Chapter 22
JACE
I sat in my parking spot for six minutes after I got home.
Maybe seven.
Time was slippery when I didn’t want to move.
The engine was off, but I hadn’t opened the door.
Cold seeped in around the windows, turning the glass cloudy at the edges.
My hands were still on the wheel even though there was nothing to steer.
The apartment building in front of me looked normal.
Lit windows. Someone’s TV flickering blue behind blinds.
A neighbor carrying groceries through the lobby with a bag of oranges tucked under one arm.
Normal people doing normal things.
I had dog hair on my hoodie, guilt in my stomach, and Roman’s text still sitting on my screen.
Alone?
Yeah.
The lie had only been four letters.
It still felt like it took up the whole car.
My phone buzzed once in the cup holder. I grabbed it so fast it nearly slipped out of my hand.
Roman: You home or still “walking”?
The quotation marks were very Roman. Dry, precise, and designed to make me feel like an idiot.
I stared at it until the screen went dark.
Then I tapped his contact before I could build another half-truth and hide behind it.
He answered on the second ring.
“Well,” he said. “Look who remembered phones make calls.”
I closed my eyes and leaned my head back against the seat. “Hey.”
There was a pause.
That pause was worse than the sarcasm.
“You in your car?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
“Outside your place?”
“Yeah.”
“Go inside.”
“I’m fine here.”
“Jace.”
I rubbed my forehead. “Can you not do the dad voice?”
“I’ll stop using the dad voice when you stop acting like I need to put your name on a mitten string.”
Despite everything, a laugh pushed out of me. It sounded rough. “I’m not that bad.”
“You once left your wallet in a smoothie place and came back with three smoothies because you forgot why you went in.”
“That was one time.”
“It was two times. Different smoothie place.”
I looked through the windshield at the lobby doors. “Did you call to inventory my crimes?”
“No.” His voice changed. Lower. Less room for jokes. “I called because you’ve been disappearing for months.”
My hand tightened around the phone.
“Not physically,” he added. “You show up. You play. Mostly. You make meetings when someone drags you there or scares you into setting alarms. You’re around.”
I swallowed.
“But you’re not around,” he said.
The car felt smaller.
I could hear something in the background on his end. A TV turned low. Maybe a game. Maybe news. Roman always had noise on in his place because silence annoyed him and company annoyed him more.
“I don’t know what you want me to say,” I said.
“I’m not asking you to confess to a murder.”
“Good, because my lawyer says not to discuss that.”
“Jace.”
There it was again. My name without the joke.
I stopped.
Roman exhaled. “Vanessa texted Rachel today.”
Rachel was his ex-wife. They had been divorced for two years and still shared a group chat about restaurant recommendations because apparently straight people were complicated too.
“Why?” I asked.
“She wanted to know if I knew what was going on with you.”
My stomach dropped. “Jesus.”
“Rachel told her to ask you.”
“Great. Love that.”
“That’s not the point.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
I opened my mouth, then closed it.
Roman let the silence sit.
That was his thing. On the ice, he could wait out chaos until someone else panicked first. In conversation, it made me want to chew through the upholstery.
“She says you keep pushing off Aspen,” he said. “Says you’re tired every time she tries to talk. Says you’re there and not there.”
I stared down at my sneakers.
“She’s not wrong,” I said.
“No, she isn’t.”
“I’m having dinner with her tomorrow.”
“Good.”
“It might not be good.”
“I didn’t say it would be fun. I said good.”
My throat felt tight enough that breathing took concentration.
Roman continued, “You snapped at Milo yesterday for asking if you wanted coffee.”
“He kept talking.”
“He asked one question.”
“In a very loud way.”
“Everything Milo does is loud. You know this. You usually threaten to buy him a shock collar and move on.”
I huffed once, weakly.
“You’ve been exhausted,” Roman said. “Not road-trip tired. Not game tired. Bone tired. You look like you’re sleeping with one eye open.”
I pressed my thumb into the seam of my steering wheel. “I’m sleeping.”
“Are you?”
“Sometimes.”
“Jace.”
“Don’t.”
He was quiet for a beat. “Okay.”
That made me feel worse.
I tipped my head back and stared at the roof of my car. My thoughts kept bunching, tripping over each other. Declan in the park. Declan’s knuckles against mine. Vanessa asking if she did something. Roman, on the phone, offering me a place to put a truth I couldn’t hand him.
“I’m trying,” I said, and hated how small it sounded.
“I know.”
“No, I mean it. I know I’m being weird. I know I’m late or I’m early by accident because I overcorrect, and I forget shit, and I’m... I’m sharp with people when I don’t mean to be. I know. I’m not sitting around thinking everyone else is the problem.”
