Chapter 31
DECLAN
Tiny stayed offended for almost twenty minutes.
He forced his way between us like he had been appointed head of emotional security, one hundred and sixty pounds of wounded dignity sprawled across Jace’s lap and my thigh. Every time Jace tried to shift closer, Tiny made a sound like an old man being asked to move furniture.
“Your dog has attachment issues,” Jace said, scratching under his collar anyway.
“He’s selective.”
“He’s a furry roadblock.”
“He thinks you came over for him.”
“I brought him nothing. That was inconsiderate.”
Tiny lifted his head at brought, eyes bright with hope.
Jace looked down at him. “No. Sorry. I didn’t stop at the store for a snack large enough to feed a medieval warhorse.”
I laughed before I could stop myself.
Not the controlled huff I gave in press conferences. Not the quiet sound I used around players when they were being idiots and I didn’t want to encourage them. A real laugh. Rough. Unplanned. It came from somewhere in my chest that had been locked up for so long I’d forgotten it could open.
Jace looked over at me, and his expression softened in a way that made the laugh catch.
“There he is,” he said.
I turned my head against the back of the couch. “Who?”
“The guy who isn’t one bad email away from turning into a granite statue.”
“That guy sounds irresponsible.”
“He sounds like he sleeps.”
“Unproven.”
“Fine. The guy who temporarily remembered he has blood pressure.”
Tiny decided my laugh meant entertainment had been approved and shoved his shredded duck into my stomach. It wheezed once, a sad little squeak from the afterlife.
Jace stared at it. “That thing is still alive?”
“Barely.”
“It sounds haunted.”
“He loves it.”
“He needs therapy.”
Tiny sneezed directly onto Jace’s wrist.
“Jesus.” Jace wiped his hand on Tiny’s side. “That is foul. I’m using you as your own towel.”
“You’re good with him.”
“I’m good with creatures who need snacks, structure, and constant reassurance.”
I looked at him.
He caught the echo a second later and pointed at me. “No. Don’t do that. I heard it too. Ignore it.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You thought it in coach voice.”
I smiled.
We stayed there with the television off, the city quiet beyond the windows, no rink noise, no staff waiting, no phone buzzing with a problem I had to solve.
Jace’s shoulder rested against my chest. His knee bounced twice, stopped, then started again in a smaller rhythm, like he was trying to be less noticeable in his own body.
I set my hand over his knee.
Not to still him. Just to touch.
He glanced down, then put his hand over mine.
“What’s your favorite movie?” he asked.
The question came out of nowhere, which meant it came from exactly where Jace lived.
“My favorite movie?”
“Yeah. And don’t say some documentary about a captain overcoming adversity.”
“I wasn’t going to.”
“You considered it.”
“I did not.”
“You have the face of a man who owns motivational hardcovers.”
“I own normal books.”
“Books about discipline are not normal.”
I gave him a look.
He grinned. Tiny’s head began sliding off his lap, and Jace caught it automatically, like the dog’s pride mattered. “Movie.”
“The Fugitive.”
He blinked. “Really?”
“What’s wrong with The Fugitive?”
“Nothing. It’s just very dad of you.”
“I’m thirty-two.”
“You have emotional dad posture.”
“You asked.”
“I respect Harrison Ford running from authority. I feel represented.”
“What’s yours?”
His mouth opened, then closed. His gaze drifted away for a second, thoughts crowding the exit at once.
“Depends,” he said finally. “Comfort movie, The Mummy. Brendan Fraser, Rachel Weisz, perfect cinema. If Harper’s there, Emperor’s New Groove, because she does every line and gets pissed if I miss my cues. If my brain won’t shut up, anything loud where cars explode and nobody has to learn a lesson.”
“That tracks.”
“You’re welcome.”
He told me about watching movies with Harper when their dad had late shifts and they were supposed to be asleep.
About Harper throwing popcorn at his head whenever he talked over the good parts, which apparently meant all parts.
He told me about being thirteen and deciding he could make pancakes before school because he’d seen his mom do it a hundred times, then burning three, undercooking one, and presenting it like a five-star breakfast.
“She ate it?” I asked.
“She took one bite, stared at me, and said, ‘Mom would haunt you for this.’ Then she poured cereal.”
I smiled, but his mother’s name settled softly between us. Not sharp. Not untouched. An old grief sitting down beside us without demanding all the air.
“She sounds like Olivia,” he said, then immediately went rigid.
I looked at him.
“Sorry,” he said fast. “That was weird. My mouth ran a red light. I didn’t mean to compare them. I meant the practical violence of competent women.”
I let out another laugh, quieter this time.
“Olivia would probably accept that description,” I said.
