Chapter 22 WREN
WREN
I am eating cereal over the sink because if I sit at the table I’ll end up staring at my phone, and if I stare at my phone I’ll check whether Jace texted me.
He has not texted me.
And I am not doing that to myself tonight.
I have been very mature about this for three days.
I went to work. I stripped thorns. I made arrangements. I drove the van. I was nice to Sasha. I ate vegetables at least twice. I did not look at my phone at stoplights. I did not construct an elaborate revenge fantasy where I show up at his office in a tight dress and ignore him.
Okay. I constructed it. I did not execute it.
I have decided I am done.
Not done-done. I am not going to pretend I don’t still think about him. I thought about him in the shower this morning, and that’s between me and the showerhead.
I thought about him when I got to the corner of Henry Street and realized I’d walked three blocks past the bodega. I thought about him every time the shop bell rang today, which was thirty-seven times—thirty-seven times I looked up hoping to see a man who was not going to walk through that door.
But done in the sense that the ball is very much in Jace Carrington’s court now.
Three days ago, I got on my knees for that man and did things with my mouth I will think about until I die. And three days ago, he couldn’t look at me afterward, sent me home in his car, and texted me something a lawyer could have drafted.
I tip the cereal box for the last of it and drink the cinnamon milk and tell my reflection in the dark window over the sink that Jace Carrington can come find me when he’s ready to be a man about it, or he can screw himself.
There is a knock at my door.
I go still with the bowl halfway to my mouth.
Nobody knocks on my door at ten o’clock on a Thursday. Sasha texts. My mother calls. Delivery guys buzz from the street.
Three days ago, Tyler was standing outside this door.
I wipe my hands on my leggings and walk over to the peephole.
My stomach drops through the floor.
Jace.
White t-shirt stretched across his chest. Jeans. Looking at my door the way he looks at a problem.
I step back from the peephole and just stand there for a second while my pulse goes completely out of control.
He knocks again.
I open the door with the chain still on, my face in the gap and his on the other side.
“Wren.”
I don’t answer.
“Can I come in?”
“No.”
It comes out calm. I didn’t know it was going to. I’m standing there with my hair in a messy knot, in leggings and Dawson’s old Army t-shirt, no bra, looking at Jace Carrington through a four-inch gap, and somehow the word sounds like I mean it.
He doesn’t move.
“Five minutes.”
“No, Jace.”
“Wren—”
“You don’t get to show up here.” I keep my voice even. “Not after three days. Not after that text. And not because you suddenly changed your mind at ten o’clock at night.”
His hand comes up to the doorframe—not to push, just flat against the wood, like he is using it to hold himself still.
Under the sleeve of the white t-shirt, his bicep flexes against the cotton. His tattoo runs down to his wrist. I’ve seen that arm hold a man against a wall in this hallway. I’ve also seen the rest of him, three days ago, in a towel.
I keep my eyes on his face.
“Wren.”
“Go home.”
I move to shut the door, and his hand comes off the frame and presses flat against it. Not hard. He is not pushing. But his palm is on my door and it is not moving, and the door is not closing.
I could push. He would let me.
I don’t push. I stand there with my fingers curled around the edge of the door and let him feel me not pushing.
“Why are you here, Jace?” I hold his eyes. “Say it. Or take your hand off my door.”
His jaw tightens, but he doesn’t answer.
“Take the chain off.”
“No.”
“Wren.”
“I said no, Jace.”
He doesn’t go.
His eyes hold mine through the gap. Green. Steady. Dark in the hallway light. He doesn’t move. I can feel him on the other side of my door, quiet and close and about to break.
He exhales. Rough.
“Open the door.”
“No.”
“Wren.”
“Give me one reason I should.”
His jaw works once. His eyes are on mine.
“Because I’m not going to be able to stay away from you.”
He says it like a confession in a courtroom. Ruined.
“I tried. Three days. I sat in my office and watched your shop on a camera I shouldn’t have opened and told myself I could hold. I can’t hold, Wren. I’m here because I couldn’t not be.”
My throat has closed.
“Take the chain off.”
The control he has worn every second I’ve known him cracks straight down the middle, and I am still the only thing he’s looking at.
I close the door long enough to slide the chain free, then open it again.
He’s standing in my hallway with his hand still half-raised from the wood, and he doesn’t lower it.
“Come in,” I say.
He steps inside.
My apartment suddenly feels impossibly small. Jace Carrington takes up space like a force of nature, and seven hundred square feet is nowhere near enough room for him.
