Chapter 14 #2
“You too.”
Her gaze slid past me.
To Jace.
He saw her at almost the same moment.
His expression didn’t collapse. Jace was too practiced for that. But his smile faltered, and his eyes went blank in a way I recognized now. The sudden inventory. Did she say she was coming? Did he miss a text? Where was his phone? Had he answered? What else had slipped?
Vanessa lifted her hand.
Jace handed a signed jersey back to a boy, said something to the parents, and came toward us.
He kissed her cheek.
She angled into him naturally, like she knew where the cameras were even when she wasn’t looking. His hand hovered at her waist, rested lightly for a second, then fell away.
“You didn’t tell me you were coming,” he said.
“I texted you.” Her smile stayed pretty, but her voice softened into something private. Not angry. Hurt, maybe. Annoyed. “Lark and Lyle are sponsoring a table. They invited me.”
Jace blinked once. “I’m sorry. I didn’t check before I got here.”
Vanessa looked him over. “You look really good.”
“Thanks. You do too.”
They stood together like people who knew how to pose and had forgotten how to stand.
There would have been comfort between them once. Maybe there still was, in some shape I didn’t have the right to judge. But not enough. Not tonight. She wanted him beside her in the version of their life that photographed well. He was trying to remember the steps.
My phone rang.
Olivia.
For one ugly second, I considered letting it go.
Then Vanessa touched Jace’s sleeve, and he looked down at her hand like he didn’t know what to do with being claimed in public by someone he was failing in private.
I answered.
“Hey,” I said, stepping into the side corridor.
“Hi,” Olivia said. “Bad time?”
“I’m at the fundraiser. It’s loud, but I can talk.”
“I’ll be quick. My Thursday flight is a mess again, so I may not land until Friday morning. I’m sorry.”
“You don’t need to apologize.”
“I know. I just...” She exhaled. “I wanted to be there this time.”
I looked through the open ballroom doors.
Jace stood with Vanessa near the sponsor wall, smiling for a photo he did not want. Roman watched from beside the auction table. Tessa watched Roman. The room was full of people seeing pieces of a thing none of them could name.
“It’s all right,” I said. “The kids are having a good night.”
“That’s good.” A pause. “How are you?”
The question should have been easy.
It wasn’t.
“Tired,” I said.
“Yeah. Me too.” Her voice changed slightly, quieter under the restaurant noise on her end. “I miss knowing what your days look like.”
Guilt landed hard and cold.
“I miss telling you,” I said.
And that was true.
That was the damage of it. Nothing was clean.
I had not stopped caring about my wife. I had not stopped knowing the sound of her exhaustion or the way she went quiet when she wanted to ask for more than she thought she should.
There was no simple villain in this. Just distance, neglect, and now something I had no honest way to excuse.
“I’ll call after dinner if it’s not too late,” she said.
“Okay.”
“Love you, Dec.”
I closed my eyes for half a second.
In the ballroom, applause rose as one of the kids scored on the synthetic shooting pad near the stage.
“Love you too,” I said.
The words were not a lie.
They were not enough either.
When I ended the call, I stayed in the corridor longer than necessary.
By the time I returned, Jace was beginning to slip.
Most people would have missed it. He was still smiling.
Still polite. Still giving sponsors answers that sounded normal.
But his responses had shortened, his left hand was working the button of his suit jacket, and his attention kept jumping, exits, cameras, Vanessa, me, the kids crowding the autograph table, the servers moving too close behind him.
The room had gotten louder as the auction picked up.
Voices overlapped with music, glassware, laughter, the bright chaos of children running on sugar and excitement.
Roman moved first.
A sponsor caught him with a handshake and a question before he made it three steps.
Jace turned too quickly and nearly backed into a server with a tray.
I crossed the ballroom.
“Holloway,” I said quietly when I reached him.
He looked at me like he’d been dragged back from somewhere far away. “I’m fine.”
“No. With me.”
Vanessa stood a few feet away. Roman had stopped pretending not to watch. Tessa found me across the room and assessed the situation in one sweep.
I did not touch him.
I walked toward the service corridor.
After a beat, Jace followed.
The hallway was not private. Staff moved at the far end. Music thudded through the walls. Anyone could turn the corner. It was safer than an empty room with a door and more dangerous because we both knew it.
Jace stopped beside a stack of folded linens and put his hands on his hips. “I’m okay.”
“Save your energy. You don’t have enough left to lie convincingly.”
His laugh was thin. “That’s encouraging.”
“Look at me.”
He did.
“Breathe in.”
His chest moved too fast.
“Again. Slower.”
He tried. Failed. Frustration flashed across his face, sharp enough to cut. He hated this part, I knew that now. Hated needing a reset. Hated being watched when his own body refused to cooperate.
“Four in,” I said. “Six out.”
“Can’t count right now.”
“I’ll count.”
His eyes stayed on mine.
I lifted one hand, low between us, counting with my fingers. He followed. The first exhale broke halfway. The second held. By the third, the panic in his breathing loosened its grip.
“Shoulders,” I said.
He lowered them.
“Hands.”
His fingers uncurled.
“Five things you see.”
“You.”
“Not me.”
A tired flicker of irritation brought him closer to himself. “Linens. Exit sign. Ugly carpet. Silver cart. Your shoes.”
“Four things you feel.”
“My socks are wrong.”
“Tell me how.”
“The seam’s under my toes. Jacket’s tight. My hands are cold. My ears are ringing.”
“Three sounds.”
He shut his eyes.
“Open.”
He opened them.
“Music. Plates. Someone laughing in the kitchen.”
“Good.”
The word left me low.
His reaction was immediate, a shiver he tried to bury and couldn’t. It went through him and came straight for me.
I should have stepped back.
Instead, my attention caught on the uneven line of his collar. “Your collar’s crooked.”
His breathing changed.
I lifted my hands slowly, giving him room to move away.
He didn’t.
My fingers brushed the edge of his collar. Warm skin. Starched fabric. The rough scrape of stubble where his jaw met his neck. I fixed the fold with more care than the task required, then adjusted his tie, two small tugs to center the knot.
It took too long.
We both knew it.
His breath touched my wrist. His gaze stayed on my face, open in a way that made my chest feel too small.
Want was there, yes, unmistakable and reckless.
But beneath it was something harder to survive.
Trust. Not easy trust. Not blind. The kind he kept handing me piece by piece, even when I had done nothing to deserve a clean version of it.
A server laughed somewhere down the hall.
Neither of us moved.
“Declan,” he said, so quietly the music almost swallowed it.
My name should not have sounded like that in his mouth. Not here. Not with my wife’s voice still in my ear and his girlfriend waiting under ballroom lights.
My thumb smoothed once along the edge of his lapel before I made myself drop my hand.
Jace searched my face. He looked exhausted, furious, steadier than he’d been five minutes ago, and more dangerous to me than anyone in that ballroom could have guessed.
“How long are we going to act like this isn’t happening?”
The hallway seemed to shrink around us.
There were responsible answers. There were cruel ones. There were versions of the truth that would hurt everyone less if I said them now and meant them.
None came easily.
Children laughed twenty yards away. Cameras flashed. Sponsors drank champagne. Vanessa was probably checking the photo they’d just taken. Olivia was at some dinner in another city, still caring about a marriage I was quietly betraying.
I stepped back because staying close would have been a decision.
“Not here.”
His face tightened, not with surprise. With the cost of hearing it.
I turned and walked back toward the ballroom.
I didn’t look over my shoulder.
I felt him there anyway, in the hallway behind me, breathing through what I had left unsaid.