The anger vanished.
Heat came back in its place, quieter and deeper.
“Your room.”
“Yes.”
His throat moved. “Color is still green.”
“I know.”
“You’re sure?”
That question, from him, here, with want written all over him, undid something in my chest.
“No,” I said honestly. “But I’m done pretending distance is keeping either of us safe.”
He absorbed that, eyes fixed on mine, the noise from the bar thudding faintly behind him.
“Twenty minutes,” I said.
He nodded once. “Yes, Coach.”
This time, the title was not a shield.
It was consent.
I watched him walk back toward the light of the sidewalk, dragging one hand over his mouth like he could erase evidence that was already burned into both of us.
Then I took out my phone, ordered a car I no longer needed, canceled it, and stood alone in the alley until I could trust myself to return to the hotel without looking like a man who had just crossed the last line he understood.
Chapter 19
Chapter 19
JACE
Twenty minutes was not a length of time. It was a punishment designed by a man who knew exactly how bad I was at waiting.
I went back inside the bar with my mouth still hot and my entire body trying to sprint ahead of my brain. The room was too loud after the alley. Music, laughter, glasses, Milo yelling about darts like anyone cared, all of it came at me in pieces. My shirt felt wrong where Declan had grabbed it. My wrist still remembered brick. My lips felt swollen enough that everyone in the place had to know.
No one did.
That was the awful miracle of secrets. You could be altered down to the bones and the world kept talking over you.
Roman looked up from the corner booth before I made it ten feet.
I stopped.
He stared at me for one full second. Then his gaze dropped to my shirt, my mouth, my missing jacket.
“Don’t,” I said.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You’re doing it with your whole face.”
“My face has concerns.”
