Chapter Seven #2
It shouldn’t have hit like it did. He’d always been blunt like that, all cut-through-the-noise and quiet loyalty. He leaned his elbows on his knees and waited, the way he always waits for me to come back to myself. When I didn’t, he rested a hand on my knee like an anchor.
“You always do that thing,” he said quietly.
“What thing?”
“You look at people like they’re better than they are. Like you’ve already decided to see the good first.” His thumb brushed over my skin, slow and sure. “It’s in your eyes. Like there’s a whole damn galaxy hiding in there.”
I almost laughed, but it caught somewhere in my throat. “You’re impossible.”
“Maybe.” His mouth curved, soft but certain. “But you are. Always have been.”
“Look at me, Star,” he said.
I did. And for once I didn’t feel like a consolation prize. I felt seen. Not as someone’s almost, not as someone convenient. Just me. Sierra.
The kiss wasn’t planned. It wasn’t careful, either. It was relief, and heat, and a yes I didn’t know I’d been holding in my chest for years. He tasted like rain and mint and something steady. When his hand slid to the back of my neck, I exhaled for the first time all week.
We didn’t rush. We didn’t pretend it was anything but what it was: two people finding a soft place to land when the world felt off. It was tender and hungry, and when it was over, I drifted toward sleep before the quiet could turn into regret.
Knox pulled the blanket higher around my shoulders like he always did when I was younger, his touch gentle, lingering. I felt the faint press of his lips against my temple, the ghost of a breath that might’ve been words.
“I’m not going to be what hurts you,” he murmured, voice rough, meant for no one but the dark.
What he didn’t know is that I wasn’t fully asleep and I heard what he said.
The next day came. And the one after it. And then, weeks later, two pink lines on a stick I bought with my sunglasses on inside a drugstore like that could make me invisible.
I sat on the edge of the tub with my phone in my hand, my head too loud to think, too empty to make sense of any of it.
My first call should’ve been to Knox. He was the obvious reason for the pink lines and it had been almost a month since Jace and I had even touched. Deep down, I already knew the timing didn’t line up the way I wanted it to.
But Knox was never the choice my family would understand.
They always thought he was trouble, too many tattoos, too many fights, too many stories that weren’t entirely his fault but stuck to him anyway.
Jace was the safe call. The steady one. The man my mother would welcome at the table without a second thought.
So I called Jace.
“Can you come over?” I asked, and even I could hear the shake in my voice.
He came fast. He always does when someone needs him.
I told him without preamble because I knew if I eased into it, I’d never say it. “I’m pregnant.”
His face went still. Not blank—just still, like he was locking everything in place so nothing would fall. He sat beside me on the couch and took my hand even though mine was cold and damp and didn’t deserve to be held.
“Okay,” he said, voice low, steady. “Okay. We’ll figure it out. You’re not alone.”
They were the right words. They always have been.
I didn’t tell him about Knox. I told myself I didn’t have to—that the math could work, that it wasn’t a lie if I never did it for the purpose of hurting anyone.
I told myself a lot of things. About timing.
About family. About how my mother would look at Knox across a dinner table and see every story someone else told her about him instead of the man he actually is.
About how Griff would go quiet in that way he does when he’s trying not to pick sides and failing.
I told myself Jace was safe. Not in a boring way—in a steady way. The kind that looks like a plan and a mortgage and holidays where no one whispers in the kitchen about your choices.
He squeezed my hand. “You don’t have to be scared.”
“I’m not,” I lied again.
He came with me to the first appointment.
He watched the grainy screen and didn’t pretend he knew where to look.
He sent me calendar reminders and looked up nursery paint colors on his laptop like we were already there.
When he asked me to marry him, he did it in the quiet—just us, no spectacle—because he knew I’d say yes even if my hands were shaking.
And obviously I said yes.
We picked a date and a venue. I picked out a crib and never hit “checkout,” because some part of me still wasn’t sure I deserved to.
And then one morning there was blood where it shouldn’t be and the world narrowed to a room and a nurse’s calm voice and a doctor who said sorry in a tone I will hear until the day I die.
Jace held my hand so tight I think he left a bruise.
He rubbed circles on my back while I stared at a poster about prenatal vitamins I didn’t need anymore.
He stayed and carried every bag. He made every call. He made sure I ate when I didn’t want to. He did everything right.
But after that, something in his eyes shifted—barely, a fraction, like a door that never closes all the way. He looked at me and then away. He leaned in like he might kiss my temple, then changed his mind halfway there. He slept on his side of the bed and didn’t roll toward the middle.
I told myself grief makes ghosts out of people for a while. I told myself time would bring him back to me, or bring me back to myself, or both. I told myself this is what love looks like when it’s trying to survive.
I set the shoebox on the nightstand and close the lid on the past with careful hands; the house is quiet except for the TV murmuring in the other room. Somewhere, a pipe knocks.
After I found out I was pregnant, I thought the baby would fix things. I thought it would bind us.
Instead, it buried the truth deeper.
…………
Present
I’d almost forgotten what it felt like to hear her name out loud.
Emma mentioned it first, bright, casual, completely unaware of the way it landed.
“Sarah’s back in town,” she said one night after dinner, laughing as she poured another glass of wine.
