Chapter Twenty-Seven Brielle
The ceiling of my room has a hairline crack running from the light fixture toward the east wall.
I’ve been staring at it for an hour.
I hear Jase knock the first time. I hear him say my name, and I lie there with my hands flat on the mattress and don’t move, because moving means opening the door and opening the door means letting the evening back in, and I’m not ready for that yet.
I hear him walk away. I hear Evan leave shortly after, the front door, footsteps fading.
Then quiet.
Then, fifteen minutes later, another knock.
I get up and open the door.
Jase leans against the opposite wall with his arms crossed. He looks at me and doesn’t say anything immediately, which, from Jase, is its own kind of language.
“You don’t have to talk,” he says. “I can just sit here.”
I step back from the door.
He comes in.
He doesn’t sit on the bed or pull out the desk chair.
He sits on the floor with his back against the bed frame, long legs stretched out, the way he sat on the floor at the station the first night, and I look at him down there for a second and then sit on the bed behind him with my back against the headboard and my knees pulled up.
We stay like that.
The room is dark except for the streetlight coming through the curtain, orange and low, and the apartment is quiet around us, the way it gets when people stop moving, and I sit there and breathe and wait to see if the feeling in my chest will change shape.
It does, a little.
“He wasn’t wrong,” I say, because it’s the thing sitting closest to the surface, and I need to say it before anything else can come out. “That’s what makes it worse. He wasn’t wrong.”
Jase doesn’t say anything.
“My name has been in the papers for three weeks,” I say. “My family is a mess. Richard is running a PR campaign that makes me sound unhinged. And now I’m—” I stop. “Whatever this is. Whatever we are. It’s something that complicates things for someone who’s trying to build something legitimate.”
“Max has a habit,” Jase says, to the wall across from him, “of being technically right about things in ways that miss the point entirely.”
I look at the back of his head.
“He said to keep my distance from you and Evan, too,” I say.
“I know,” he says.
“That was the part that—” I stop. Try again. “That was the part that sounded like my mother.”
Jase turns his head slightly. Not fully around, just enough to see his profile. “What did your mother use to say?”
I think about it. “Nothing directly. She didn’t have to. It was more like the way she’d look at something I wanted. Like wanting it was evidence of a flaw.” I pull my knees tighter to my chest. “Like the wanting itself was the problem.”
He nods.
“And tonight Max looked at what you wanted,” he says, “and called it a liability.”
I don’t say anything, because yes, that is exactly it, and hearing it said plainly makes something loosen in my chest.
“I agreed with him,” I say. “That’s the part I can’t stop thinking about. He said it, and I said you’re right, like I was sixteen again and my mother had just told me that pursuing art wasn’t a direction.”
“You agreed with him,” Jase says, “because agreeing is what you know how to do when something hurts and you don’t want anyone to see that it hurts.”
I look at the back of his head.
“That’s very specific,” I say.
“I know the move,” he says. “I have my own version of it.”
He goes quiet after that, and I wait, because something in his voice has shifted into a register I’ve only heard from him a few times, the one that means he’s decided to say something real and is taking the last moment before he does.
“Can I tell you something?” he says.
“Yes,” I say.
“I am not an easy person to actually know,” he says.
“I’m aware that’s not obvious from the outside.
I’m aware that I’m the one who makes people laugh and keeps things light and makes sure nobody in the room feels too uncomfortable for too long.
I’ve been doing it since I was eleven years old, and I got very good at it very fast because I had to.
” He pauses. “But there’s a version of me that I don’t show people.
Not because I’m hiding anything dark or complicated, just because—” He stops.
“Because the last time I showed it to someone who wasn’t my dads, Evan, or Max, they used it. Not maliciously. Just carelessly.”
The room is very quiet.
“I’m telling you because I want you to know that I see what you’re doing,” he says.
“The agreeing. The folding. The making yourself smaller so nobody has to accommodate you. I see it because I have a version of it and I know how much it costs.” He tilts his head back slightly, not looking at me but angling toward me.
“And I want you to know that you don’t have to do it here. Not with me.”
I sit with that for a long moment.
“I’m scared,” I say. “Not of you. Not of any of you specifically. I’m scared of—” I look at the wall across from me.
“My mother cut me off. My family thinks I’ve lost my mind.
