Professional. Plain.
He nodded and kept walking.
I let him.
That was the work now. Not just the secrecy. Not just the rules. Not the nights that felt dangerously close to a life neither of us had earned yet.
Letting him leave in public.
Trusting he would choose to come back.
An hour later, I sat alone in my office. The building had quieted. My laptop was shut. My notes were stacked neatly beside my mug, because control still mattered, even when it no longer solved a damn thing.
I picked up my phone.
I could’ve written something careful. Something weighted. Something about how I’d watched him carry pain through the day without letting it make every decision for him.
Instead, I gave him what had helped him most from the beginning.
A plan.
Dinner. 7pm. Tiny’s already waiting.
I stared at the message after I sent it.
My phone buzzed almost immediately.
Jace: He knows I’m not bringing him anything, right?
Me: He refuses to accept that.
Jace: Relatable.
I sat back and closed my eyes.
Outside my office, someone rolled a gear bag down the hall. Farther away, a door shut. The rink settled into its evening creaks and hums.
Nothing about this was safe.
Nothing was clean.
Consequences were already moving toward us from more than one direction.
But for the first time since it began, it didn’t feel like we were living only on stolen air and bad judgment.
It felt like an unlocked door.
It felt like a dog waiting behind it.
It felt, dangerously, like the beginning of a life we might have to become brave enough to build.
Chapter 26
Chapter 26
JACE
I parked three houses down like I was in a spy movie directed by someone with anxiety and poor impulse control.
