Chapter 19
JACE
Twenty minutes was not a length of time. It was a punishment designed by a man who knew exactly how bad I was at waiting.
I went back inside the bar with my mouth still hot and my entire body trying to sprint ahead of my brain.
The room was too loud after the alley. Music, laughter, glasses, Milo yelling about darts like anyone cared, all of it came at me in pieces.
My shirt felt wrong where Declan had grabbed it.
My wrist still remembered brick. My lips felt swollen enough that everyone in the place had to know.
No one did.
That was the awful miracle of secrets. You could be altered down to the bones and the world kept talking over you.
Roman looked up from the corner booth before I made it ten feet.
I stopped.
He stared at me for one full second. Then his gaze dropped to my shirt, my mouth, my missing jacket.
“Don’t,” I said.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You’re doing it with your whole face.”
“My face has concerns.”
“My face doesn’t want to hear them.”
“Your face looks like it lost a fight with a bad decision.”
I grabbed my jacket from the back of a chair and shoved one arm into it, then the other, catching the lining wrong because of course I did. The sleeve twisted. I got annoyed, yanked harder, nearly punched myself in the ribs, and Roman sighed like I was a community service project.
“Sit down for five seconds,” he said.
“I’m leaving.”
“I gathered that from the part where you’re trying to strangle yourself with outerwear.”
“Roman.”
He stood, slower than I wanted, blocking enough of the room that I had to focus on him instead of everything else. His expression wasn’t joking anymore.
“You okay?”
The question hit the exact place I didn’t have armor.
Not are you drunk. Not what did you do. Not who were you with.
You okay.
I nodded too fast. “Yeah.”
He didn’t buy it.
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.” I forced my hands to stop fighting the jacket. “I’m going back to the hotel. I’m tired.”
“Tired.”
“Yes.”
“You won a game, drank two beers too fast, got mauled by a stranger at the bar, disappeared outside after Coach, and now you’re tired.”
My stomach dropped.
There was no accusation in his voice. That made it worse. Roman didn’t throw guesses around for sport. He saved them until he was sure enough to hate knowing.
I looked past him toward the hallway to the bathrooms, then back. “I didn’t get mauled.”
“That’s the detail you want to argue?”
“I’m fine.”
His mouth flattened. For a second I thought he might press. Roman had been my friend long enough to know when I was lying and my goalie long enough to know when a puck was about to get through.
Instead he said, “Text me when you’re in your room.”
My throat tightened. “Yeah.”
“Jace.”
“What?”
His eyes stayed on mine. “Don’t make me stupid.”
I didn’t have an answer for that.
So I nodded, because anything else would have cracked too much open, and got out of there before my twenty minutes became twenty-five because time meant nothing when my brain was on fire.
The walk back to the hotel should have helped. Cold air, moving feet, simple task. Get to hotel. Elevator. Declan’s room. Knock. Don’t explode.
Instead every step made me more aware of my body.
My cock was still half-hard in my dress pants, uncomfortable and persistent.
My mouth kept replaying the pressure of his.
The way he’d said color. The way he’d stopped, not because he didn’t want me, but because he wanted me somewhere safer than an alley with beer on my breath and brick at my back.
That should have cooled me down.
It did not.
I texted Roman in the elevator because I promised, and because if I didn’t do it right then I would forget until three in the morning and he would actually murder me.
Me: Back at hotel.
His reply came before the doors opened.
Roman: Room.
Fuck.
I stared at the word. My thumb hovered. My brain started building a lie, fast and useful and terrible.
Me: Almost.
Not true.
Not fully false.
I hated it anyway.
Declan’s room was at the far end of the hall, away from the elevator, because apparently hotels knew how to make bad choices feel cinematic. The carpet swallowed my footsteps. My heart thudded too hard. I stopped outside his door and checked the number twice even though I knew it was right.
Then I knocked.
The door opened almost immediately.
Declan stood there in a black T-shirt and gray sweatpants, barefoot, hair still a little damp, beard rough around his mouth. He looked less like my coach and more like a man who had been trying not to pace.
For some reason, that was what made me nervous.
He stepped back. “Come in.”
I did.
The door clicked shut behind me.
The room was dim, one lamp on near the bed, curtains pulled over the city lights. His suit jacket was hung neatly over the chair. His phone sat facedown on the desk. There was a water bottle beside it, unopened. It bothered me that I noticed all of that and not where to put my hands.
Declan noticed that too.