There are tabloid stories about me being unstable.
And the thing I’m most scared of is that they might be right.
That this whole thing, the station, the apartment, all of you, is me running away from one life and calling it freedom. ”
“Is it?” he says.
I think about Brighton Beach.
“No,” I say.
“Then it’s not,” he says, as simply as that.
I let out a breath.
“My dads,” he says, after a moment, and his voice changes again, goes somewhere warmer and more specific.
“They met when they were thirty-two. My dad, Patrick, had been out since he was twenty, and it was fine, mostly. It was the nineties in Boston, which wasn’t exactly fine, but he’d made his peace with it.
My other dad, Ren, hadn’t told anyone. Not his family, not his friends, nobody.
He’d spent thirty-two years being exactly who everyone expected him to be, and he was very good at it, but it was costing him everything. ”
I listen.
“They met at a bar,” he says. “Patrick said he knew in the first five minutes. Ren said he knew too and that it terrified him because it meant he was going to have to stop pretending.” He pauses.
“They were together for two years before Ren told his family. Those were not easy years. His family was not easy. There were people who walked away and didn’t come back.
” He pauses. “But Ren says those two years of hardship were the first two years of his actual life. That everything before that was rehearsal.”
I don’t say anything for a while.
“I want that,” Jase says. “I’ve always wanted that. Not the difficulty, not the family fallout, but the thing underneath it. The choosing. The actual life.” He pauses. “I’ve spent a long time being easy to be around and very hard to actually reach. And I don’t want to do that anymore.”
He turns then, properly, shifting on the floor so he is facing me, one arm resting on the bed frame. He looks up at me in the low orange light of the room, and his face is open in a way I haven’t seen it before, not performing anything, not managing anything, just him looking at me.
“I’m falling for you,” he says. “I want you to know that. Not as pressure, not as a thing you have to do anything about right now. Just as a true thing that you deserve to hear from someone tonight after what happened.”
My heart beat doubles in time.
“Jase,” I say.
“I know you’re scared,” he says. “I know what Max said lands somewhere; it’s already tender. I know your family thinks you’ve lost your mind and that the world has a lot of opinions about what you should do with your life.” He holds my gaze. “None of that changes what I said.”
I look at him for a long moment.
Then I slide off the bed and sit on the floor in front of him.
He doesn’t move.
I reach up and put my hand against his jaw.
He closes his eyes briefly, the way people close their eyes when something they’ve been waiting for finally arrives.
“Okay,” I say.
He opens his eyes.
“Okay,” he says back.
Jase leans in and kisses me.
The kiss is slow and deep. His lips press warm against mine, and I hear the soft sound of our breath mixing together. He doesn’t rush. He kisses me like every second matters.
“Brielle,” he whispers against my mouth, his voice low and rough.
I answer by kissing him harder. My hand stays on his jaw, feeling the slight scrape of stubble under my fingers.
His hands slide under my shirt. His palms are warm and steady on my bare back. I hear the quiet rustle of fabric as he pulls me closer. I shift until I am straddling his lap on the floor. Our bodies press together, still fully clothed, and the heat between us grows.
We kiss like that for a long time. The only sounds in the room are our breathing and the soft, wet sound of our mouths moving together.
After a while, Jase pulls back just enough to look at me. His eyes are dark in the orange streetlight.
“You sure?” he asks quietly.
“Yes,” I say. My voice comes out a little unsteady. “I’m sure.”
He stands up without breaking the kiss. He lifts me easily, and I wrap my legs around his waist. I hear the soft creak of the floorboards as he carries me the few steps to the bed and lays me down gently on the mattress.
He stays on his knees between my legs for a moment, looking at me. The orange light from the street paints soft shadows across his chest.
He reaches for the hem of my shirt. “Lift your arms,” he says softly.
I do. He peels the shirt off slowly. The cool air touches my skin, and I hear myself breathe in sharply. He unhooks my bra next. The straps slide down my arms, and my nipples tighten in the open air.
Jase lowers his head. He kisses the side of my neck, then my collarbone. His mouth moves lower. When he takes one nipple between his lips and sucks gently, a small moan slips out of me.
“God, Jase,” I whisper.
