Chapter 34
JACE
By the time I got back to Declan’s house, my skin felt too tight.
Not in the good way. Not yet.
It was the other kind. The buzzing kind.
The kind where my thoughts kept slamming into each other and none of them would take a number.
Lawyer names. Ownership. Vanessa’s face when she realized the breakup was more than me being emotionally unavailable.
Olivia asking Declan questions I had no right to hear.
Roman knowing and not knowing. My dad not knowing anything at all.
I sat in my car outside Declan’s for two full minutes after I turned the engine off because I had arrived six minutes early and that somehow felt suspicious.
Six minutes early to my boyfriend’s house.
My life had become a math problem written by a sadist.
Tiny solved the paralysis by barking from inside with the force of an air horn.
I laughed once, because it startled out of me, then got out and walked up the side path.
Declan opened the door before I knocked. He had changed out of his rink clothes into black sweats and a white T-shirt, beard trimmed, hair still damp like he had showered not long ago. He looked calm.
That annoyed me for approximately half a second, until I saw the tension at the corners of his mouth.
“Hey,” he said.
I stepped inside. “Hey.”
Tiny hit me at thigh level, which was less a greeting than a weather event. I caught his giant head with both hands while he shoved himself into my legs like he had personally arranged my return.
“Hi, yes, I survived the cruel absence. I know. Nobody suffered like you.”
Tiny groaned and leaned harder.
Declan shut the door behind me. “He’s been watching the window since six.”
“That’s unhealthy.”
“He learned from you.”
I looked over Tiny’s head. “Cheap shot.”
“Accurate shot.”
The house smelled like garlic and something warm and rich.
My stomach reacted before the rest of me did.
I had eaten after the meeting because Declan had told me to, but eating a protein bar while sitting in my apartment staring at a list of employment attorneys did not count as dinner.
It counted as self-preservation with crumbs.
“You cooked,” I said.
“Yes.”
“Like, cooked cooked.”
“There are degrees?”
“There’s food, and then there’s grown-up food. This smells like grown-up food.”
He watched me take off my jacket. “Chicken, pasta, vegetables.”
“Vegetables plural?”
“You’ll survive.”
“I’m under legal stress.”
“Your cells still require nutrients.”
I pointed at him. “This is why people think athletes need supervision.”
“You do.”
I should have made a joke. It was sitting right there. Easy. Automatic.
Instead, the word hit lower than humor.
Supervision.
Structure.
Someone noticing if I ate, if I slept, if I ran myself into a wall and called it fine because stopping felt harder than crashing.
Declan saw it land. He didn’t pounce on it.
“Come eat,” he said.
That was worse.
Kinder, which was worse.
We ate at the island again, because apparently I was slowly becoming a person with a preferred seat in Declan Reid’s kitchen.
Tiny lay under my stool with his head on one of my feet.
Declan put food in front of me and didn’t comment when I inhaled the first five bites too fast, then slowed when my body remembered nobody was stealing it.
For a while, we didn’t talk about lawyers.
We talked about his brother Owen instead, because Owen had sent a video of himself trying to install a shelf and ending up with drywall dust in his hair and what looked like a mild spiritual crisis.
Declan played it for me twice, deadpan, while Tiny perked up at Owen’s voice and knocked his tail against the cabinet.
“He’s a firefighter,” I said, watching Owen swear at a bracket. “He runs into burning buildings.”
“He cannot use a level.”
“People contain multitudes.”
“He once changed my contact photo to a close-up of Tiny’s gums.”
“That’s art.”
Declan took a drink of water. “He wants to visit.”
My fork paused halfway to my mouth. “Here?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“He mentioned next month. I haven’t answered.”
That landed in the pile with everything else. Not bad. Not even scary in the same way. Just another piece of real life pressing against us.
“Does he know about Olivia?” I asked.
“He knows we’re separating. He doesn’t know about you.”
“Right.”
“He will, eventually.”
I nodded and forced myself to take the bite.
Declan watched me for a second. “Your sister?”
“Harper’s going to know before the public does, if I have any control over it. She hates surprises unless they’re food related.”
“And your dad?”
My fork tapped the plate once.
Tiny lifted his head like I had dropped something.
“My dad is...” I exhaled. “He’s my dad. He handled everything after my mom died.
Work. Me. Harper. Bills. Grief. School forms. Forgot his own birthday for three years but never forgot our dentist appointments.
