Chapter Six
Heat in the Rain
Sarah
The Bar smells like beer and old wood, the kind of place where the jukebox only half works and no one cares. Emma’s the reason I’m here. She swore I needed a night out, shoved a shot glass into my hand, and said something about “new memories fixing old ones.”
She’s wrong. New memories don’t fix anything. They just blur the edges for a little while.
The door swings open, letting in a rush of cold air and too many memories. His voice, low and familiar, cuts through the noise like it’s meant for me. I don’t have to turn to know who it is.
Jace Prescott.
He’s got two days of stubble and the kind of tired slouch that comes from pretending you’re fine when you’re not.
A few of the guys from the team clap him on the shoulder, laughing too loud, trying to drag him into whatever game they’re playing at the corner table.
He nods, half there, half somewhere else.
I know that look.
It’s the same one I’ve been wearing for weeks.
Emma leans in, following my gaze. “You okay?”
“Fine,” I lie.
She doesn’t believe me, but she doesn’t push either. That’s the thing about Emma, she’s always known when to give me space.
She hesitates, fingers tracing the rim of her glass. “You ever notice how some places hit like a sucker punch?”
My laugh comes out thin. “Maybe.”
“Yeah.” She nods, half-smiling, half-knowing. “That's why I usually avoid this place.”
I lift a brow. “Then why drag me here?”
“Because you’d never come on your own.” She pushes her chair back, slinging her purse over her shoulder. “I need the bathroom. Don’t vanish while I’m gone.”
“I wouldn't dream of it.”
She rolls her eyes, grinning as she disappears through the crowd.
Jace’s eyes find mine anyway, across the bar, over the heads of half-drunk college kids and a haze of neon light. And just like that, the air shifts. I feel it all over again, the pull, the ache, the part of me that never really stopped reaching for him.
I should look away.
Instead, I lift my glass, pretending I don’t feel my pulse in my throat.
He breaks from his friends and crosses the room. No hesitation. No pause. Just straight toward me like he’s been planning it since he walked in.
“Didn’t expect to see you here,” he says, voice rough.
“Didn’t expect to be here.”
He smiles, faint and tired. “Still letting Emma drag you into bad decisions?”
I glance at the empty shot glass between my hands. “Apparently.”
He huffs a laugh, rubbing the back of his neck. “She always did know how to talk people into things.”
“Yeah,” I say quietly. “She’s good at that.”
The silence stretches, filled with all the things neither of us says. The noise from the bar fades, the music shifts, and suddenly it feels like we’re back in that endless loop of almosts and what-ifs.
“How’s Sierra?” I ask finally, because I have to.
His jaw works. “We’re… taking space.”
The words hit harder than I expected. “Oh.”
“She needed time. So did I.”
“And yet you’re here,” I murmur.
He shrugs. “Maybe I just came to see if forgetting her felt anything like trying to forget you.”
That one lands too cleanly.
I look down, tracing the rim of my glass, trying to breathe around the rush of heat that sentence brings. “You always did know how to ruin a night.”
“Only when it was already half-ruined.”
Our eyes meet again, and something in me cracks. I remember every touch, every word, every time I swore I wouldn’t let him close again. And still, here we are, standing too near, caught in the gravity of something neither of us ever stopped wanting.
He reaches out, fingers brushing mine where they rest on the bar. Just a touch. Barely there. But it’s enough.
I should have walked away.
But the second his fingers brushed mine, every reason I had for staying gone burned to ash.
The air inside The Bar feels too thick after he touches me, like every laugh and clink of glass presses closer.
I mumble something about needing air and weave through the crowd before I can talk myself out of it.
The door bangs shut behind me, and cool night air hits my skin, sharp enough to make me breathe again.
Footsteps follow a second later.
“Sarah.”
His voice slides through me like a memory that never learned how to fade. I turn, and there he is, hands shoved into his jacket pockets, jaw tight, eyes darker than I remember.
“You don’t have to chase me.” My voice comes out quieter than I mean.
He huffs a laugh that doesn’t sound amused. “Wasn’t gonna let you walk off thinking I didn’t feel that.”
My pulse jumps. “You shouldn’t have.”
“Yeah?” He steps closer, stopping just shy of touching me. “Then why didn’t you pull away?”
Because I couldn’t. Because I’m an idiot. Because I still want him, even when I shouldn’t.
