Chapter 19 JACE
JACE
The ride up to the penthouse in my private elevator is forty-one seconds.
I’ve timed it before, for other reasons, on other nights, and tonight I count it down the way I used to count breaths under cover—because if I’m counting I don’t have to think about the fact that Wren Ashford is standing beside me while her duffel hangs from my hand like she already belongs here.
She hasn’t said a word since Brooklyn.
I haven’t pushed.
Thirty-eight.
My right hand is still half-closed at my side. I flex it once. Open. Shut. The grip I had on his throat is sitting in the tendons of my forearm. I can feel where his pulse was under my thumb.
What I did, I already know. Hand on his throat, walked him into the wall, told him to leave. That was the job.
What I wanted to do was put him on the floor of her hallway and not stand up until he couldn’t.
The only reason I didn’t is that I clocked, even in the middle of it, that she was at the peephole on the other side of the door, and the version of me she opened it to needed to be a version she’d let in.
Which means she’s the brake.
Which means if she isn’t there next time, there isn’t one.
That’s the part I can’t look at. Not that I did it without deciding. That the only thing between me and doing worse was calculating what she would see when she looked through the glass.
Twenty-two.
She shifts her weight.
Glances at me once. Looks away.
Nine.
This morning she told me to stay away from her. Stood in a room in this building and told me to stay the hell away from her shop. Her apartment. Her.
I said okay. She walked out.
Tonight I put her in my car and drove her here.
She knows. I know. Neither of us is going to say it.
Two.
One.
The doors open.
“This way.”
I drop her duffel beside the island.
She stands in the middle of my living room looking out at the wall of glass.
“This is a lot of apartment.”
Her eyes move past me—to the river, the bridges, Manhattan lit black and gold beyond the windows—and I watch her take it in. The scale of it. The distance between her life and this one.
“It’s beautiful, Jace.”
“Thank you.”
“Bathroom’s down the hall, second on the left. Guest room’s across from it.”
Her eyes lift to mine briefly.
“Would it be okay if I took a quick shower?”
It takes me a second.
“Yeah. Yeah, of course. Let me grab you a towel.”
I walk down the hall. She follows a step behind while I pull the linen closet open and take two clean towels off the top shelf with a facecloth tucked between them.
When I turn, she’s closer than I expected.
Her gaze catches mine as I hand her the stack. Our fingers brush. She doesn’t look away.
A small smile pulls at her mouth. Tired. Soft.
“Thank you.”
She takes the towels and disappears into the bathroom. The door clicks shut behind her.
I stand there for a second with my hand still half-raised before I finally lower it and head back to the living room.
I stop at the windows.
Manhattan is quiet at this hour. One A.M. traffic on the FDR, the bridges lit, the river black. I’ve stood here a thousand nights. I’ve never stood here with her showering down the hall.
I put a hand flat on the glass.
Breathe once.
And somewhere in the apartment behind me, the water runs.
I can hear it.
I can also—because tonight my head’s gone somewhere I didn’t send it—picture her in it. Wet hair. Bare skin. Steam curling under the bathroom door.
Jesus Christ, Carrington. She’s in your shower because a man scared her out of her own apartment tonight. Get it together.
I close my eyes. Push off the window. Drag the thought back into whatever compartment it was supposed to stay in.
I walk into the kitchen and take my phone out of my pocket.
Ryker picks up on the first ring.
“What happened?”
“Tyler went to her door.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“Rivas was off. Miller was at a stoplight on Flatbush. Nobody was on her.”
“Jace—”
“I want three men on her block tonight. One in her lobby. Increase coverage on every existing feed and add cameras on all approaches to the shop and her apartment by noon.”
“Copy.”
“And I want Miller and Rivas off the roster. Tonight.”
A pause.
“Understood.”
“Get me Davis to cover overnight. If Davis is out, Park. Nobody I haven’t used before.”
“On it.”
“Ryker.”
“Yeah.”
“She’s here.”
He’s quiet for a second.
“Okay.”
“I’m not leaving her tonight.”
“Copy that. Go be with her.”
I hang up.
I dial Miller.
“Boss—”
“You were hired to be on her at six. You weren’t.”
“Rivas was supposed to—”
“I don’t give a fuck who was supposed to be. I hired you. You weren’t there. A man walked up to her door tonight and she was on the other side of it with a dead phone. You’re done.”
“Boss, please—”
“Don’t bother coming back to the office. Ryker will cut your last check in the morning.”
I hang up.
I dial Rivas.
“Boss, I’m so sorry, Miller was supposed to—”
“Your shift ended at six.”
“Yeah—”
“You do not end a shift until coverage is physically on her. You do not assume. You confirm. You visually confirm. Miller wasn’t there and you left anyway.”