“Jacket off,” he said.
My fingers moved before my embarrassment caught up. I took it off and folded it badly over the back of the chair.
“Shoes.”
I kicked them off, then immediately winced because one hit the wall.
His gaze dropped to the shoe, then returned to my face.
“Try again.”
Heat climbed my neck.
I picked both shoes up, set them side by side near the chair, and straightened.
“Better.”
One word, and my body went loose at the edges.
Declan watched me take it in. He always watched like that, as if my reactions mattered more than his impatience.
“Color,” he said.
“Green.”
“Alcohol?”
“Two beers. Water after. I’m not drunk.”
“I believe you.” He came closer, stopping with enough space between us to make the restraint obvious. “Still, if I ask you the same question in ten minutes, I expect the same honesty.”
“You’ll get it.”
His eyes held mine. “No performing tonight. No guessing what I want and trying to become it.”
That landed harder than I expected.
I swallowed. “Okay.”
“You use red, everything stops. You use amber, we slow down and figure out why. No penalty for either.”
“I know.”
“Say it anyway.”
“No penalty.”
His voice lowered. “Good.”
The word traveled straight through me.
I wanted to touch him so badly my hands hurt. I kept them at my sides because he hadn’t said I could, and the simple act of waiting scraped every nerve raw in the best, worst way.
Declan saw that too.
“Come here.”
I took one step.
“Closer.”
Another.
When I was near enough to feel his body heat, he lifted his hand and brushed his thumb over my lower lip. Not much. Barely anything.
I shook.
His gaze sharpened. “Color.”
“Green.”
“Sure?”
“Yes.”
Then his hand slid around the back of my neck and he kissed me.
Not like the alley.
This was slower, and somehow worse. In the alley he’d been breaking.
Here he was choosing. His mouth moved over mine with control that made me want to climb out of my skin.
He took his time, small shifts of pressure, his beard scraping my chin, his thumb steady at the side of my throat.
I opened for him when his tongue touched mine, and the sound I made embarrassed me until his fingers tightened.
“That,” he murmured against my mouth. “Don’t hide that.”
My knees almost gave.
I grabbed his waist, careful at first, then not careful when he let me. He was solid under my hands. Warm. Real. His body did not feel strange because he was a man. It felt strange because I wanted him so much I could barely track anything else.
He walked me backward until my calves hit the bed.
“Sit.”
I sat.
He stood between my knees and looked down at me, not smug, not theatrical, just focused in a way that stripped the room down to us.
“Hands on my thighs,” he said.
I did it.
His sweatpants were soft under my palms. His muscles tensed when my fingers spread.
He touched my hair, not arranging it, just pushing through the mess like he wanted to know the shape of me there. My eyes tried to close.
“Look at me.”
I did.
His hand moved from my hair to my jaw.
“You did well tonight.”
My chest tightened. “In the game?”
“In the game. At breakfast. In the hallway. In the alley when I stopped.”
The praise settled differently each time. The game was easy. The rest felt like he had reached under my skin and found the places I expected people to criticize.
“I wanted to argue,” I admitted.
“I know.”
“I’m still kind of mad about it.”
“I know that too.”
“Annoying.”
His mouth almost curved. “You came anyway.”
Because you told me to.
I didn’t say it, but he heard it. His thumb moved once along my cheekbone.
“Shirt off,” he said.
My fingers fumbled on the buttons.
“Slowly.”
A shiver moved through me. I forced myself to slow down, which was almost worse than rushing. Each button became a task. Each exposed inch of skin became something he watched. By the time the shirt hung open, my breathing was rough.
“Finish.”
I pushed it off my shoulders. It dropped behind me on the bed.
Declan’s attention moved over my chest, my scars, the rise and fall of my ribs. I expected to feel judged. Instead I felt cataloged. Kept.
He pulled his own shirt over his head.
I forgot how breathing worked.
I’d seen pieces of him before. Practice clothes, rolled sleeves, the tattoos down his forearms. This was different.
His chest was broad and inked, dark lines over muscle and old scars, his shoulders big enough to make my hands flex with the need to hold on.
He looked like impact. Like control built out of damage survived.
“Touch,” he said.
My palms hit his stomach first. His skin was hot. Firm. The hair low on his abdomen disappeared under the waistband of his sweats, and my eyes followed before I could stop them.
Declan caught my chin.
“Not yet.”
The words made my cock throb.
“Yes, Coach.”
His inhale changed. Not much. Enough.