He’s not fragile. I know that. But I still think of telling him big things like I’m handing him more weight. ”
Declan’s face changed in a quiet way. “You’re not a burden to him.”
“I know.” I pushed a piece of chicken around. “Most of the time, I know. Then my brain gets weird about it.”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t know how he’ll react.”
“To me?”
“To me. To men. To cheating. To the coach thing. To all of it.”
Declan set his fork down. “You don’t have to tell him until you’re ready.”
“No.” I looked at him. “But ready might be a fake finish line. Like perfect.”
The corner of his mouth moved, not quite a smile. “Tessa got to you.”
“Tessa lives in my walls now.”
“She charges for that.”
“She should. She’d make a fortune.”
We finished dinner slowly. Or Declan finished slowly and I repeatedly forgot I had a glass of water until he nudged it closer with two fingers. Not controlling. Not making a production. Just putting the thing I needed where my attention might catch on it.
Afterward, I insisted on helping clean because I was not a complete menace. I was a partial menace with strong opinions and limited follow-through.
Declan washed. I dried. Then I got distracted by the cabinet system because he kept plates in a place that made sense to him but not to me, which meant it was wrong. I opened the wrong door twice, shut one too hard, apologized to the cabinet, then heard Declan make a sound behind me.
“What?” I asked.
“You apologized to furniture.”
“It startled me.”
“The cabinet startled you?”
“It was aggressive.”
He turned back to the sink, shoulders moving like he was trying not to laugh.
The wired feeling hadn’t gone away. Food helped.
His house helped. Tiny helped by existing as a breathing blockade of meat and devotion.
But the day had filled me with too much momentum and nowhere to put it.
My body wanted to sprint. My head wanted to reorganize my entire life by midnight. My hands wanted trouble.
Trouble was standing at the sink with wet forearms and tattoos disappearing under pushed-up sleeves.
I dried a plate and moved behind him to put it away, even though there was absolutely enough room to go around. My hip brushed his ass.
“Excuse me,” I said.
Declan didn’t turn. “Plates go left.”
“I know where plates go.”
“You opened the mug cabinet.”
“I was surveying.”
I reached up to the higher shelf for no reason. My shirt lifted. My chest pressed lightly against his back. He kept washing the pan in his hands, but his head tipped down a fraction.
“Jace.”
“What?”
“Don’t start something you don’t want finished.”
The words went straight through the noise.
My brain did that thing I hated and loved, where everything narrowed so fast it was almost dizzying. Sink running. Soap. His voice. The heat off his body. My own breathing.
“I’m helping,” I said.
“You’re provoking.”
“Can’t I do both?”
I crouched to put a bowl in the lower cabinet. On the way down, I let my hand slide along the front of his sweats, not enough to grab, enough to feel him hardening under the fabric.
The pan hit the sink with a dull sound.
I smiled at the cabinet.
Then Declan’s hand closed around the back of my neck and pulled me up.
Not rough enough to hurt. Not careless. Exact.
My body listened before my mouth had a chance to ruin it.
He turned me and backed me into the counter. My lower back met the edge. His other hand planted beside my hip, caging me in without trapping me.
“Try again,” he said.
My pulse thudded hard. “I was helping.”
His thumb moved once at the side of my neck. “Try again.”
I swallowed. “I wanted your attention.”
“You had it.”
“I wanted it on me.”
“There it is.”
The praise wasn’t the usual shape. It didn’t soften me. It stripped me down.
I reached for his waist, but he caught my wrist and put my hand on the counter beside me.
“Leave it there.”
My fingers curled against the stone.
His gaze moved over my face. “Color?”
“Green.”
“Use your words if that changes.”
“It won’t.”
“It might. That’s why you tell me.”
That should not have turned me on as much as it did. The pause. The check. The fact that control with him always had a door I could open from the inside.
“Green,” I said again, steadier.
He turned me around.
My palms hit the counter. He stepped in behind me, big and warm, and pressed the hard line of his cock against my ass through my sweats.
My breath left in a stupid, broken sound.
He rocked once, slow, making me feel exactly what I’d asked for and exactly how little patience he had left for my little performance.
“You came in here vibrating out of your skin,” he said near my ear. “Instead of asking for what you needed, you decided to be a brat in my kitchen.”
I gripped the counter. “Maybe I needed both.”
His hand slid over my stomach, fingers spread, holding me against him. “Then you say that.”
“I need both.”
He went quiet behind me for one second.
Then his mouth touched the side of my neck.
“Better.”
My knees almost unlocked.