the cold.
A beat passes before I can move my limbs and follow him out of the car.
He waits for me at the front door, backpack slung over one shoulder, that damn plastic bag dangling from his other hand.
I unlock the door with fumbling fingers and push it open. The hinges creak. I step inside first, the warmth of the house hitting me all at once. Jace follows close behind and closes the door with a soft click.
For a moment, we just stand there in the entryway, caught in the quiet space between the outside world and whatever the hell this is.
He pauses in front of me, his body blocking the rest of the house. He’s close enough that I can sense the heat radiating off him.
“Are you sure you’re okay, Bells?” he asks.
I nod automatically. It’s easier than admitting the truth. Easier than saying I feel seconds away from falling completely apart that I can’t let him see.
He watches me for a moment longer than necessary. His eyes move over my face slowly, noting every crack, every tremor I’m trying hard to conceal. He knows it’s bullshit. That I’m lying straight to his face. He just doesn’t call me on it anymore.
He used to push, smirk, or make some stupid joke about how I overthink everything, how I can’t let shit go. Now he just… sees.
And somehow, that’s worse.
“Okay,” he says softly. The word is a surrender, an acceptance of my bullshit.
He turns and walks down the hallway toward the spare room, the plastic bag rustling faintly with each step.
I stand there, frozen, until the doorway at the end of the hall swallows him.
The silence he leaves behind settles like a weight on my chest. It presses down, making it hard to breathe. I need to move.
I force myself into the kitchen because standing in the entryway and staring into the silence is going to make me break apart. I lean against the counter, my palms flat on the cold granite, and look at the chair across from me. The one Dad usually sits in. The one that’s so empty it’s like a hole punched through the room.
No change in his condition.
The words detonate in my head without warning. A bomb in the quiet. They ricochet around my skull, bouncing off every raw nerve until I can’t breathe past them.
I blink hard, pulling away from the counter with a jerky motion, struggling against the tide that threatens to pull me under. I need to do something, anything, before I drown in it.
The sound of Jace’s footsteps on the tiled floor pulls me back from the edge.
My body moves on autopilot. I yank open the fridge, the bright light an assault on my eyes, and grab two cans of Coke. The cold bites into my skin, a welcome shock of something real.
I set them down on the table with a sharp clank, right beside the stack of books I left there this morning. English. The boring kind that Miss Mallory thinks is supposed to shape Jace’s future. A future that feels a million miles away right now.
Even though this is the absolute last thing I want to do right now, is to sit here and talk about symbolism and metaphors and whatever else she assigned, I have to do something.
He enters the kitchen and stops suddenly when he notices the table is set. His eyes flick from the books to the two Coke cans, then to me. A muscle in his jaw ticks.
“You’re serious,” he says, voice flat with disbelief.