“I know that too.”
I blinked hard.
Roman’s voice softened in a way I didn’t know what to do with. “That’s why I’m worried.”
The truth rose so fast I almost choked on it.
I almost said, I’m seeing someone.
I almost said, it’s not a woman.
I almost said, it’s Declan, and I know, I know, don’t look at me like that, I know exactly how bad it is.
Instead I gripped the phone until my fingers hurt.
“I’m not ready to talk about everything,” I said.
Roman didn’t answer right away.
When he did, there was no anger in it. “I figured.”
“You figured?”
“You think I’ve known you this long and don’t know what it looks like when you’re carrying something? You get twitchy. You make too many jokes. Then you stop making jokes at all. Then you start lying badly because your brain moves faster than your morals can file the paperwork.”
“That’s offensive.”
“It’s accurate.”
I laughed again, but it broke at the end.
“I don’t want to make you stupid,” I said.
“I appreciate that.”
“I already did tonight.”
“Yeah.”
The simple acknowledgment hit harder than if he’d yelled.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Don’t apologize and then keep doing it the same way.”
I squeezed my eyes shut.
He sighed. “I’m not asking for details tonight. I’m not asking you to say anything you’re not ready to say. But I need you to stop acting like ‘fine’ is a personality. It’s insulting, and frankly, you’re not good at it.”
My chest hurt.
“I don’t know how to do this,” I admitted.
“Do what?”
“Be not fine without becoming everyone’s problem.”
Roman was silent long enough that I heard my own breathing.
Then he said, “You’ve been my problem since you were a rookie who tried to microwave a fork in the practice facility kitchen.”
“It had foil on it. Different issue.”
“You are missing the emotional weight of my point.”
“I got it.”
“No, you didn’t.” His voice stayed steady. “People are allowed to care about you before you hit the wall. That’s not a crisis response. That’s friendship.”
I looked out the windshield because my eyes burned and I refused to cry in a parked car like a sad commercial.
“I don’t need details,” Roman said. “I just need you to stop pretending you’re fine.”
That landed so hard I couldn’t answer.
For once, Roman didn’t make me.
After a minute, he said, “Go inside. Eat if you haven’t. Text me tomorrow after dinner with Vanessa. Not a report. Just alive or not alive.”
“Those are the options?”
“With you, yes.”
I nodded even though he couldn’t see it. “Okay.”
“And Jace?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m on your side. I can be pissed and still be on your side.”
My throat closed.
“Yeah,” I managed. “I know.”
“Good. Go inside.”
He hung up first, which was mercy because I didn’t think I could.
I stayed in the car another minute. Then I got out before my body could decide the driver’s seat was where I lived now.
Upstairs, the apartment was exactly how I’d left it. One shoe near the couch. Laundry basket in the hallway. Bowl from earlier still in the sink because apparently I had never met a dish. I locked the door, checked it twice, then forgot if I’d checked it and checked again.
I ate turkey slices standing in front of the fridge because Declan’s anti-cereal campaign had apparently entered my bloodstream.
Then I brushed my teeth, plugged my phone into the charger beside the bed, realized it was supposed to be across the room, muttered, “Not tonight,” and got under the blankets.
The room was dark except for the thin bar of light under the bedroom door.
I was tired in a way that didn’t feel like sleep. My brain kept replaying everything in jump cuts.
Roman saying disappearing.
Vanessa saying I deserve more.
Declan saying careful is not the same as alone.
My phone buzzed.
I grabbed it too fast.
Declan.
Not a text.
A call.
I stared at his name, my heart suddenly loud.
He never called.
I answered before I could think long enough to ruin it.
“Hey.”
A small pause. Then his voice, low and close through the speaker. “Hey.”
It did something to me immediately. Not just heat. Relief, which was more dangerous.
“You okay?” he asked.
“I talked to Roman.”
“I thought you might.”
I rolled onto my back. “He knows I’m lying about something.”
“Did he push?”
“No. That was the worst part.” I rubbed my eyes with my free hand. “He gave me room. Like, actual room. And I still couldn’t say it.”
“You don’t owe the full truth before you’re ready.”
“I know. But he’s been watching me disappear, apparently.”
Declan was quiet for a second. “Has he?”
The question wasn’t accusation. It still caught.
“Yeah,” I said. “I think so.”
“What did that feel like?”
“Awful.” I stared at the ceiling. “Also... not awful. He noticed. I hate that he noticed, but he noticed.”
Declan’s exhale moved through the line. “That matters.”
“Yeah.”
Another pause.
Then I asked, “Did you call Olivia?”
“Yes.”
I held still.
“How was it?”
“Familiar,” he said. “That’s the honest answer.”