“Feet still.”
His right foot stopped moving.
The room became exact. Not quiet, exactly. More focused. Breath. Distance. The dull shine of his phone facedown on the table. The city beyond the glass, irrelevant and bright.
I stepped closer.
I did not touch him.
“Color?”
His throat moved. “Green.”
Consent. Awareness. Choice.
Not a scene stumbled into because we were too hungry to think. Not me taking what had not been offered. Jace wasn’t helpless in this. He wasn’t being dragged by something he couldn’t name. He had gone looking for language because he wanted to understand what he was giving me before he gave it.
“Look at me.”
He did.
The noise in him hadn’t vanished. It never would. Structure would not cure his ADHD. Desire would not make his mind linear. I could not command away the racing thoughts, the time blindness, the overload, the sleep he chased and missed.
But right now, his focus had somewhere to land.
“If I tell you to go upstairs,” I said, “you will.”
Pain crossed his face before he got control of it.
“Yes.”
“If I tell you not to text me again tonight, you won’t.”
His lips parted, then closed. That one cost him more.
“I won’t.”
“And if I tell you to stay?”
His answer came lower. “I’ll stay.”
My control thinned enough that I could feel everything beneath it. Every bad idea. Every image I had refused to let form. His knees on hotel carpet. My hand in his hair. His mouth open, not with a smart remark for once, but because I had told him exactly what to do with it.
I stopped myself there.
Barely.
I stepped close enough to see the pulse working in his neck.
“I’m not going to touch you tonight.”
His eyes shut for a second.
Disappointment moved through him first. Then relief, quieter but just as real. When he opened his eyes, he nodded.
“Okay.”
“You’re going to take your phone. You’re going to your room. You’re going to shower, drink water, and sleep.”