He hums against my skin, the sound vibrating through me. He sucks a little harder, then switches to the other breast, licking and teasing until my back arches off the bed.
I sit up enough to tug his shirt over his head. My hands move over his bare chest, feeling the warmth of his skin and the steady beat of his heart under my palm.
He helps me with the rest of our clothes. He eases my pants and underwear down my legs, pausing to kiss the inside of my knee. I push his pants and boxers off, and then we are both completely naked.
Jase kisses his way down my body. He takes his time with my breasts again, licking and sucking until I am breathing fast and making soft, helpless sounds. Then he moves lower. He settles between my thighs and looks up at me.
“Tell me if it’s too much,” he says.
I nod, my fingers already threading into his hair.
He lowers his head. His tongue finds me, slow and warm. The first long lick makes my hips jerk, and a quiet gasp escapes my throat. He does it again, steady and focused, circling my clit. When he slides one finger inside me, then two, I moan his name.
“Jase, yes.”
He makes a low sound of approval and keeps going, his mouth and fingers working together. The wet rhythmic sounds of his tongue fill the quiet room. Pleasure builds deep and tight in my belly, and all I can do is breathe and hold on to his hair.
Right before the pleasure crests, my whole body goes still.
Jase notices immediately. He lifts his head, his fingers still gently moving inside me. His voice is quiet and careful.
“Are you okay?” he asks.
I take a breath, not the quick, automatic one I usually give. I look down at him between my legs, his mouth shiny, his eyes steady on mine.
“Yes,” I say, and this time it is real. “I’m here. I’m really here.”
Something in the room changes when I say it.
The air feels warmer, heavier. Jase smiles softly against my thigh, then lowers his head again.
His tongue returns, slower now, more intentional.
He curls his fingers just right, and the orgasm hits me hard.
My thighs tremble around his shoulders as I moan his name, long and broken.
“Jase, oh God.”
He stays with me through every pulse, gentle and steady, until I am breathing hard and my body goes soft.
When the waves finally ease, I tug at his hair. “Come here,” I whisper.
Jase moves up my body and kisses me. I can taste myself on his lips. My hand slides between us and wraps around him. He is hot and hard, the skin smooth and velvet-soft. I stroke him slowly, learning the weight of him, the way he twitches in my palm when I run my thumb over his head.
He lets out a low groan. “Brielle.”
I keep touching him, watching his face, the way his eyes half-close and his breath catches. After a minute, he gently catches my wrist.
“I want to be inside you,” he says, voice rough. “If you’re ready.”
“I’m ready,” I tell him.
He settles hastily between my thighs again. The head of his cock nudges against me, warm and blunt. He looks into my eyes the whole time.
“Tell me if you need me to stop,” he says.
I nod.
Jase pushes in slowly, one smooth, careful inch at a time. I feel every bit of him stretching me, filling me. When he is fully inside, we both go still. I can hear our breathing, loud in the quiet room.
“You feel so good,” he whispers.
We stay like that for a long moment, breathing together, connected. Then he starts to move, slow, deep thrusts that make me moan softly with every push. I wrap my legs around his waist and meet his rhythm. The bed creaks quietly under us. His mouth finds mine again, kissing me between breaths.
The pleasure builds differently this time, deeper and fuller. I hold onto his shoulders, feeling the muscles flex under my hands as he moves.
“Jase,” I gasp. “Don’t stop.”
He doesn’t. He keeps the same steady pace, watching my face, adjusting whenever my moans change. When I come the second time, it rolls through me powerfully. My walls clench around him, and I cry out against his neck.
That pushes him over. His thrusts grow a little faster, a little deeper, then he buries his face in my neck and groans my name as he comes.
“Brielle.”
We stay joined for a few seconds, breathing hard. Then he pulls out and rolls onto his back, pulling me with him so my head rests on his chest. His hand slides into my hair, fingers gentle and slow.
His heartbeat is steady under my ear.
I close my eyes and let it be the only thing for a while.
“Jase,” I say, when the room has been quiet long enough.
“Mm,” he says.
“Thank you,” I say. “For knocking twice.”
A pause.
“You would have opened it eventually,” he says.
“Maybe,” I say.
“You would have,” he says, with the certainty of someone who knows me well enough to be sure.
I don’t argue with that.
I think he might be right.