Chapter 12 #2
“And you just moved in with a backpack and a plastic bag,” I shoot back. “We’re both having a fucking banger of a day.”
His mouth twitches slightly. God, I love that he still does that. That even now, after everything, he still lets me throw my sharp edges at him and doesn’t back down. Doesn’t treat me with kid gloves.
“Ready?” I ask, pulling out a chair and sinking into it before my legs give out.
“Yeah,” he says, moving toward the table. His voice is rough, resigned. “Let’s get this shit over with, I guess.”
I watch him sit down next to me, his long legs stretching out under the table. His knee bumps mine, a solid point of contact in the swirling chaos of my head. He looks comfortable, taking up space in the kitchen in a way that feels both strange and right at the same time.
I crack open the book and start explaining something. I don’t even know what the fuck I’m saying at first. Words just come out on autopilot. A stream of thoughts about poetic structure, my voice a monotone drone.
The black letters on the white page blur together, losing their shape. It’s all too overwhelming. The image of my dad lying in that bed, so completely still. Talking to him for hours, not knowing if he could hear a single word I said.
My voice falters, and the sentence dies halfway through.
He notices right away.
“Bells.” His voice is low.
I glance down at the page, staring hard at the words, trying to hold back tears. I refuse to cry. Not here. Not now. Not over some stupid fucking poem about dying. I refuse to cry over Dylan Thomas and his rage against the dying of the light.
“I’m fine,” I mutter, the lie tasting like ash in my mouth.
“Bullshit.”
The moment I look up at him, my eyes give me away. Everything becomes blurry and bright, his face melting into a gentle shape.
“I just… I keep wondering how much longer I’ll keep going to the hospital and hearing the same thing. Like it’s nothing. Like my dad isn’t just… stuck.”
The last word cracks right down the middle.
I press my lips together hard, furious at myself. At the tears that are threatening to spill over.
Jace goes completely still. His whole body stiffens, and his eyes stay fixed on my face. This is the moment when most people panic. They start rambling, filling the silence with pointless words. They say something stupid like “it’ll be okay” or “stay positive” or some other useless bullshit.
But Jace doesn’t do any of that. He slowly stands up, the legs of his chair scraping softly against the floor.
For a second, I think he’s going to brush it off, walk away, or tell me to stop thinking about it and focus on something else.
Instead, he crouches down in front of me, his knees popping softly. He’s right there at my level, and suddenly the kitchen is too small and quiet.
He takes my hands, prying my fingers off the cover of the book I’m clutching, and holds them between his own.
“Hey,” he says quietly.
I force myself to look at him. His eyes, deep sea blue and serious, stay fixed on my face.
“It doesn’t mean he’s gone,” he says, his gaze unwavering. “It just means he’s fighting.”
“You don’t know that,” I say, the words coming out as a strained whisper.
“You don’t know he isn’t,” he replies instantly, his thumb brushing over my knuckles. That simple touch is almost my undoing.
“You’re allowed to be scared, Bells,” he continues, his voice lowering even more. “You don’t have to pretend for me.”
And that’s it. That’s the moment that breaks me. A single, hot tear slips free before I can stop it, tracing a path down my cheek.
He swears under his breath, a quiet, frustrated sound. He raises his hand, catching the tear with his thumb and gently wiping it away.
“I know I’m shit at this,” he mutters, his eyes on my cheek. “I don’t know how to do the comforting thing.”
A wet, broken laugh slips out of me. It’s a raw, ugly sound—half sob, half amusement. “You’re doing fine.”
He studies my face. “But you should know if anyone could fight through stubbornness alone, it’s your dad,” he says, a faint ghost of a smile touching his lips. “He raised you.”
I laugh again, a shaky, watery sound that’s more of a sob than anything else. “That’s not how medicine works.”
“Doesn’t matter,” he says firmly. “He’s not done.”
The certainty in his voice is a fragile thing, and it’s everything I need right now. It’s a flicker of light in a suffocating darkness.
“I’m here,” he says, his gaze burning into mine. “You don’t have to carry it by yourself.”
My chest aches with a sharp, sudden pang. Because this boy who once measured his worth in how many girls wanted his cock is kneeling on my kitchen floor trying to figure out how to hold my grief without dropping it.
Before I can overthink it, pull away, and lock everything back inside, he stands and pulls me up with him.
His arms wrap around me, hesitant at first, a question lingering between our bodies. When I don’t pull away and instead sink into him, he holds me tighter, tucking my head under his chin.
I bury my face in his T-shirt and just breathe him in. His hand moves up and down my back in a slow, slightly awkward rhythm, like he’s following a set of instructions only he can hear.
“I’ve got you,” he murmurs into my hair.
And that’s all it takes.
A raw, ragged sob tears from my chest, then another, and another. The tears come hot and rapid, soaking the front of his shirt, but he doesn’t pull away. He simply holds me tighter, a steady, silent presence in the storm, letting me fall apart in his arms.
I stare at the ceiling, wide awake. The red numbers on my alarm clock blink 2:17 a.m., then 2:18. I count the seconds between each flash, each breath a tight knot in my chest. My heart won’t slow down—a frantic, panicked bird beating against my ribs.