Six minutes ago I was standing alone in my kitchen drinking cinnamon milk out of a bowl. Now Jace Carrington is in my apartment, close enough that I can feel the heat coming off him from two feet away, and I have thought about this man every minute of the last three days.
He doesn’t move. He lets me look at him like he’s giving me space to decide what happens next before he asks for anything at all.
I turn and walk back into the kitchen.
He follows.
I lean back against the counter and cross my arms, making him stand there for a second. He made me wait three days. He can survive thirty seconds in my kitchen.
He stops on the other side of the small island and keeps his eyes on me.
I don’t say anything right away. The kitchen settles into silence around us, the clock above the stove ticking softly while the fridge hums behind me and both of us pretend we aren’t hyperaware of every breath the other one takes.
Jace breaks first.
“That text was a mistake,” he says quietly. “I knew it the second I sent it.”
He waits for me to answer, but I just look at him.
“I treated you like a client. I shouldn’t have handed you off to Davis.”
“No,” I say, still holding his eyes. “You shouldn’t have.”
His jaw tightens slightly at that, but he nods once like he expected it.
“Three days, Jace.”
“I know.”
“You don’t get to say I know like that’s the apology.”
His gaze drops for half a second before coming back to me. “It’s not the apology. I’m trying to get there.”
I uncross my arms. Cross them again.
“Then get there.”
He runs a hand over the back of his neck and leaves it there. The bicep of his arm flexes against the sleeve of the t-shirt, and I drag my eyes back up.
The island is still between us, and he hasn’t moved an inch.
“I don’t have a clean version of this, Wren. I sat in my office for three days and told myself I was protecting you. I wasn’t. I was protecting me. I knew if I got near you again I was done. So I didn’t come near you.”
“And now you’re here.”
“And now I’m here.”
“Why tonight?”
“Because I lost.”
I look away, toward the dark window over the sink because suddenly looking at him feels dangerous.
“You should go.”
“Wren.”
“I mean it. I’m not—” My voice goes rough and I clear it. “I’m not doing this tonight. You showed up. You said your piece. Go home.”
I turn to walk out of the kitchen.
“Wren—”
Two steps. I spin back.
“I jumped every time the bell rang.”
It comes out before I can stop it.
I close my mouth. Swallow.
He goes still.
“What?”
“I hoped, Jace.” I try to laugh. My hand goes up and drops. “Thirty-seven fucking times yesterday and every single time I looked up I thought maybe—and then it wasn’t you, and I had to keep my face normal for Sasha, and then the bell would ring again and I’d do it all over again.”
I stop. My lip is doing something I can’t control. I turn my face away from him, toward the fridge, because I am not letting him see it.
I hear him move.
He is across the kitchen before I can take another breath.
His hand catches my arm and turns me. His other arm goes around my lower back and pulls me against him.
His mouth is on mine.
It is not the kiss from before.
He takes my face in both hands and angles me where he wants me, and his tongue is in my mouth and his body is against mine and I can feel every inch of him—chest, stomach, hips, the hard length of him through his jeans against my belly—and he groans into my mouth.
I fist his shirt and pull.
He walks me backward.
My back hits the fridge. The magnets rattle. He doesn’t stop kissing me. One hand comes off my face and goes flat on the fridge beside my head, caging me in. The other slides up under the hem of the t-shirt, palm dragging up my ribs—and stopping when there’s nothing under the cotton but skin.
He goes still against my mouth.
“Christ, Wren.”
“Mhm.”
His hand closes over my breast—large and a little rough—and his thumb drags across my nipple, and I arch into him. He growls into the kiss and does it again, deeper.
My head goes back against the fridge and his mouth follows, down my throat to my collarbone.
Then he is lifting me—one-handed, like I weigh nothing. My legs go around his waist, and he pins me there against the fridge with the whole of him.
Oh god.
He grinds up against me once, slow, and I make a sound into his mouth. He drops his face to my throat. Bites. Not gently. The side of my neck, the hollow under my jaw, my ear.
“Three days,” he says against my skin, and it sounds like it cost him. “I’m not doing that again. I watched you on that camera. I told myself I’d stop. I didn’t.”
His mouth is at my ear. His hand under my thigh has gone tight.
“I’m done staying away from you, Wren.”
“No.”
It comes out before I think about it. My hands go to his chest. I push—not hard, just enough.
He stops immediately. He lowers me down off the fridge until my feet are on the floor, slow, careful, and then his hands come off me—off my thigh, off my breast—and go up beside my shoulders.