Chapter 30
JACE
Can you come over tonight? We need to talk.
I read the message six times and got six different versions of my future.
Need to talk could mean an ending. Could mean Olivia knew everything. Could mean he had changed his mind. Could mean he wanted space, or wanted me, or wanted to tell me whatever we were doing had finally hit the wall we had both been pretending not to see.
My brain did what it always did when given too much empty room. It sprinted.
Olivia kicked him out. Olivia guessed. He told her. He didn’t tell her. He regrets it. He loves me. He’s done.
I typed, Yes.
Deleted it because it made me look like I’d been standing by the door waiting, which was emotionally accurate and therefore humiliating.
Typed, When?
Deleted that too because he had already said tonight and I wasn’t trying to turn a crisis into a calendar invite.
Typed, I can.
Stared at those five letters like they were going to rearrange themselves into a better answer.
Sent it before I could start over again.
His reply came almost immediately.
Now, if you can. Park where you did last time.
I stood in my kitchen with my phone in my hand while the apartment made all its normal sounds around me.
Dishwasher humming. Refrigerator clicking.
Heat blowing through the vent. A container of cold pasta sat open on the counter because I’d taken two bites, forgotten I was eating, then remembered at the exact moment my life decided to become a crime scene.
Now.
Okay.
Now was manageable. Now had motion.
Waiting was where I fell apart. Waiting let thoughts breed in corners. Moving gave my hands and feet a job. Shoes. Keys. Jacket. Wallet.
Keys were actually in the bowl by the door, which felt suspiciously like a trap.
My wallet was not in the bowl, not on the counter, not in the jacket I wore yesterday, then somehow in the pocket of the hoodie I already had on.
I patted myself down for my phone, panicked for half a second, then realized I was still holding it.
“Unbelievable,” I muttered.
I drove to Declan’s house with both hands on the wheel and my speed exactly legal, like one mile over would summon every cop in Denver.
Streetlights dragged pale lines across the windshield.
Brake lights blinked red ahead of me. A guy in a parka jogged across an intersection with a paper bag tucked under his arm.
Normal people doing normal things while I drove toward the aftermath of a marriage breaking open.
I parked two streets away, same place as last time. Not in front of his house. Not where a neighbor could glance out and think, Isn’t that Holloway’s truck?
Same careful bullshit.
Different damage.
Before I got out, I checked the mirrors. Left. Right. Rearview. The street was empty except for a parked sedan with frost on the windshield and a trash bin tipped halfway into the gutter. Nobody was watching.
Probably.
I hated that probably had become part of my life.
The cold hit my face when I stepped out, sharp enough to help.
I shoved my hands in my jacket pockets and walked with my head down, moving too fast until I realized I was moving too fast, then forced myself to slow down.
My body wanted to get there. My brain wanted to arrive already knowing what would happen.
Neither one of them had ever been good at patience.
When I reached his street, I saw the driveway first.
Olivia’s car wasn’t there.
I stopped on the opposite sidewalk.
The house looked the same. Porch light on. Curtains pulled halfway over the living room windows. The narrow glow beneath the door. Nothing dramatic. No luggage visible. No slammed-open garage. No sign on the lawn announcing adultery and consequence.
But the absence of her car landed hard.
It made the whole place look hollowed out.
I crossed the street and went around to the side entrance because apparently we were still doing secrecy even with everything already on fire.
Declan opened the door before I knocked.
He looked wrecked.
Not tired. I knew tired on him. Tired was after practice, after a late flight, after three hours of video and a room full of grown men acting like toddlers in pads.
This was different. His face had been stripped down.
His beard was rough. His hair was messed from his hands.
His eyes were bloodshot at the edges. Sweatpants, black T-shirt, bare feet. No jacket. No whistle. No coach.
Just Declan.
For a second, neither of us said anything.
Then Tiny shoved past his leg like he’d been launched from a cannon.
The dog hit me in the thighs before I got fully inside.
“Oof. Hi. Yeah, I’m here.” I grabbed the doorframe and tried not to get taken out by a hundred and whatever pounds of emotionally unstable mastiff. “Buddy, we’ve talked about my knees. I need those professionally.”
Tiny made a horrible thrilled noise and pushed his head under my hand so hard my wrist bent.
Declan shut the door behind me and locked it.
The click sounded too loud.
I looked past him into the house. Living room lamp on.
