Chapter 18- JADE
Chloe’s couch is comfortable enough, but sleep won't come.
I'm lying in the dark, wrapped in a blanket that smells like her lavender fabric softener, staring at the ceiling of her living room. She offered me the bed, but I couldn't take it. She has a deposition prep session tomorrow and needs the rest more than I do.
Besides, I don't deserve a bed right now. Not after what I did to my mother.
My old apartment isn't an option. I sublet it to a friend from my writing workshop when I was in California. That was months ago. Emma has made the place her own now, filled it with her plants and her books and her life. I can't exactly knock on the door at midnight and ask for my studio back.
So Chloe's couch it is.
Nothing feels like home anymore except him.
My phone sits on the coffee table, dark and silent.
I've been checking it every few minutes, telling myself I'm not waiting for him to call, knowing that's exactly what I'm doing.
It's almost midnight. He's working or drinking expensive scotch on his balcony while the ocean crashes against the shore below.
I wonder if he's thinking about me. I wonder if the distance hurts him the way it hurts me, like a physical ache in my chest that won't go away no matter how many times I tell myself I made the right choice.
Did I make the right choice?
My mother's face flashes through my mind. The coldness in her eyes when she told me to go. The way she turned her back and walked away without looking at me, her shoulders shaking with sobs she was too proud to let me see.
I chose Phoenix over her. I chose a man I've known for months over the woman who raised me, who sacrificed everything for me, who loved me before anyone else in the world knew I existed.
What kind of daughter does that make me?
The phone buzzes against the wood of the nightstand, and my heart lurches so hard I feel it in my throat. I grab it before the first vibration even finishes, and his name glows on the screen like a beacon in the darkness.
Phoenix.
I answer before I can talk myself out of it. "Hello?"
"Jade." His voice is rough, like he's been drinking or crying or both. Just hearing him say my name makes something inside me crack open. "I wasn't sure you'd pick up."
"I almost didn't." It's a lie. I would have answered on the hundredth ring if that's what it took.
Silence stretches between us, heavy with everything we're not saying.
I can hear him breathing on the other end, slow and steady, and I close my eyes and imagine him there with me.
The warmth of his body against mine. The weight of his arm across my waist. The way he always pulls me closer in his sleep, like even unconscious he can't stand the distance between us.
"I miss you." The words come out like they're being torn from somewhere deep inside him. Vulnerable in a way Phoenix Crawford never lets himself be. "God, Jade, I miss you so much it's killing me."
Tears prick at the corners of my eyes. "I miss you too."
"Come home." His voice breaks on the word, and I feel it shatter something inside my chest. "Please. Just come home."
"Phoenix..."
"I know." He cuts me off before I can say whatever I was going to say.
"I know I was suffocating you. I know I was being controlling, treating you like a possession.
I put a tracker on your phone without telling you.
I blocked the door when you tried to leave.
I did everything my father does to my mother, everything I swore I would never do, and I'm so fucking sorry. "
The tears are falling now, sliding down my temples and into my hair. I don't try to stop them.
"I'm trying to be better," he continues, his voice raw. "I don't know if I can change completely. I don't know if the darkness inside me will ever go away. But I'm trying. For you. Because losing you would destroy me in ways I can't even describe."
I press the phone harder against my ear, desperate to feel closer to him even though he's two thousand miles away. "How do I know you won't do it again? How do I know you won't start controlling me the moment I walk through the door?"
"You don't." The honesty in his voice cuts like a blade. "I can't promise I'll be perfect. I can't promise I won't fuck up again. All I can promise is that I'll try. Every day, I'll try to be the man you deserve instead of the monster I'm afraid I'm becoming."
I think about my mother's words. It’s history repeating itself. Olive, hollowed out and filled with Nicholas until there was nothing left of the woman she used to be.
Is that my future? Is that what loving Phoenix Crawford will cost me?
"I'm scared," I whisper into the darkness. "Of us, of what we've become. Of what we might become if I come back."
"I know." His voice softens. "I'm scared too. Every day I wake up terrified that this is the day you realize you deserve better than me. That this is the day you finally see me clearly and run."
"I do see you." The words come out before I can stop them. "I've seen the best of you and the worst of you. I watched you kill a man, Phoenix. I watched you beat him until there was nothing left, and instead of being horrified, I felt relieved. What does that say about me?"
"It says you're human. It says you understand that sometimes violence is the only answer, even when we wish it wasn't." He pauses, and I can hear him swallow hard.
"We're the same, Jade. Both of us broken in ways that other people can't understand.
Both of us capable of darkness that would send most people running.
