Maybe One Day, page 10
Remembering I still hadn’t answered him, that he was waiting for me to give him permission, I nodded.
Instantly, I knew Jace was going to kiss me. I knew exactly where this would lead, and I chased after it, hoping I was right.
His head bowed a little, the stubble along his jaw rubbing deliciously against my chin. About a thousand different emotions swamped me as his lips brushed mine for the first time, feather-soft, sweet. Infused with shock, I barely had time to register the feeling before he was drawing back, and I missed his touch immediately.
Unfulfilled desires crashed through me, and I went up on my toes, holding on to his broad shoulders for leverage, and then, much to my relief, my mouth was back on his. This time, there was nothing tentative or questioning about the kiss. It was desperate and shattering—a release of years’ worth of pent-up sexual tension and longing.
A low moan escaped the back of his throat, and the sound reverberated against my lips, making me shiver. Jace deepened the kiss, his tongue sliding into my mouth, tasting me. Devouring me.
The push of his solid chest against my breasts, the feel of him nudging my legs open with his knee, had lightning zipping through my veins. I felt like I was sparking to life beneath his touch, seconds away from combusting.
I’d fooled around with a couple of guys before, but it never felt like this.
Note to self: this was what kissing someone you loved felt like.
Nothing bad existed here. Only unfamiliar lightness, a distinctive warmth. Our bodies were fused, and Jace’s mouth molded to mine perfectly, like he’d been born to do this—to hold me and kiss me so thoroughly, to make me feel sexy and wanted.
My arms skated up his biceps, over his shoulders, and slipped around the back of his neck. Every square inch of him was corded and strong. It was so easy to press against the entire length of him, leaving little to the imagination.
Despite lying awake at night, fantasizing about this moment for an embarrassingly long time, it occurred to me then how badly I’d wronged Jace. I hadn’t done him justice. At all. He was so beautiful, crafted by a master hand.
Jace’s tongue danced along mine, a lick of heat, and I was catching on fire. Melting away. I gasped when he pulled my bottom lip between his teeth.
His hands moved from my waist, sliding down to palm my ass, and tendrils of pleasure coiled in my belly. With slight pressure, he ground me against him. The friction was intense, almost taking me over the edge.
“Damn it, Hayles,” he whispered, mouth moving against mine.
“You feel so good.”
As if to prove his point, his erection lined up against me. My breathing constricted.
Holy shit.
In the corner of my mind, I knew we should slow down. Things were escalating faster than a speeding bullet, but what my body needed and wanted was something entirely different.
When his lips moved over my neck, placing an open-mouthed kiss where my pulse was hammering crazily, I found my voice again. “Jace,” I rasped out, tangling my fingers in his soft hair—something I’d had the urge to do every day for the last five years.
So worth the wait. “We should—”
The apartment door swung open suddenly, and my eyes widened. We jumped apart, and I welcomed the cool air that flooded every place he’d touched and kissed me. Both of us were breathing hard.
“Ah, shit, sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt anything,” Owen said. “Should I . . . ? I can come back later.”
I didn’t need a mirror to know that my face was turning an unattractive shade of red.
Straightening, Jace slipped out from between the wall and me, shoving his hands in his pockets.
Another twist of embarrassment stirred as I watched Jace’s reaction, the tension that poured into his body language. Surprise and confusion marked his expression, but that was quickly replaced by something much, much worse. Something I didn’t even want to comprehend flickered across his face. It looked way too similar to regret.
“Nah, man,” Jace said in a deceptively casual voice, like dry-humping one another against Owen’s wall was no big deal.
“It’s fine. You don’t have to do that. We were just about to leave.”
I nodded, tamping down a stream of curses. Gathering my phone and my bag, I tried to keep my cool, but one question continued to beat at me like a drum: How can I possibly spend the night at Jace’s now?
nine
The drive to Jace’s apartment was about as fun as I imagined eating glass would be. At one stage, I’d even considered jumping out of the moving vehicle if that meant I didn’t have to endure the awkward silence anymore.
My knuckles hurt from clenching my fists—from holding back everything I wanted to say. The last thing I wanted was to get into a heated argument while Jace was behind the wheel.
