Chapter 35 JACE
JACE
She doesn’t let go of me in the elevator.
Her arms are around my neck, her face against my throat. I just hold her.
She’s shaking. Not crying anymore. Just the tremor that comes after, when the body finally believes it’s safe.
I know this tremor.
I’ve felt it in my own hands more times than I want to count.
The elevator opens into the foyer of the penthouse and we walk through the dark apartment without turning the lights on.
She sits down on the edge of our bed.
“Wren.”
She doesn’t say anything.
“Baby.” I crouch down in front of her. “Look at me.”
She looks up.
Her eyes are wrecked. Mascara everywhere. Her bottom lip is trembling the way it does when she’s trying not to cry and losing.
Then she breaks.
She folds forward into my chest and the sound that comes out of her isn’t a sob, it’s just air leaving a body that’s been holding too much for too long. I pull her in. One hand on the back of her head. The other low on her back. She’s shaking again.
I let her go for as long as she needs.
When her breathing finally evens out, I tip her chin up with two fingers until she’s looking at me.
“Hey.”
Her eyes are wet. Bloodshot. She holds mine.
“You’re safe.”
Her eyes fill again. A tear spills over and I catch it with my thumb before it gets to her jaw.
“I am never letting anything happen to you again. Do you understand me?”
“Jace—”
“Never.”
“Okay.”
I press my mouth to her forehead and hold it there.
“Come on, baby. Let’s get you in a hot bath.”
She nods against me.
I take her hand off my shirt and lift it to my mouth and kiss her knuckles.
She watches me do it.
The corner of her mouth lifts a little, and something in my chest unlocks.
I dump in the bath salts she likes—the eucalyptus ones from the place down the block from Wild Tide—and I keep glancing back at her through the doorway the whole time.
She’s sitting on the edge of the bed in her dress staring at her hands.
I come back and stand in front of her.
“Arms up.”
She lifts her arms.
I pull the dress up over her head, slow, careful of her hair — careful of the bruise on her bicep I can’t look at straight, because if I do I’m walking back out this door tonight. And I can’t do that to her.
Not yet.
The bra next. Her underwear, down her legs, and she steps out of them.
Into the bathroom with my arm around her, and I lower her into the water. She sinks to her chin and closes her eyes.
I sit on the cold tile beside the tub with my back against the wall and one hand resting on the edge of the porcelain right next to her shoulder, and I stay there.
The only sound in the room is her breathing slowly evening out.
“Jace.”
“Yeah.”
“I’m sorry.”
I shake my head. “No.”
“I shouldn’t have left—”
“Don’t you apologize to me.”
“Jace—”
“I shouldn’t have stood in your bedroom and told you I wasn’t good for you. That was Dawson in my head, not me — and I sat there and decided he was right. I should’ve been right behind you, and instead I sat there—”
I stop.
“You went down those stairs alone because of me. That’s on me. Not you. Don’t you ever apologize to me for it.”
The water laps against the side of the tub.
“You said I sounded like Tyler.”
It comes out of me before I can stop it.
She looks at me, eyes filling again.
“You don’t,” she whispers. “You don’t sound like him. I shouldn’t have said that.”
I push off the wall and come up onto my knees beside the tub. Both hands on the porcelain now. My face is close to hers.
“Tell me where the line is, Wren. Tell me where the line between protecting you and controlling you is, because I’m telling you right now I will spend the rest of my life walking that line if you tell me where it is, but I can’t find it on my own. I am too in love with you to find it on my own.”
She’s crying again.
Quietly.
“You’re nothing like him.”
“I want to believe that.”
“Jace.” Her wet hand grabs my wrist. “I’m not afraid of you. I have never been afraid of you. Not once.”
I look at her.
“You are nothing like him,” she says.
“I made you cry tonight.”
“Yeah.” She squeezes my wrist. “And then you came for me.”
I press my forehead to hers.
She runs her fingers over my hair.
“Dawson doesn’t get to decide what I need,” she says, quiet, frayed. “I do. And I already did.”
The thing I’ve been holding shut since her bedroom lets go.
“He asked if I could be what you need. I didn’t have an answer.” I pull back enough to look at her. “I do now.” My thumb moves along her jaw. “You make me better, Wren. I didn’t know I had it in me.”
She holds on to me, her face against my neck, and I hold her back, and for a while neither of us moves. The water’s gone cool around her.
I press my mouth to her hair. “Come on. Let’s get you to bed.”
I lift her out of the water dripping wet, and wrap her in the biggest towel I own, and I dry her off slowly.
I get her into one of my t-shirts and into our bed.
I climb in beside her in my undershirt and my pants. If I take anything else off she might think I’m asking, and I’m not asking tonight.
I pull her into my chest.
She’s asleep in under five minutes.
I lie there in the dark with her breath on my collarbone, waiting for the call.
* * *
It’s two in the morning when my phone buzzes against the nightstand.
I check it without moving her.
Ryker : We have him.
I look down at her and ease out from under her so slowly she doesn’t stir, and pull the covers up to her shoulder.
I cross to the dresser and pull a black shirt over my head. Black on purpose.
I write her a quick note and prop it against the lamp:
Back soon.—J
I take one more look at her from the doorway.
Then I go.