Chapter 40
Jacob
It had been three weeks since Jacob had last touched him.
Since he’d last heard Liam’s voice, tasted his mouth, or felt him come apart in his arms. Three weeks since Liam had walked out of this house and left Jacob standing in the middle of the room with nothing but the ragged sound of his own goddamn breath.
He hadn’t expected heartbreak to feel physical; he hadn’t known it could cut this deep.
What he felt wasn’t the dull ache of missing someone, or the cliché of longing.
It was a raw wound torn open inside him that refused to close.
Every breath scraped across it, and every quiet hour pressed salt into it.
Liam was the ache itself, lodged too deep to carve free.
Nights were the worst. He’d lie awake in bed staring at the ceiling, replaying every second of their time together.
He tried reading, writing, even lifting the piano lid once, only to close it again without pressing a single key.
Running helped sometimes—pounding pavement until his lungs burned and exhaustion drowned out the pain—but even then, Liam was there, tucked into the shadows of his mind.
He had spent his whole life building walls to keep himself from this very place.
Growing up the way he had, there had never been another choice: want nothing, need nothing, feel only what you can control.
That was survival. That was safety. It had worked, too, until Liam.
Now Jacob barely recognized the man in the mirror, carrying grief he could neither hide nor release.
He still had the kids twice a week, and he tried to make every hour count.
He gave them everything—stories, games, warmth.
His love for them was the only thing that hadn’t broken, untouched by the wreckage.
But every time he dropped them off, the silence swallowed him whole.
Caroline barely looked at him when she opened the door, and he couldn’t blame her.
He was the reason for the frost in her eyes and the coldness in her voice.
Work had started to pick up again: press, promo, post-production.
Liam had been out on paternity leave since the baby’s birth, a grace period the studio had extended more generously than most actors could dream of.
That grace had run out now. Today would be the first time seeing each other since it ended.
They’d both been called into the studio for an ADR session—and of course, it had to be that scene.
Automated Dialogue Replacement was supposed to be simple—fix the sound, nothing more.
They would be in a booth together, watching themselves on screen, their voices syncing to their own lips until the two moved as one.
Perfection wasn’t only in the precision; it lived in the breaths, in the pauses, in the timing that cracked open something raw.
The chemistry had to spark just as fiercely as it had the first time.
Jacob stood with the script loose in his hand, headphones slung around his neck, eyes unfocused on the page.
The sound engineer shifted sliders on the board behind the glass, the faint hum of equipment filling the silence.
He was trying not to feel like a man trapped in a cage waiting for the door to open.
His pulse was restless, braced against a hit he knew was coming.
The door swung open, and Liam stepped inside. Three weeks hadn’t dulled it. The gravity hit hard, the same impossible pull that had lived inside Jacob’s bones since the moment they met. The one he’d tried and failed to silence, over and over again.
Liam looked exhausted, bruised crescents darkening the skin beneath his eyes.
His hair was unstyled, as though he hadn’t even cared enough to glance at a mirror that morning.
He carried the air of someone who had used every ounce of strength just to get here, and even that wasn’t enough to disguise how goddamn beautiful he was.
“Hey,” Liam said quietly.
Jacob forced his voice level. “You good?”
A sharp exhale. “Not even close.”
They didn’t speak again. Just moved into place side by side, the mic hanging between them like a line neither dared to cross.
The playback flickered to life on the screen.
Their characters were nose to nose, the air between them trembling with the kind of tension that begged to combust. Jacob remembered every second of that shoot—the closeness, the way Liam had looked at him, and the magnetic pull that had drawn them together.
“Take one,” the sound engineer called over the intercom.
Jacob watched Liam breathe in, noticing the familiar tic in his jaw that signaled nerves. Liam hesitated slightly, and the line landed half a beat too late.
“Take two,” the engineer said, preparing for another attempt.
Liam’s fingers tapped an anxious rhythm against his thigh. He tried again, but this time his voice barely carried, the intensity draining away.
“Take three.”
Liam faltered again, then glanced Jacob’s way, a flicker of apology in his eyes. His shoulders tensed and Jacob could see the effort it took not to let frustration win. He wanted to say something, to reach across the space and anchor him, but the moment slipped away.
Take four came, then five, but it still wasn’t right.
Jacob heard the problem immediately. Liam was in his own head, overthinking it. He was trying too hard to keep the performance clean, to hold himself together, when it was never meant to be clean. The scene was messy—an emotional breakdown in disguise.
“Don’t play it safe,” Jacob said gently. “He’s breaking. Let him break.”
For a moment, Liam just stared at the floor, the weight of the scene and Jacob’s words hanging between them. His voice was barely a whisper. “I don’t know how to do this without falling apart.”
Jacob turned, meeting his eyes and holding them. “Then fall apart,” he said, like it was the simplest thing in the world.
Take six edged closer to what they needed, but Liam still kept a piece of himself locked away. Jacob watched his profile—the tight clench of his hand, the hollow at his throat where his pulse jumped, and the way his mouth parted as if words had to claw their way out.
He took a step closer, narrowing the distance between them.
“Look at me,” he said, tone soft but commanding.
Liam’s pretty eyes lifted and their gazes locked—and there it was, the tether neither of them could sever.
Everything else faded, and Jacob let all the words he couldn’t say bleed into the space between them.
“Take seven.”
Liam didn’t look away. He opened his mouth and delivered the line, his voice breaking over the words: “You’re the only thing that’s ever felt like home.”
It wasn’t a performance; it was truth, pulled straight from the wound.
Jacob’s hand moved without permission. He reached out and touched Liam’s wrist—barely a brush, but enough. Liam stilled, then leaned into it, as if even that small touch was oxygen.
Line after line, they kept going, their voices dropping lower, rougher, something unspoken crawling beneath every syllable. It stopped being about the characters or the film. It became the unraveling of two men who couldn’t separate themselves from one another no matter how hard they bled trying.
Jacob couldn’t hear the engineer anymore.
Couldn’t remember the script in his hand.
He could only see Liam’s wet eyelashes, his mouth slightly parted, and his chest straining for air.
He moved again without thinking, his hand lifting to cup Liam’s jaw, thumb tracing gently along his skin as Liam let his eyes fall shut.
Jacob leaned in, close enough to hear Liam’s breath catch and to feel the tremor moving through his body. His mouth brushed Liam’s ear as he whispered, voice rough with everything he couldn’t bury: “I miss you.”
The sound Liam made cut him clean through—like pain forced into existence. Liam’s hands clenched at his sides, refusing to lift because he knew the cost. And then, so quiet Jacob almost didn’t hear it, came the words that would undo him for the rest of his life: “I miss you, too.”
Jacob clung to those words, hoping they might anchor him, but anchors only held for so long. Liam still turned and walked to the door, moving as if every step cost him, and left without a backward glance.
Jacob remained, script limp in his hand, his lungs locking around a breath he couldn’t release. The booth still held the heat of him, lingering in the air. When the engineer cleared his throat, waiting for direction, Jacob didn’t respond. There would be no working after this.
Three weeks, and he was still bleeding out. He kept replaying the way Liam had met his gaze, let himself be touched, and spoken the words Jacob had ached to hear. He held onto them, hope threading through the emptiness, refusing to let go.