I roll onto my side, then my back, then the other side. The sheets are twisted around my legs, a suffocating tangle. The whole house feels too big and too quiet.
Jace is downstairs, just down the hall. Sleeping in a bed that is probably too soft for him after years of sleeping on that sagging mattress in his run-down trailer.
Before I can talk myself out of it, before the voice of reason can tell me what a stupid fucking idea this is, I sit up and swing my legs over the side of the bed. My feet hit the floor, and I push myself up, moving on pure, desperate instinct.
The hallway light is off, but I know my way around this house in the dark. I walk slowly, my bare feet silent on the cold floors, careful not to make a sound, even though there’s no one here to wake except him.
His door is slightly open. I pause outside, my hand hanging near the frame. For a moment, I almost turn back. This is stupid… insane. I’m not afraid of the dark. I’m afraid of the silence, of the vast, empty space inside my own head.
I slowly push the door open. It opens smoothly and silently.
The room is dim, illuminated only by the weak glow of the streetlight outside filtering through the curtains. He’s lying on his back, one arm thrown over his head, the blanket twisted around his waist. His bare chest rises and falls in a slow, steady rhythm.
I step inside, the door clicking softly shut behind me.
For a second, I just stand there, my heart pounding against my ribs.
For a fleeting moment, the pale light from the window hits the ink on his chest. The word seems so out of place on him, on the boy who built his reputation on not caring about anything.
I wonder how old he was when he first got it done, when he felt the need to permanently etch that word onto his skin as a constant, desperate reminder.
This is such a bad idea. I should walk back out and let him sleep. But my chest is caving in, and I don’t know how to fix that on my own tonight.
I move before I overthink it.
The mattress dips under my weight.
He stirs instantly. His entire body tenses, adopting a predator’s stillness. He doesn’t even breathe for a second.
“Bells?” His voice is a rough, sleep-thick whisper in the dark.
I freeze, my whole body tense with the sudden, overwhelming realization of what I’ve just done.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper, the words barely audible. “I’ll go.”
I start to move, trying to slide back out, but his arm wraps around me, warm and heavy, stopping me. He doesn’t say anything; he just shifts, rolling onto his side to face me and pulls me against his chest.
My head rests in the hollow of his shoulder, my cheek pressed against his chest. He wraps his arms around me, holding me close, and I listen to the slow, steady beat of his heart against my ear.
The frantic little bird inside my chest starts to quiet down.
I breathe in, and for the first time all night, I breathe out.
The simple act seems monumental. I realize I am growing more dependent on him, on this steady warmth in the cold, hollow space that has become my life.
And I understand this can only end one way.
The Jace Cooper way. The way where he gets what he wants and then walks away, leaving nothing but scorched earth behind him.
But right now, with his heart beating a steady rhythm against my ear, I can’t bring myself to care.
“You okay?” he murmurs into my hair, his voice thick with sleep. The same question he’s been asking all day.
“No,” I admit, the word a small, shattered thing in the space between us.
It’s the first honest thing I’ve said all day.
I lift my head and look at him. Even in the dark, I notice the change in his eyes. The awareness. The way he’s trying to read me without pressuring or taking advantage of what’s fragile.
My thigh slips between his unintentionally. My body naturally presses against his, like puzzle pieces fitting together perfectly. As if we’ve done this a hundred times.
I feel his hard cock through his boxers, pressing insistently against my hip.
I sense the way his breathing changes.
“Bells,” he says quietly.
A warning or a question. I press closer anyway, my body making decisions my brain has stopped trying to rationalize. My hand slides up his chest, fingers spreading over his warm skin toward that single word: Hope.
My thumb traces over it.
His hand rises and catches mine, stopping it against his chest.
We look at each other for a long moment, the air between us charged with something dangerous and unspoken. Then I lean down and press my lips to his bare chest, staying there briefly, a quiet promise. It lingers, a silent claim.
“Fuck,” he breathes out, the word scraped raw with restraint.
Goosebumps spread across his skin. He becomes completely still, every muscle tense, like he’s fighting with something wild inside himself that’s never learned how to behave. He takes a sharp breath in.
Not because he’s attempting to take control, but because he’s fighting like hell not to. And that’s what breaks me wide open. This boy, who has never second-guessed a single impulse in his entire life, is holding himself in check. For me.
I shift, swinging one leg over his hips until I’m straddling him. My hair falls around us, creating a dark curtain for our private moment. He gazes up at me with those impossible-to-read eyes as I lean down, and my lips begin a slow, torturous descent along the center of his chest.
“Jesus,” he mutters, his voice thick and strained. “You’re killing me, Bells.”
He releases my wrist, the last bit of his control slipping away.
I drag my mouth lower over the hard ridges of his stomach, taking my time, allowing the tension to build between us. His breathing stutters with each inch I go down.
I don’t stop. I keep going.
I slide down his body, disappearing under the sheet. My hands become explorers in the dark, tracing the sharp line of his hips as I move toward his cock. His entire body responds to each touch.
And for the first time since I’ve known him, Jace isn’t the one in control.
He’s yielding.
And I don’t think Jace Cooper has a fucking clue what to do with that.