Chapter 16
Jacob
It had been five days since the conversation in his trailer. Five days of distant nods, polite hellos, and pretending Liam Hart was just another co-star.
It should have helped. Distance was supposed to dull the edge, a way to train the body out of wanting.
Jacob had told himself it would get easier if he starved the craving.
Yet the longer he stayed away, the more he noticed the things he shouldn’t.
The way Liam chewed the corner of his lip between takes.
The way he laughed with the crew. The way he stopped looking Jacob in the eye unless the cameras were rolling.
It didn’t feel professional; it felt like holding his breath. Still, Jacob told himself the plan was working. He told himself that often.
Today had been a location shoot in the middle of nowhere—a secluded stretch of forest doubling for one of the midseason’s more dramatic scenes.
It was remote enough that cell signal dropped halfway up the road.
The crew had to bring in portable generators and their own coffee truck.
It was the kind of place the real world didn’t reach, a place where no one expected surprises.
The shoot had wrapped early. Most of the team was already gone by the time Jacob and Liam made their way down the gravel path toward their chauffeurs. Jacob wasn’t sure how Liam ended up walking beside him. It just happened. They were thirty steps from the cars, and then—
“Jacob! Liam! Look this way!”
Jacob’s head snapped up. Cameras, paparazzi—six, seven, maybe more.
“Liam! Is Emma okay with you screwing your co-star?”
“Is this a PR stunt or are you just cheating in broad daylight?”
“Are you in love with him, Liam!?”
The questions sliced through the stillness. Jacob felt Liam stiffen beside him, his chin lifting, and his spine snapping straight. The fragile openness was gone, replaced by a mask in a single breath.
Jacob scanned for crew, for security—nothing. Clearly no one had expected this. Someone must’ve tipped them off, and now it was just flashing lights and a hundred headlines waiting to be born.
He didn’t think. He caught Liam’s arm and pushed forward, dragging them both through the press of bodies, snapping shutters, and greedy voices.
He didn’t loosen his grip until Liam’s driver came into view.
Even then he didn’t let go, shoving the door open and guiding Liam inside before sliding in after him.
The door slammed shut, sealing the world out.
The driver took off immediately, leaving the chaos behind.
The silence inside was sharp, broken only by the buzz of the AC.
Cold air blasted against his overheated skin.
His pulse still raced, adrenaline refusing to leave.
Their knees nearly touched, and his hand still circled Liam’s wrist. He should have let go the moment the door shut.
He didn’t. His fingers clung like they had their own will.
Liam turned toward him slowly. There was no fear in his face, just something hotter.
Jacob felt it hit low in his body, heat pooling where it had no right to live.
His thumb moved before he could stop it, a single drag across the inside of Liam’s wrist. Liam’s breath hitched, lips parting, pupils swallowing the brown of his eyes.
Jacob couldn’t look away. He felt the thrum of Liam’s pulse beneath his thumb, each beat against his skin like a dare. The air between them grew thick and charged. Jacob leaned in, not enough to close the distance, but enough to feel the heat between them sharpen into something alive.
“Are you going to let go?” Liam’s voice was rough, threaded with something Jacob had no defense against.
He didn’t answer, because he didn’t know. He was close enough to see the pulse at Liam’s throat, to feel the warmth radiating off his skin, to hear the fragile sound of breath catching when Jacob stroked his thumb one more time.
Then Liam did something stupid, or maybe it was brave—probably both. He leaned in just a fraction more. Close enough that Jacob could feel the weight of the question hanging between them.
Jacob’s hand slid higher, fingertips ghosting along the inside of Liam’s forearm. His touch was too careful for the hunger clawing at his chest. He could feel Liam’s skin shiver beneath the trace of his fingers. The restraint it took to stop there burned through him.
“Jacob…”
Liam’s voice cracked on his name. He wasn’t asking, he was begging.
The sound of it hit Jacob like nothing else ever had.
He felt his control fray at the edges. He wanted to close the space.
Wanted to press Liam back against the seat and take what had been haunting him for weeks.
He needed to taste his mouth, bite those lips, and dig his fingers into his skin hard enough to bruise.
