“I wasn’t.”
“You were.”
“I was a little.”
“Then stop.”
That got his breathing steadier by a fraction.
I unzipped his jacket and eased it off his shoulders. He let me. That trust moved through me like heat under skin. I hung it on the hook by the door, then bent and tugged his sneakers loose one at a time. He looked down at me like he didn’t know what to do with being cared for in such a plain way.
“Phone,” I said.
He blinked. “What?”
“Phone.”
He patted the wrong pocket first, then the right, then handed it over. His fingers were cold. I checked the screen, not his messages, just the battery and notifications crowding the top.
“Text Roman,” I said. “Alive.”
He winced. “Now?”
“Now.”
He took the phone back, thumbs moving too fast and then stopping. “If I text weird, he’ll call.”
“Then text simple.”
Jace swallowed, typed, erased, typed again, and showed me without being asked.
Alive. Home safe. Talk tomorrow.
The word home sat there between us.
He noticed a second after I did.
“Fuck,” he whispered. “I didn’t mean...”
“Send it.”
He looked at me.
“Send it, Jace.”
He did.
I took the phone and set it on the entry table. “Kitchen.”
“I don’t think I can eat.”
“You don’t have to eat a meal. You’re having water and two bites of something.”
“That sounds like a hostage situation.”
“It’s a cracker situation. Keep moving.”
Tiny escorted us with great seriousness, shoulder pressed to Jace’s thigh like he had been assigned protective detail. In the kitchen, Jace finally looked around. Not much. Enough to see the coffee mug in the sink, Tiny’s massive food bowl, the mail stacked by the counter, the dish towel Olivia had bought inVermont three years ago because she’d said mine looked like evidence.