“Took a job at the university. Can you believe they finally convinced her to come home?” I nodded, pretending I didn’t feel Jace go still beside me.
Just for a second. Just long enough that I noticed.
She didn’t mean anything by it, just gossip over dinner, but the words landed heavier than she could’ve known.
A week later, we were all at Emma and Ethan’s for dinner—takeout boxes spread across the counter, a game muted on the TV. Emma mentioned Sarah again, mid-conversation, like it was nothing.
“Apparently she’s already running the whole department at the University,” she said, laughing. “They’d fall apart without her.”
Ethan nodded. “Sounds about right. She’s sharp.”
Jace didn’t say a word. Just took a slow sip of his beer, jaw flexing like it wasn’t news.
No one else caught it, that flicker of something behind his eyes… recognition. The kind that says shit, I should’ve told you.
He didn’t.
And I didn’t ask why.
But the silence after her name came up again hit me differently this time. He didn’t fill it with excuses or small talk. Just let it hang there, heavy and strange, like something we’d both been trying to ignore.
I told myself I was overreacting, that I was dragging an old ghost into something new. But ghosts don’t shift the air like that, don’t make a man look through you like he’s somewhere else entirely.
Maybe it didn’t mean anything. Or maybe it meant everything. I just knew that night felt like the first real crack.
That was why I stopped pretending Sarah was a memory.
She was back. And even if he hadn’t said he’d seen her yet, I knew he already had.
There are nights he’s been in the room, but somewhere else completely.
We’d watch a movie and he’d laugh half a second late, like he was catching up to a scene he hadn’t been watching.
I’d lean into his side and feel his arm tighten like a reflex, not a choice.
He was kind and careful, always. Just not really with me anymore.
Last Thursday, I stopped by his office with sandwiches. He wasn’t there, so I set the bag on the desk and went to leave a note. His browser was still open. A campus newspaper headline filled the screen.
“Meet Sarah Evans: University’s New Director of Communications.”
Her photo sat just below the title, bright, confident, that same easy smile I’d seen a hundred times before in other rooms, on other days that still lived in his eyes. I closed the laptop and told myself it was nothing. People read campus news.
Emma texted me the other night to see if we were coming by The Bar Friday night for trivia.
“Sarah’s popping in for one,” she added, like it was just a head count detail.
I watched Jace reread the message twice and then tell me he was wiped and maybe we should stay in.
We stayed. He flipped channels for an hour and never settled on anything.
That was three nights ago.
Tonight it’s just after ten. Rain taps against the window. Jace is on the couch, laptop open, his face lit by the flicker of game footage. The same scene rewound, the same play replayed. I linger in the doorway, arms crossed, knowing this conversation’s been waiting for weeks.
“You saw her, didn’t you?” I ask.
He looks up, frown already forming. “What?”
“Sarah. You saw her.”
He exhales, slow. “Yeah. She came by the fieldhouse. Media orientation thing.”
“That all?”
“What do you want me to say, Sierra?” His voice is calm in the way that only makes it worse. “She works there. We crossed paths. That’s it.”
“You didn’t think I should know?”
“I didn’t think it mattered.”
I laugh, sharp, ugly. “You didn’t think it mattered that the woman you are in love with just walked back into your life?”
His jaw tightens. “That’s not what’s going on. She works there, Sierra.”
“I don’t care where she works,” I shoot back. “I care how it feels. And it feels like you’ve been somewhere else for a long time now.”
He stands, running a hand through his hair. “You’re not exactly here either, Sierra. We’ve both been… keeping the peace.”
“That’s not peace, Jace. That’s pretending.”
The silence that follows feels heavy enough to crack the floor. The dishwasher hums in the background, a quiet, mechanical heartbeat that fills the space between us.
“I’m tired,” he says finally. “Tired of you thinking there’s something I’m not saying.”
“And I’m tired of waiting for you to admit there is.”
For a long moment, neither of us moves. I think about every version of this fight we’ve almost had, all the swallowed words, the careful smiles, the slow fade from love to routine. This is just the part where we stop pretending not to notice.
“I’m sorry, Jace,” I whisper, because it’s true. “I think we were both just trying to save the wrong thing.”
He doesn’t argue. Doesn’t reach for me. Just stands there, quiet, like he finally understands too.
I walk to the bedroom, grab my overnight bag from the closet, and start pulling clothes from drawers. It’s mechanical, fold, pack, zip. I check my reflection in the mirror, hair still damp from the earlier shower, eyes red but dry. There’s no breakdown left in me. Just resolve.
On the nightstand, my phone buzzes once before I even touch it—like it knows. I open Griff’s thread and type:
Me: You home?
Griff: Yeah. Why?
Me: Can I stay tonight?
Griff: Always. Everything okay?
Me: Not really. But it will be.
I slide the phone into my bag, take one last look around the room we built out of careful choices and quiet compromises. The kind of space that looks fine until you realize how empty it sounds.
At the door, I turn back once more. Jace hasn’t moved. His laptop’s still open, the light flickering across his face, but his eyes aren’t on it anymore.
“Maybe love isn’t about staying,” I say softly. “Maybe it’s knowing when you’ve already left.”
I grab my keys and walk out before either of us can take it back.