Chapter 4 Jace
JACE
Sienna’s hands move as she talks, her bracelets catching the light, her whole face alive with energy.
“—and I’m thinking we do the full choreography. Like, really commit to it. The girls have been practicing, and I think we can actually pull off the lifts if we—”
Charles laughs, shaking his head. “Lifts? Babe, your bachelorette party is going to put my bachelor party to shame.”
“That’s the goal,” she says, her grin widening. Then she turns those bright eyes on me. “You think you can handle that, Jace? Your party being upstaged by ours?”
I lean back in my chair, crossing my arms as I tip my head slightly in her direction. “I think I can survive the blow to my ego.”
Charles slides her a teasing look. “We could add lifts to the bachelor party, just to even things out.”
“Hard pass.”
Sienna’s laughter is effortless—low and warm, the kind that fills a space instead of piercing it.
She’s the kind of woman who softens everything around her, who makes people want to stand closer.
I can see why my brother chose her. She’s disarming, not because she’s naive, but because she sees the best in people.
That’s something rare in our world, and rarer still when it lasts.
She’s talking again, describing the choreography, the costumes, the music, her fingers drawing invisible lines in the air like she can already see it on stage.
Charles nods when she glances at him, half-listening and fully in love, and I pretend to do the same even though my mind is ten steps ahead—running through the bachelor party details, confirming security rotations, making mental notes of which of his college friends will need babysitting before someone ends up bleeding in one of Silas’s workrooms.
It’s automatic, the way I compartmentalize. The way I let my mind fracture into tasks instead of feelings.
Then Sienna says her name.
“—and Parker said she’d do it! It’s perfect, now we have an even number for the routine—”
My focus snaps back to her voice, the word Parker hitting harder than I expect.
The thought of her dancing—on stage, in whatever little costume Sienna has dreamed up—slams into me like a body shot.
I can already see it: her hips swaying, that defiant chin tilted toward the lights, people staring at her the way they always do.
I know I should be used to the thought of men looking at her, but I’m not. I never will be.
Then a movement catches my eye. Parker steps in from the patio, and my pulse stutters in my throat.
The noise of the room dulls around her, the chatter dissolving into something distant, irrelevant.
Her shoulders are squared like she’s holding herself together by will alone, and her chin is angled just enough to tell me she’s not fine.
Not really. Her dress brushes mid-thigh, her hair glints auburn under the warm lights, and she’s looking everywhere but at me.
And then I see Silas.
He’s cutting through the crowd like a blade, jaw clenched, hands shoved deep into his pockets. Cal’s still at the bar, shaking his head as he pours another drink, his movements too slow, too deliberate. I don’t need words to know something went down between them. Between her and him.
“Parker!” Sienna waves her over, voice bright. “Come here! We were just talking about the dance number!”
Parker’s smile appears wide and wrong. Too bright to be real.
She moves toward us with that unshakable grace she’s always had, the one that makes her look untouchable even when she’s bleeding inside.
Her pulse flutters at the base of her throat when she stops in front of us, and she still won’t look at me.
Which means she’s doing everything she can not to.
“Are you ready for the dance number?” Sienna grabs her hands and squeezes them, oblivious to the tension simmering between us. “It’s going to be so much fun! Rochelle sent me videos of the choreography—it’s incredible!”
Parker’s voice is smooth, but there’s a tremor under it, a note that only someone who knows her would catch. “Can’t wait.”
Sienna’s radiant. “It’s going to be the highlight of the week, right, Charles?”
“It’s going to be amazing,” Charles says automatically, grinning like he can feel none of this pressure suffocating me.
And still, Parker doesn’t look at me.
I shouldn’t take it personally, but I do. I feel it like a bruise forming beneath the ribs. So I decide to fix it.
I lean forward, forearms resting on my knees, voice pitched just low enough for her to hear through the noise of laughter and clinking glasses. “Little Parker’s all grown up now.”
Her shoulders tense. She freezes, just for a second.
Then she turns, slow and deliberate, until her gaze locks with mine.
The years vanish in an instant. That look—God, that look—hits me harder than any bullet I’ve taken.
Her eyes are molten brown, all defiance and memory and pain she won’t let me see.
“Hi, Jace.” Her voice is polite. Flat. The kind you reserve for strangers you’d rather not talk to.
Two words, and somehow they hurt more than the six years of silence between us.
I smile. Slow. Calculated. “Hey, princess.”
The nickname lands like a spark in dry grass. Her jaw tightens. Her breath catches. Her fingers curl into small fists at her sides. And for just a heartbeat, I see her—the girl who used to snap back, who’d argue with me until the sun came up, who never flinched when I pushed her too far.
“Don’t call me that,” she mutters, her voice tight.
“Why not? You used to love it.”
“I used to be twelve.”
“And now you’re not.” My gaze trails down her body, unhurried, tracing the slope of her shoulder, the line of her dress, the curve of her hip. I meet her eyes again, letting her see the hunger I don’t bother hiding. “Hard not to notice.”
Her cheeks flush, anger and color blooming together. “You’re being inappropriate.”
“Just observant,” I murmur, my smile soft but sharp. “You’ve changed. A man notices these things.”
“You can fault a man for being an ass about it.”
There it is—that spark I’ve missed. The fire that always made me forget how to breathe.
But I can’t touch her. Not because I don’t want to, but because the line is still there, buried deep under years of loyalty and guilt. Charles’s sister. Our code. The one rule that never stopped mattering, even when every part of me wanted to break it.
Charles laughs, oblivious, tossing a balled-up napkin at me. “Ignore him, Parker. He’s allergic to good behavior.”
She doesn’t even look at him. “So he hasn’t changed.”
Sienna tugs her hand, already moving. “Come on, I want you to meet the other bridesmaids! They’re dying to meet you—Charles talks about you all the time!”
“Lucky them,” she says with a small, tight smile. But before she disappears, she glances back—just once—and for that brief second, something unspoken flashes between us. Anger, sure. But something else, too. Something I’ve spent six years pretending not to want.
Then she’s gone.
Charles eyes me like he’s reading the storm on my face. “You’re really not going to let that 'princess' thing go, are you?”
“Not a chance.”
“She hates it.”
“I know.” I rise from the chair, straightening my cuffs, smoothing away nothing. “That’s why it works.”
He huffs out a laugh. “You’re an ass.”
“So I’ve heard.” My gaze slides toward the bar—Cal with his glass half-full—and the direction Silas disappeared. “I should check on a few things. Make sure no one’s bleeding yet.”
Charles leans back, smirking. “Translation: go find Silas before he actually kills someone.”
I don’t answer. I just clap his shoulder once and head toward the door, pulse steady, jaw tight, mind already calculating.
Because Charles is right.
Something happened out there on that patio.
And if it has anything to do with Parker, I need to know exactly what.