Chapter 23
JACE
Vanessa picked the restaurant.
Of course she did.
Not because she needed to control everything.
Vanessa understood presentation. She knew which restaurants photographed well without looking desperate for attention.
Which booths gave privacy without making it obvious you wanted privacy.
Which servers were discreet, which managers cared more about regulars than gossip, which lighting softened every angle.
She understood a room the way I understood open ice.
I used to admire that about her.
Tonight, walking through the front door felt like stepping into a scene neither of us wanted to film anymore.
She was already at the table.
Cream sweater. Gold hoops. Hair smooth enough to survive weather, wind, and emotional devastation. A glass of water sat untouched in front of her. Her posture was perfect. Her face wasn’t.
“You’re on time,” she said.
Fair shot.
“Yeah.”
I sat across from her and immediately noticed the fork beside my plate was crooked.
I moved it a quarter inch. Then it looked too placed, too deliberate, so I moved it back.
My fingers wanted the knife next. Then the napkin.
Then the water glass with the condensation ring that wasn’t centered on the coaster.
I forced both hands into my lap and held them there.
Vanessa noticed.
She always noticed more than people thought.
The server appeared with menus and the kind of smile that said he knew who I was but had been trained not to act like it. Vanessa ordered sparkling water. I said I’d have the same because wine would make my head worse, and my head was already a room full of alarms going off in different languages.
When we were alone again, Vanessa didn’t open her menu.
“I don’t want to do small talk.”
“Okay.”
“I don’t want to hear about the road trip. I don’t want to talk about practice. I don’t want to pretend Aspen is the issue.”
My throat tightened.
She studied me across the table. “Something’s wrong, Jace.”
I nodded once. My mouth hadn’t caught up.
“Is it me?”
“No.”
“Don’t answer fast because you think fast sounds less cruel.”
I pressed my shoe flat to the floor. My foot had started bouncing hard enough to vibrate the table leg. “It’s not you in the way you’re asking.”
Her expression changed, not a lot, but enough.
“That’s what you do now.”
“I know.”
“Half answers,” she said quietly. “Enough honesty to make yourself feel like you’re not lying. Not enough honesty to actually tell me anything.”
The guilt came hot and immediate.
I looked down at the napkin in my lap. My thumb had twisted one corner into a tight little rope. I let go of it and made myself look at her again because she deserved that much. She deserved more than that, but I was already late on every debt here.
“I’ve been unfair to you.”
A short laugh left her. Hurt, not surprised. “Yeah.”
“I should’ve said something sooner.”
“Yeah, you should’ve.”
“I kept thinking after the next game, or after the next trip, or once my head wasn’t such a mess, I’d know how to handle it.” My fingers curled against my thighs. “And then I just kept not handling it.”
Vanessa searched my face like she was looking for the version of me she’d started dating. The easier one. The one who showed up grinning with flowers because he’d been late and could still make that charming instead of exhausting.
“Are you in love with someone else?”
The restaurant sharpened around me.
A fork tapped a plate somewhere behind her. A laugh broke from the bar. Ice shifted in a glass. Music I hadn’t noticed a second ago suddenly pressed against the inside of my skull.
I had rehearsed things. In the shower. In my car. While tying my shoes and forgetting I had already tied one of them. I had practiced saying we weren’t working and you deserve better and I don’t know how to be what you need.
I hadn’t practiced the truth arriving with no padding around it.
Vanessa saw the answer before I gave it.
Her face closed in a way I wished I could unsee. No scene. No dramatic gasp. No throwing water. Just a quiet, terrible understanding settling over her features.
“Oh,” she said.
“Ness.”
“Is that a yes?”
I wanted to lie.
Not because she deserved a lie. Because I wanted, pathetically, to be less bad for one more second.
“Yes.”
She inhaled through her nose, slow and controlled. “Do I know her?”
My stomach rolled.
“No,” I said.
True.
Not true enough.
That made it sit ugly in my mouth.
Vanessa nodded like she’d expected the hit and still hadn’t been able to brace for it. Her eyes shone, but nothing else on her face moved. “How long?”
“It’s complicated.”
