I looked down at his hand.
He looked too.
His thumb shifted once, not a caress, not quite. A claim neither of us had agreed to say out loud.
I could have pulled free.
He could have let go.
Neither happened.
When I lifted my eyes, Declan’s composure was still there, but now I could see what it cost him.
“You’re not the only one jealous,” he said quietly.
My breath left me.
He glanced toward the event room at the end of the hall, then back to me. “That doesn’t make this simple. It makes it more dangerous.”
“I didn’t ask for simple.”
“No.” His grip tightened by a fraction. “You asked what we’re doing.”
“And?”
His throat moved.
The answer didn’t come wrapped in certainty. It came like something dragged out honestly and against better judgment.
“We’re past pretending it’s only control.”
My wrist burned under his hand.
Inside the event room, people laughed. Glasses clinked. My team existed twenty yards away, ordinary and unaware.
Declan released me first.
Not quickly enough to hide anything.
I stayed where I was, fingers flexing around the absence of him.
For the first time, the jealousy wasn’t only mine. The want wasn’t either.
And when he looked at me in that empty hotel corridor, I knew the next fight would not be about stopping.
It would be about what happened when neither of us could.
Chapter 16
Chapter 16
DECLAN
I walked away first.
It was the only responsible thing I had done all night.
If I stayed in that hallway with my fingers around Jace Holloway’s wrist, I was going to forget the event on the other side of the wall. I was going to forget staff, sponsors, cameras, contracts, my job, my marriage, his girlfriend, the entire structure of the life I had built out of discipline and restraint.