He wanted to leave marks—deep and deliberate—the kind Liam would feel for days.
For one wild second, he almost did. He leaned in, breath grazing Liam’s lips before he realized he’d moved. Suddenly the car jolted. Jacob’s shoulder hit the door, Liam blinked, and the moment cracked.
Jacob pulled back first, just enough to remember that wanting him didn’t mean he could have him.
They didn’t touch again for the rest of the ride.
* * *
City lights slid past the windows in streaks of white and red. The driver had dropped Liam off first. Jacob sat stiff in the corner of the back seat, dragging a hand over his mouth before leaning his head back and closing his eyes.
That had been too close. He could feel it even now—the hunger to take, to bite, to leave marks. It hadn’t been fantasy or some passing temptation. It had been real and alive, right here in the backseat of this goddamn car.
He let his head thunk lightly against the cold glass as the car pulled off the freeway, winding through the dark canyons of Malibu. His house appeared on the hill like a painting, quiet and perfect.
The kids were asleep, and probably had been for hours.
It was well past their bedtime. He checked on them anyway, pausing in each doorway to watch the slow rise and fall of their chests.
He bent to kiss their foreheads, something catching in his throat when he did.
This was real. This was his life. He loved them more than anything.
Caroline was in the kitchen, rinsing out a glass. She looked up when he entered, face tired but kind. “Hey,” she said softly. “You’re late.”
“Location shoot,” Jacob answered, voice even.
She stepped close without hesitation, rising on her toes to kiss him. Her lips were soft and familiar. He kissed her back the way he always did, but something was off. The part of him that should have answered stayed quiet.
Heat with Liam came too easily. A look, a breath, and Jacob’s control was already fraying. Here, with his wife, there was nothing. The silence inside him mocked him, and made him furious. He wanted to prove it wrong, prove Liam hadn’t stolen that part of him.
He kissed her deeper, chasing what was missing, searching for the spark he used to find without effort. His mouth moved against hers with more force than tenderness, his hand cupping her face and dragging her closer, willing something inside him to come alive.
He wanted it to burn the way it used to, but he was still in the backseat of a black SUV. He heard it again—Liam’s voice in the car, begging his name. That sound lived inside him now.
Caroline’s hands slid around his waist. He let his palms drift down her spine, and over her hips, as he guided her back until she met the edge of the kitchen table.
She made a soft sound of approval, the kind that should have pulled him closer, but it landed all wrong.
Too gentle and feminine. The sound that haunted him was deeper—a masculine timbre he couldn’t forget.
He kissed her harder as he slid his hand under her sweater, where he found warm skin and soft curves. It should have felt like home.
All he could think about was Liam in the backseat of that car. Liam with blown pupils and parted lips, his body strung so tight Jacob could feel the vibration of it even across inches. That would feel like chaos. Like falling into gravity. This felt like choreography.
Caroline gasped, pulling him closer. “The kids?” she murmured against his mouth.
“Asleep,” he said. His voice sounded wrong to his own ears.
He lifted her onto the table and stepped between her legs. Her thighs tightened around him as he pulled her sweater over her head and reached for her bra with the practiced ease of a thousand nights before. She moaned softly, touched his jaw, and whispered his name.
He stripped off the rest of their clothes, dragged her hips forward, and pushed inside her. He kept moving. Hands on her skin. Lips on her throat. Touches that used to mean everything, but all he could see—could feel—was Liam.
Jacob blinked hard, the room blurring for a second. He pressed his forehead to Caroline’s shoulder and tried to stay present. It was useless, because in his mind, it wasn’t her body wrapped around him anymore—it was Liam.
Liam’s head tipped back, that perfect throat exposed, voice breaking on his name. He’d be begging without even trying, like he wanted to be ruined. That image undid him. Not the woman beneath him. Not the body he’d known for years. Not the life he was trying so damn hard to hold together.
It was the ghost of Liam that finally dragged him over the edge. When his release ripped through him, it wasn’t Caroline’s name that lived on his tongue. He didn’t say it out loud, but God, he felt it. Every brutal second of it.