Maybe that's why we work. Maybe that's why I can't breathe without you. "
The tears are coming faster now, soaking into the pillow beneath my head. I think about all the reasons I should stay away. My mother's ultimatum. The police investigation. The secrets we're keeping, the lies we're telling, the grave in the mountains that could destroy us both.
But then I think about Phoenix. The way he looks at me like I'm the only thing in the world that matters and the way he killed for me without hesitation, without regret, without asking for anything in return except my love.
"I'll come back." The words leave my mouth before I've consciously decided to say them. "Tomorrow. I'll book a flight in the morning."
The sound he makes is somewhere between a laugh and a sob. "Really?"
"Really." I wipe my eyes with the back of my hand, smiling despite the tears still falling. "But Phoenix, I need you to hear me. If you ever put a tracker on my phone again, if you ever block me from leaving, I will walk away. And I won't come back."
"I understand."
"Do you? Because I mean it. I love you more than I've ever loved anyone, but I won't let that love destroy me. I won't become Olive."
"You won't." His voice is fierce now, certain. "I won't let that happen. You're not Olive, and I'm not my father. We're going to write our own story, Jade. Together."
I want to believe him. God, I want to believe him so badly it hurts.
"I wish you were here," I whisper. The ache in my chest has transformed into something else, something hotter and more urgent. Missing him isn't just emotional anymore. My body craves him in ways I didn't know were possible before we met.
"I wish I was there too." His voice drops lower, rougher. "Tell me what you're wearing."
Heat floods my cheeks. "Phoenix..."
"Tell me."
I swallow hard, my pulse quickening. "Just a t-shirt. One of Chloe's old ones."
"Take it off."
The command in his voice sends a shiver down my spine. I hesitate for only a moment before sitting up and pulling the shirt over my head. The cool air raises goosebumps across my bare skin.
"It's off," I breathe.
"Good girl." The words make something clench low in my belly. "Now lie back. Close your eyes. Pretend it's my hands touching you instead of yours."
I do as he says, sinking back against the pillows, letting my eyes flutter closed. In the darkness behind my eyelids, I can almost feel him there with me. The heat of his body. The calluses on his palms. The way he always knows exactly where to touch me to make me fall apart.
"Touch yourself for me," he murmurs. "Start at your neck. Trace your fingers down slowly, the way I would."
My hand trembles as I bring it to my throat. I trail my fingertips down the column of my neck, across my collarbone, lower. The sensation is electric, amplified by his voice in my ear and the knowledge that he's doing the same thing thousands of miles away.
"Are you touching yourself too?" I ask, my voice barely a whisper.
"Yes." The word comes out strained, breathless. "I'm imagining it's your hand wrapped around me instead of mine. Imagining the way you look when you take me in your mouth, those beautiful eyes looking up at me."
I moan softly, my fingers drifting lower. "I want you here. I want to feel you inside me."
"Soon." His breathing is heavier now, rougher. "Tomorrow night, I'm going to take you apart piece by piece. I'm going to worship every inch of your body until you forget your own name. I'm going to make you come so many times you'll be begging me to stop."
"I won't beg you to stop." My back arches off the bed as my fingers find the place where I need them most. "I never want you to stop."
"That's my girl." Pride and possessiveness color his voice, and instead of bristling at it, I lean into it. I am his girl. His and only his. "Tell me how it feels."
"Good." The word comes out as a gasp. "So good. But not as good as when you do it."
"Nothing compares to the real thing." His voice is ragged now, and I can tell he's close. "I can't wait to have you back in my bed. Back where you belong."
The tension building inside me crests and breaks, and I cry out his name into the darkness of the hotel room. I hear him groan on the other end of the line, and knowing he's falling apart at the same moment I am makes the pleasure even more intense.
For a long moment, neither of us speaks. Just breathing together, sharing this moment across the distance that separates us.
"I love you," he says finally. "I know I don't say it enough. I know I show it in ways that are fucked up and possessive and probably unhealthy. But I love you, Jade. More than anything in this world."
"I love you too." The words feel like a vow. A promise. A surrender.
"Get some sleep. You have a flight to catch in the morning."
"I'll text you when I book it."
"I'll be waiting." A pause. "Jade?"
"Yes?"
"Thank you. For giving me another chance. I won't waste it."
The line goes dead, and I lie there in the darkness, my heart pounding, my body still humming with aftershocks. Tomorrow I'll go back to California. Back to Phoenix. Back to the life we're building together, whatever that might look like.
Back to danger and secrets and a love that might consume us both.
But tonight, for the first time in days, I sleep without nightmares.