He has nothing.
“She was in her apartment alone with a dead phone and Tyler Vaughn at her door. Because you went home.”
“Boss—”
“You’re done, Rivas. Ryker will be in touch.”
I hang up.
I set the phone on the stone island, brace both hands on the counter, and let the rage sit because there’s nowhere else for it to go.
I’ve never fired two people over the phone in under five minutes.
I brace both hands on the stone island and lock the rage down the way training taught me to.
I look up.
She’s in the doorway of the kitchen.
And for a second, I can’t breathe.
Her hair is wet and combed back from her face. No makeup. No jewelry. A thin cotton tank, matching shorts, her feet bare on my wood floor. The tank does nothing to hide the fact that she isn’t wearing a bra. The shorts stop high on her thighs.
I drag my eyes up.
She heard me on the phone.
I see it on her face. She heard the Miller call. She heard the Rivas call. Heard me take two men apart from a granite island in my own kitchen with my voice low and my free hand clenched into a fist I hadn’t even realized I made.
She’s not scared.
She’s watching me carefully.
“Are you okay?”
Three quiet words from the doorway of my kitchen.
I don’t have an answer for that.
Nobody asks me that. Not Ryker. Not Nora. Not Dawson. Not in years.
She stands in the doorway waiting for one anyway.
I can’t give her one. If I open my mouth, whatever comes out of it isn’t going to be something I can take back.
So I don’t open it.
Then she starts walking.
Slow. One bare foot in front of the other across my kitchen. Her eyes on mine the whole way.
She doesn’t look at the floor, the island, or anything else in the room. Just me.
I don’t move.
My pulse has gone somewhere I can’t control. I feel it in my throat, my wrists, lower. My jaw locks. My hands are already fists at my sides before I realize it.
Halfway across.
She doesn’t speed up. She doesn’t slow down. She crosses my kitchen like she knows exactly what she’s doing, and every step she takes is the sound of a woman giving me every chance to stop her.
I don’t stop her.
I should.
I don’t.
Three-quarters across. Another step. Then she’s standing in front of me. Close. Closer than she needs to be. The warmth of her through the inch of air between us.
If I looked down—and I do not look down, because I am hanging on by a thread—I would see exactly how little that thin tank is hiding.
Her eyes are on mine. She doesn’t say a word. Her hands come up to the third button of my shirt.
My voice finds something. “Wren. What are you doing?”
She looks up at me. Her fingers work the button open. “Tell me you don’t want this and I’ll go.” Quiet. She doesn’t wait for an answer. She works the next one open.
Her knuckles brush my bare skin on the way down and it takes everything I have not to move. She opens the next one. Still looking at me. And the next.
She is not rushing. She is not fumbling. She has decided, and every button is a second I have not said stop.
I don’t say stop.
I can’t. Because if I stop this, I have to look at her and pretend I don’t want her.
What I want to do is pick her up and put her on my counter. Drag those shorts down her legs. Put my mouth on her until she is soaking and shaking and the only word she remembers is my name.
I don’t move.
She works the last button open. Her fingers brush the waistband of my pants and every muscle in my body goes tight.
She opens the shirt. Both hands. Palms flat against my ribs, pushing the fabric back a few inches off my shoulders.
Then she stops.
An inch of air between us. I can feel the heat of her through it. Her breath is warm and soft against the bare skin of my chest. Her eyes have not left mine.
Her right palm comes flat against my chest. Over my heart. Skin on skin. Her hand is small and cool from the water and my heart is going hard enough that she has to feel it. There is no hiding it. She feels it.
She goes up on her toes. Her mouth an inch from mine. Her eyes drop to my lips.
“Tell me you don’t want this, Jace.”
Her eyes come back up to mine. Searching. Looking for the no she just asked for.
“And I’ll go.”
Fuck .
My throat works. Nothing comes out.
Her hand stays over my heart, feeling every brutal beat of it. She’s not pushing. She’s just there, waiting me out, and the longer I say nothing the more she has her answer.
“Wren.”
It tears loose rough. Wrecked. Not the no she asked for.
“We can’t.”
The words sound rough coming out of me. Thin. Unconvincing.
Because the truth is I don’t know if I mean can’t or won’t.
She studies my face for a long second like she’s looking for something underneath the words.
Then she lowers off her toes. Slow.
Her thumb drags once over my skin before she steps back.
Her face isn’t angry. It isn’t hurt.
It’s clear.
She found her answer.
“Okay,” she says quietly.
Then she turns and walks out of my kitchen.
Bare feet against the wood floor. The guest room door closing softly down the hall.
I stay where I am long after she’s gone, shirt hanging open, pulse still pounding under the place her hand was.
Because I let her walk away for one reason only—I didn’t trust myself not to follow.