“I didn’t think,” I lie.
He studies me like he can see through every defense I’ve ever built. “Neither did I.”
For a second, neither of us moves. The hum of traffic fills the silence, distant and low, the smell of rain thick in the air. When a drop hits my cheek, I almost laugh, it figures the sky would open up now.
“Guess we’re still a mess,” I say, half-smiling.
Jace’s mouth lifts at one corner, but it fades fast. “You ever think about what it could’ve been? I still think about you sometimes.”
“Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Make this sound like something it’s not.”
He shakes his head. “You think I don’t know what it is? You think I don’t wake up some mornings and still—” He stops, swears under his breath. “Forget it.”
The rain starts to fall harder, and I should turn back, find Emma, go home, do anything but stand here waiting for him to say something he can’t take back. But I don’t move. When his hand lifts, fingers brushing a strand of wet hair from my face, I forget why I was supposed to.
“Jace,” I whisper, a warning that doesn’t sound like one.
He answers by closing the last inch between us. The kiss hits fast, hard and hungry, the kind of collision that burns. His hand finds my jaw, his other gripping my hip, pulling me flush against him. The taste of beer and rain and everything we shouldn’t be, spills between us.
I gasp when his tongue slides against mine, when his body crowds me into the brick wall behind me. The sound that leaves me isn’t polite. It's desperate. My hands fist in his shirt, pulling him closer, needing more.
“Tell me to stop,” he breathes against my mouth.
“I can’t.”
Instead, I let him guide me backward, deeper into the shadows of the alley behind the bar, away from the light, away from reason, where no one can see how far we’re about to fall.
That’s all it takes. His hands are everywhere, under my shirt, on my skin, tracing the path he remembers all too well. The rain slicks my hair to my neck, and the sound of it hitting pavement mixes with the broken rhythm of our breathing.
When he lifts me, I wrap my legs around his waist without thinking, the scrape of the wall against my back grounding me in the chaos. He groans when I roll my hips, the sound raw, wrecked, like he’s been starving.
“God, you still—” he starts, but the words dissolve into another kiss, deeper, slower this time. His mouth smooths down my throat, and I tilt my head back, letting it happen.
He sets me down hard enough that my back hits the wall, his mouth never leaving mine.
My fingers clutch his shirt as his hands slide lower, finding the edge of my jeans.
The sound that slips out isn’t planned, it’s raw, caught somewhere between a gasp and a plea, as he unzips and pushes them down just far enough, his body pinning mine, heat rolling off him in waves.
He spins me before I can catch my breath, my palms hitting the wall as his hands grip my hips, dragging my jeans down just enough.
The sound that leaves me is half shock, half need.
Behind me, there’s the rough slide of a zipper, the sound sharp in the quiet rain.
Then he’s there, pushing into me in one hard thrust that steals the air from my lungs.
The stretch burns, sharp and perfect, and I bite down on a gasp as his hips slam into mine again. It’s rough, fast, desperate, the kind of need that feels more like breaking than breathing. His fingers dig into my skin, holding me in place, and all I can do is take it, meet it, lose myself in it.
He curses against my shoulder, voice ragged, the sound spilling into the rain. It’s over almost as quickly as it started, a blur of heat and motion that leaves my heart racing and my body trembling.
We fit together too easily. Every push, every pull, every shudder between us feels like remembering. Like falling back into something we never really left.
When it’s over, the world feels quieter. Just the patter of rain, the rush of blood in my ears, the weight of him still holding me up because my legs won’t.
I press my forehead to the wall in front of me, catching my breath. “We can’t do this again.”
“I know,” he says, but his arms don’t move.
That’s the worst part, the way it feels right, even when it’s all wrong.
Because no matter how many times I tell myself to walk away, I already know the truth:
It doesn’t mean what it feels like.
But I’ll spend years wishing it did.
The sound of rain fills the silence between us.
He hasn’t moved yet, his breath still ragged against my neck, our clothes half-on, half-off, the air thick with everything we shouldn’t have done.
My pulse is still racing, but the rush fades fast, too fast, leaving only the ache underneath it.
The air between us feels heavier now, thick with everything we didn’t say.
“I should go,” I say, even though neither of us moves.
He finally steps back, giving me space to turn around. He drags a shaky hand through his hair like that might erase what just happened. Rain drips from his hair, sliding down his cheek. “Sarah…”