Jace nodded, but the humor thinned. “I hope she’s okay tonight.”
“So do I.”
He didn’t look away from me for that answer. He didn’t make it smaller. He let it be true.
That mattered more than I knew how to say.
After a while, he asked, “If things weren’t complicated, what would we do tomorrow?”
I stared at the ceiling.
Tiny snored between us, all trust and terrible breath.
“We’d sleep in,” I said.
“You? Impossible.”
“You said if things weren’t complicated. Apparently we’re inventing better versions of ourselves.”
“Okay. Sleep in. Then?”
“Coffee. Breakfast.”
“Here?”
“Here.”
“Do I cook?”
“No.”
“Insulting.”
“You nearly poisoned your sister with pancakes.”
“I was thirteen.”
“Have you improved?”
“I can make eggs.”
“Can you?”
He opened his mouth, thought about lying, then shrugged. “I can acquire eggs.”
I rubbed my thumb along his knuckles. “We’d take Tiny somewhere he could run.”
“He runs?”
“For a few minutes. Then he lies down and expects me to fix it.”
“Same.”
“Then groceries.”
Jace went quiet.
I looked down at him.
His face had changed. The longing there was plain and unguarded, and it hit me harder than anything he could have said.
“Groceries,” he repeated.
“Yeah.”
“With you.”
“If things weren’t complicated.”
His fingers tightened around mine. “I’d buy cereal you hate.”
“I assumed.”
“And those little oranges.”
“Tiny likes those.”
“Of course he does.”
“You’d forget half the list.”
“I’d forget important things, yeah. But I’d remember a sauce I saw online at three in the morning because some guy said it changed his life.”
“We’d come home with no toilet paper and six jars of sauce.”
“That’s partnership.”
I pressed my mouth to his hair for a second. He smelled like cold air, soap, and the rink, that stubborn trace of ice and sweat that never fully left him.
“What about you?” I asked. “If things weren’t complicated.”
He stared down at our joined hands. “I’d sit too close to you in public.”
My chest tightened.
“At breakfast,” he said. “In a booth. Not making a scene. Just my knee against yours under the table. I’d complain that your order was depressing. You’d steal my bacon and pretend it was for nutrition.”
“I wouldn’t steal your bacon.”
“You would. Quietly. Like a criminal with a meal plan.”
“Your body is your career.”
“My soul needs chips.”
“Your soul can make compromises.”
He smiled, but it didn’t last. “Maybe I’d call my dad and not walk into another room.”
I didn’t answer.
His thumb moved over mine, restless and uneven. “Not tell him everything right away. Just not feel like the whole sentence is a lie when I say I’m fine.”
I lifted his hand and kissed it.
For once, he didn’t dodge the tenderness.
Tiny slid off the couch with a dramatic thud, staggered three steps, then collapsed on the rug like we had exhausted him personally. The sudden absence of him between us felt deliberate.
Jace looked at him. “He planned that.”
“He’s given his approval.”
“That’s somehow worse.”
I stood and held out my hand.
Jace looked at it. Then at me.
The humor left him slowly, not vanishing, just making room for something steadier.
No command. No game. No correction.
An offer.
He put his hand in mine.
We went down the hall without turning on more lights.
In my bedroom, everything felt familiar and altered.
The bed. The closet. The quiet. The fact that he was here not for stolen minutes, not with adrenaline pushing us, but because we had chosen the room and the night and each other with open eyes.
Jace noticed it too. His gaze flicked once around the space before settling back on me.
I stopped near the bed. “We don’t have to do anything.”
“I know.” His answer came quickly, but it wasn’t careless. “I want to be here with you.”
I nodded.
Then I kissed him.
Slowly at first. His hands slid to my waist, fingers pressing into my shirt like he was grounding himself in the shape of me.
I held his face and felt his breath leave him.
The kiss broke twice because he smiled. Then because I did.
There was no panic in it, no clock in the back of my head, no threat of footsteps outside a locked door.
That almost made it harder to bear.
He tugged at the hem of my shirt. “Take this off.”
I did.
He got rid of his own, dropping it somewhere near his feet. When our bare chests met, his breath caught against my mouth. I felt every inch of him respond, the tense line of him easing and tightening at the same time.
My hands moved down his back, over warm skin and hard muscle, slower than I’d ever let myself touch him before.
No rush. No hiding the way I wanted to learn him when I already knew the sounds he made, the places that made him lose track of language, the way he fought stillness until pleasure gave him a reason to stay.
I kissed his jaw, his throat, the place beneath his ear that made his fingers dig into my shoulders.
He let out a quiet laugh.
I paused. “What?”
“Your beard.”
“Too much?”