Her laugh had teeth this time. “I bet it is.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I know you are.” She looked toward the window, blinking fast. “That’s the awful part. You’re sitting there looking like you might crawl out of your own skin because you hurt me, and some stupid part of me still wants to make you feel better. Which makes me want to throw this glass at your head.”
I would have let her.
“I didn’t do this right,” I said.
“No.”
“I didn’t set out to hurt you.”
“I know.”
Her voice cracked on the last word.
Anger would’ve been easier. Anger had edges. You could stand against it. This was softer and heavier, and it settled right where I couldn’t breathe around it.
The server returned wearing the bright, professional expression of a man approaching a table he now regretted accepting.
Vanessa turned her head and gave him a polished smile. The kind she used when a brand wanted too much for too little money. “We need a few more minutes.”
The second he left, the smile was gone.
“I can’t do Aspen,” she said.
“No. You shouldn’t.”
“And I can’t keep being your girlfriend while you decide whether somebody else matters more.”
“You shouldn’t have to do that either.”
Her eyes came back to mine. “Are you relieved?”
The answer lodged behind my ribs.
Her shoulders lowered, barely. “Please don’t lie about that too.”
I pressed my palms hard into my thighs under the table. “Yes.”
She closed her eyes.
“But I’m sorry too,” I said quickly, because the words started crowding, trying to stampede out before I lost them.
“And ashamed. And I hate that relief is part of it, because you didn’t deserve to be something I needed to end.
You were good to Harper. You remembered my dad’s birthday.
You showed up to games even when I know you had your own things going on, and I let myself act like that was just normal.
It wasn’t. It mattered. You mattered. I just wasn’t with you the way I should’ve been. ”
“Stop.”
I stopped so hard my teeth clicked together.
Vanessa touched beneath one eye with the tip of her finger, careful not to smear anything. “I don’t need a closing statement on my better qualities.”
“Okay.”
“I need you to not make this humiliating.”
“I won’t.”
“That means no vague public mess where I look stupid for months while people make guesses in comment sections.”
“I won’t do that.”
“We’ll say schedules were hard and we still care about each other. It’s boring. Boring dies faster.”
I nodded.
“And tell Roman before Rachel texts me asking if she should come over with wine and a shovel.”
Despite everything, a breath left me that was almost a laugh. Not quite. “Yeah. I’ll tell him.”
Vanessa picked up her bag.
I stood because my body reacted before my brain decided whether that was smart.
“Ness.”
She paused beside the table.
“I really am sorry.”
“I believe you.” Her eyes were wet now, but her voice held. “I just wish believing you made any difference.”
Then she walked out.
I stood there too long.
Long enough for the server to come back and ask if everything was all right in a voice that knew it wasn’t. I paid for two untouched waters, tipped too much because my hand was shaking, and got outside before the restaurant air could choke me.
Cold hit my face.
By the time I got into my car, everything arrived at once.
Not in sequence. Never in sequence when I needed my brain to be useful.
Vanessa saying oh. Her asking if I was relieved.
My answer. Declan’s voice last night. Roman telling me not to apologize and then keep doing the same thing.
Olivia, whose face I barely knew and whose life I had still helped damage.
Aspen. The receipt in my hand. Did I sign the receipt?
I had. Did I leave my card? No. Wallet? Phone? Keys?
I patted my pockets anyway.
Wallet. Phone. Keys.
My chest wouldn’t expand right.
I started the car.
Then turned it off because I had no idea where to go.
Home.
No.
Home was too quiet and too loud at the same time.
Laundry in the washer that probably smelled because I’d forgotten it twice.
Dishes in the sink. Too many pillows Vanessa had bought because mine looked, in her words, like “college boy sadness.” My charger across the room because I’d tossed it yesterday and then spent twenty minutes looking for it this morning.
The ceiling waiting for me to stare at it while my brain built new ways to hate myself.
Roman.
I should call Roman. I’d promised him alive or not alive.
My thumb hovered over his name.
I couldn’t.
Not because I didn’t trust him. I did. More than almost anyone.
But I could already feel it. Me talking too fast, giving him pieces in the wrong order. Roman going quiet in that goalie way, making room. Room was dangerous right now. Room let thoughts multiply.
I didn’t want room.
I wanted weight.
A hand at the back of my neck. A voice with edges. Something steady enough to tell my body where it stopped.