Kitchen dim. A blanket folded over the back of the couch.
One of Olivia’s decorative bowls on the entry table, empty except for a single key I didn’t recognize.
It all looked normal in the way places look normal after something terrible happens, which somehow makes it worse.
“Where’s Olivia?” I asked.
Declan’s hand stayed on the lock for a second before he turned.
“She went to stay with Rachel.”
My stomach dipped.
Rachel.
Not just Olivia’s friend. Roman’s Rachel. Roman’s ex-wife. The one he almost never talked about unless he’d had two drinks and someone else brought up divorce first. The world tightened in that uncomfortable way it did when separate parts of my life started touching.
“Rachel,” I said.
Declan’s gaze moved over my face. “Yeah.”
“As in Roman’s ex-wife Rachel?”
He nodded once. “Olivia and Rachel stayed friends after the divorce. You knew that?”
“I knew they were connected. I didn’t know she’d be the place Olivia went tonight.”
Tiny bumped his head under my palm again, demanding service despite the collapse of civilization. I scratched behind his ear automatically.
Declan’s expression pulled with fatigue. “I didn’t plan it.”
“I know.” I swallowed. “I know you didn’t.”
It still changed the shape of the room in my head.
Roman already knew. Not because I’d been brave enough to say every word out loud, but because Roman wasn’t stupid and I was terrible at hiding from people who actually paid attention.
He knew enough. Maybe all of it. And Roman would take a secret to the grave if it was mine to keep.
That wasn’t the part that scared me.
The part that scared me was Rachel knowing Olivia’s pain. Olivia needing to talk. Rachel maybe piecing together the man Olivia wouldn’t be given a name for. Roman sitting in the middle of it without ever betraying me, but carrying one more impossible thing on that permanently annoyed face of his.
Secrets didn’t only hurt when people exposed them.
Sometimes they hurt because decent people had to hold them.
Declan watched me process that.
“She left this afternoon,” he said.
“This afternoon?”
“After we talked again this morning. She said she couldn’t stay here right now.”
Of course she couldn’t.
This house had evidence of me everywhere, even if nobody else could see it.
The couch. The hallway. The kitchen counter.
His bedroom. The stupid rubber duck Tiny had mauled while Declan had me pinned to the mattress weeks ago, both of us pretending there was any version of this that wouldn’t hurt people.
Guilt moved through me in a hot, nauseating wave.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
Declan’s face shifted, not forgiving me, not blaming me. Something more exhausted than either.
“Come in.”
I stepped out of my sneakers and lined them up by the wall because apparently I could help detonate a marriage but tracking slush across the floor was where I drew the moral line. Tiny stayed plastered against my thigh as if he’d personally been abandoned by everyone he’d ever loved.
Declan led me into the living room.
The quiet hit me harder there.
Not silence, exactly. Tiny’s breathing filled half the room.
The furnace kicked on. Somewhere, a clock ticked with irritating confidence.
But the house no longer sounded like two people lived in it.
No work bag on the chair. No laptop open in the kitchen.
No suitcase half-unpacked near the hallway. No second glass beside the sink.
It felt paused.
Declan started for the chair, stopped, then sat on the couch instead. I stayed standing too long because sitting down felt like taking a place I had no right to occupy.
“Jace,” he said.
Not sharp. Not coach voice.
Just my name, low and worn out.
I sat at the far end of the couch.
Tiny immediately tried to climb between us, discovered his body was not built for subtlety, and settled for throwing his front half across my lap.
I looked down at him. “Personal space continues to be a foreign language to this animal.”
“He’s been unsettled all day.”
“Yeah,” I said quietly. “I bet.”
Declan leaned forward, forearms on his knees, hands clasped between them. The tattoos on his arms shifted over muscle and tension. He looked like a man who had kept his composure because there had been no other option, and now didn’t know where to set it down.
“How did it go?” I asked.
The question was uselessly small.
He drew in a breath. “Bad. Better than continuing to lie.”
I nodded. My mouth felt dry.
“I told her I was unhappy,” he said. “I told her I didn’t want to work on the marriage.”
Tiny’s head was heavy against my thigh. I rested my hand on the back of his neck and kept it there.
“She asked if there was someone else.”
I knew it was coming. I still felt the drop.
“What did you say?”
“Yes.”
My fingers tightened in Tiny’s fur. “Okay.”
“She asked how long. I told her a few months.”
“Okay.”