I tucked him in close, my knees behind his, my palm spread over his stomach. He was still vibrating under his skin.
“Listen to me,” I said against the back of his head. “Nothing else gets solved tonight. Not Vanessa. Not Olivia. Not Roman. Not the team. Tonight you breathe, sleep, and let your body come down.”
“What if it doesn’t?”
“Then I stay awake until it does.”
He was quiet a long time.
“That’s not fair to you.”
I pressed my mouth to his hair. “Let me decide what I can give.”
His hand covered mine on his stomach. He held on like he needed the proof.
So I talked.
Not about us. Not about consequences. I talked about Tiny eating drywall as a puppy. About Owen convincing Nate he could grill a frozen turkey if he started early enough. About the worst minor league bus trip I’d ever had, twelve hours with no heat and a rookie who wouldn’t stop playing harmonica until our captain threw it out a window at a gas station.
Jace’s breathing changed halfway through the harmonica story.
His body got heavier. His fingers loosened around mine. Every so often, he twitched like his brain was still firing off alarms in sleep, and I tightened my arm until he settled.
Sometime after midnight, he finally went under.
I didn’t sleep for a long time.
I lay with him in my bed and stared at the dark wall, feeling the shape of him against me and the shape of my choices around us. Olivia’s towel in the kitchen. Her shoes in the closet. Her name in my phone. Jace’s car outside my house.
I had crossed lines before. I had told myself each one had a reason.
This one had an address.
Morning came gray and quiet.
I woke before my alarm, still curled around Jace. Tiny snored from the floor with obscene commitment. Jace was asleep on his stomach now, one arm under the pillow, hair wrecked, mouth soft. Without the movement and the jokes and the sharp brightness of him, he looked painfully unguarded.
I liked him here.
That truth landed without mercy.
I liked his clothes on my chair. His phone charging on my dresser. His bare foot hooked outside the blanket. I liked that Tiny had accepted him as if the house had been waiting for him. I liked waking up and not feeling the immediate, familiar emptiness of a room built for two people who rarely occupied it together.
Then guilt followed, heavy and deserved.
Olivia and I needed to talk.
Not someday. Not when the timing was convenient. Not after I figured out how to make the damage smaller. There was no clean version left. There was only honest or cowardly.
Jace shifted.
His eyes opened slowly, unfocused at first. Then they found me.
“You’re staring,” he mumbled.
“Yes.”
“Creepy.”
