Chapter 15 #2
I stared at the safety card until the diagrams blurred.
“No, it’s fine,” Declan said. Warmer than he sounded with staff. Softer at the edges. “Did you make the connection?”
A pause.
“Good. Eat something more substantial than airport almonds.”
My stomach turned.
He cared. Of course he cared. She was his wife. They had years, a house, a dog that probably loved her, routines I didn’t know about, private jokes, old grief, old sex, old everything.
I hated how much I wanted to rip the phone out of his hand.
“That sounds miserable,” he said, and there was almost a smile in his voice. “Send me the deck if you want another set of eyes.”
I put my headphones on without turning them on.
Milo leaned over from across the aisle. “You good?”
“Do I look like I’m asking for audience participation?”
He blinked. “Nope. Retracting concern.”
I spent the rest of the flight irritated at seat fabric, air pressure, Milo’s breathing, my own kneecap for touching the tray table, and Declan Reid for loving his wife in a normal tone of voice.
By the time we reached the hotel, I was wound so tight I could barely follow instructions.
Room key. Bag. Elevator. Team dinner at seven.
Sponsor drinks at eight-thirty in some private event space because apparently travel days didn’t count unless we were paraded past rich people with tiny appetizers.
At dinner, Declan sat at the far end with staff. Olivia didn’t call again. I checked. Not because I had any right to know. Because my eyes kept going to his phone like a bruise I wanted to press.
He noticed.
Of course he did.
At the sponsor thing, I played my part badly but not badly enough to get benched from society. I shook hands, answered questions, smiled when Tessa’s eyes said smile, and avoided Roman because he was watching me like he was deciding whether to stage an intervention in front of a shrimp tower.
Declan and I got trapped near the same exit when a sponsor cornered us both to talk about leadership.
“Jace is a natural leader,” Declan said, professional and smooth.
I almost laughed in his face.
Instead, I said, “Coach is generous when he’s being watched.”
The sponsor chuckled, thinking we were doing a bit.
Declan didn’t.
Ten minutes later, I walked out into the corridor before I said something that could not be mistaken for charm.
The hotel hallway was quiet, carpet swallowing my steps. I made it past two meeting rooms before his voice followed me.
“Holloway.”
I stopped with my hand on the stairwell door.
“No,” I said.
“Turn around.”
I did, because apparently my body still hadn’t received the memo that we were furious.
Declan stood halfway down the hall, tie loosened, sleeves rolled to his forearms. He looked controlled. He always looked controlled. I wanted to wreck it. I wanted proof I wasn’t the only one walking around with my skin on wrong.
“You’ve been looking for a fight since the airport,” he said.
“Don’t flatter yourself.”
His gaze stayed fixed on mine. “It started after the phone call.”
There it was.
Too accurate. Too calm.
I gave a short laugh. “Congratulations. You solved the case.”
He came closer, not enough to crowd me, enough that my body tracked every inch. “Say it.”
“Say what?”
“What you’re angry about.”
“You really want to do this in a hotel hallway?”
“No. But you’re about to make it everyone’s problem if we don’t.”
The truth punched out of me. “You sounded happy.”
He stopped.
I hated the silence. Filled it immediately.
“With her. On the phone. You sounded normal and warm and like you belong to someone else, which is funny, because you do. So maybe I’m the asshole for noticing.”
Declan’s face changed, not a crack this time. A hit.
“Jace.”
“No. You don’t get to say my name like that and make me reasonable.
” My voice dropped, rough and fast. “You tell me not here, not now, not this. You fix my tie in a hallway, then walk back to your wife’s phone call and I walk back to my girlfriend’s table, and we’re supposed to what?
Keep breathing through it? Keep finding corners where you can look at me like you’re one second from putting your hands on me and then decide we’re civilized? ”
His eyes sharpened. “Lower your voice.”
“See, that right there. That’s the problem. I want to listen when you sound like that.”
Heat flashed across his face, gone almost instantly.
I stepped back because staying still felt impossible. “Then what exactly are we doing?”
He didn’t answer fast.
That hurt more than I expected.
“Right,” I said. “Great talk.”
I pushed the stairwell door open.
His hand closed around my wrist.
Not hard. Not punishment. Not even enough to stop me if I truly pulled away.
I stopped anyway.
The hallway went silent around the point where his fingers circled my pulse.
I looked down at his hand.
He looked too.
His thumb shifted once, not a caress, not quite. A claim neither of us had agreed to say out loud.
I could have pulled free.
He could have let go.
Neither happened.
When I lifted my eyes, Declan’s composure was still there, but now I could see what it cost him.
“You’re not the only one jealous,” he said quietly.
My breath left me.
He glanced toward the event room at the end of the hall, then back to me. “That doesn’t make this simple. It makes it more dangerous.”
“I didn’t ask for simple.”
“No.” His grip tightened by a fraction. “You asked what we’re doing.”
“And?”
His throat moved.
The answer didn’t come wrapped in certainty. It came like something dragged out honestly and against better judgment.
“We’re past pretending it’s only control.”
My wrist burned under his hand.
Inside the event room, people laughed. Glasses clinked. My team existed twenty yards away, ordinary and unaware.
Declan released me first.
Not quickly enough to hide anything.
I stayed where I was, fingers flexing around the absence of him.
For the first time, the jealousy wasn’t only mine. The want wasn’t either.
And when he looked at me in that empty hotel corridor, I knew the next fight would not be about stopping.
It would be about what happened when neither of us could.