He dropped the duck at my feet.
I bent forward, elbows on my knees, and put a hand on his broad head.
The house was no longer quiet because nothing was happening.
It was quiet because something had finally broken out loud.
Chapter 29
Chapter 29
JACE
I woke up before my alarm and hated that immediately.
Usually my alarm had to drag me out of sleep like a body from a lake. Three separate alarms, one across the room, one on my phone, one on my watch vibrating against my wrist until I wanted to chew through my own arm. This morning my eyes opened at six-oh-two, and my brain was already standing at the foot of the bed with a clipboard.
Olivia was home.
Declan had told her.
Or he hadn’t.
Or he’d started and stopped.
Or she’d cried.
Or he had slept in the same bed as her because that was still his house and his marriage and none of my business except it had my fingerprints all over it.
I rolled onto my back and stared at the ceiling of my apartment.
The room was too bright in the wrong places. A slice of winter light leaked through the gap in the curtains and cut across the pile of laundry I’d sworn I’d deal with two days ago. My duffel bag sat by the door, half unpacked, one sock hanging out like it was trying to escape. The hoodie I’d worn to Declan’s house was on the chair.
I looked at it too long.
Then I made myself look away.
No texting.
That was the rule I had made for myself before I even left his house. Not one he gave me. Mine. A thing I could do because I wasn’t a kid waiting outside the principal’s office. I was a grown man with a job and a life and a therapist-approved list of coping strategies I used maybe forty percent of the time, which still counted as progress if you asked me and not Harper.
Do not text Declan this morning.
Do not ask if he is okay when he is dealing with the consequences of choices you both made.
Do not make his marriage ending about your anxiety.
I repeated that in my head while brushing my teeth too hard.
Then I forgot whether I’d taken my meds.
“Fuck.”
I stood in the bathroom with the toothbrush in my mouth and tried to rewind the morning. Bottle. Cap. Water. Did I drink water? There was a glass on the counter, but that meant nothing. I left glasses everywhere. The pill bottle was next to the sink because last night I’d been responsible for approximately eight minutes before I got distracted by a highlight clip Roman sent me and then spent forty minutes reading comments I knew better than to read.
I picked up the bottle and counted back from the prescription date like a detective with poor evidence.
Close enough.