The silence only thickened as we rode the elevator up to his floor. When I mustered up the nerve to give him another sidelong glance, Jace’s profile was stoic. No surprises there. The thin line of his lips was a stark contrast to earlier, yet I could still feel how they’d adeptly moved over mine. That kiss had changed everything. He’d officially taken a piece of me—a piece of my heart—and I’d handed it over so willingly. But now, the memory of that kiss felt tarnished, and I hated the stab of disappointment that came with it.
When we reached the door to his apartment, something in Jace finally seemed to shift. His gaze met mine, and although all emotion was gone from his face, his eyes betrayed him—they usually did. Digging into the pocket of his jacket, he withdrew his set of keys.
He held them out to me. “Here.”
That one word dropped between us, like a gigantic pebble that rippled the quiet. I had this sinking feeling I’d take an awkward car drive over the conversation we were about to have.
I blinked. “You’re not coming in?”
“I’m not,” he said. “I know exactly what happens behind that door, and I won’t do that to you or me.”
When I stubbornly refused to take the keys from him, Jace exhaled and pushed past me. He unlocked his door and then he stepped back like he couldn’t get away from me quickly enough.
“You’re just going to leave?” I asked, disbelievingly. “Don’t you think we should at least acknowledge what happened at Owen’s?”
I knew I was only adding yet another layer to my possible mortification, but my mind was reeling, trying to understand what on earth was going on.
Until less than an hour ago, I’d put my heart and hopes on ice.
Now I wasn’t so sure. Not after Jace had just kissed me like his very life depended on it.
“I can’t stay,” he murmured, features softening. “Not now. Not when we’d already decided that this can’t go any further, and it still can’t.”
The awful sting of rejection lashed me.
It felt like I’d been dangled over the edge earlier, and now I was free-falling, only to discover that Jace had no intentions of being there to catch me. For the first time, I felt let down by him.
“You mean when you decided?” I challenged, my anger rising.
I refused to be continually rejected with zero explanation. “It’s okay, I get it. You want me, just not nearly enough.”
Jace’s jaw twitched. “It’s not like that, Hayley. I just can’t do this.”
“I don’t think your dick got the memo.”
He choked on a cough. “Well . . .” Jace’s lips turned down at the corners. “What do you expect? You already know I’m attracted to you. Shit, anyone with eyes can see that you’re fucking gorgeous.
But that doesn’t mean that this can lead anywhere. We’ve always been better off as friends.”
I quelled the overwhelming impulse to punch him in the throat.
Better off as friends?
I tried to swallow that statement, but it tasted like acid, burning the entire way down. That was what I’d been trying to tell him back at Owen’s—we weren’t capable of friendship, not anymore.
We’d left that turnoff behind years ago. It was too late.
I averted my gaze, pride spurring me to hide the tears that pricked my eyes. “Then don’t kiss me,” I shot back. “You know I’ve always liked you. Hell, I told you how I felt two years ago. Everything you’ve ever said to me has been honest . . . or so I thought, until you kissed me. You don’t kiss someone like that and then claim you’re better suited as friends. You just don’t, no matter your reasons.”
Jace recoiled, his eyes flaring darkly. “I don’t—” He stopped, inhaling through his nose. His shoulders sagged in defeat. “You’re right.”
I expected to be satisfied with that answer, but I wasn’t. I felt empty as his admission hung there, suspended between us.
Emotion clotted my throat like a plug, and I couldn’t speak.
“Hayley,” he tried again. “I’m sorry that—”
“I don’t want you to apologize. I want you to . . .” I trailed off, frustration punctuating each of my words. It was then I finally understood. Nothing he said, no apology in the world, could fix this. Whatever Jace’s logic was, it didn’t change the heart-wrenching fact that he didn’t want to be with me. He didn’t want a relationship. And I wasn’t willing to settle for less than that.
“Forget it.”
Detecting that the fight had drained out of me, Jace rocked back on his heels. “I should go.”
“Please, don’t leave.” My arms were hugging my chest, holding myself together.
His lashes lifted, his features pinching in anguish.
“I need you, Jace. Whether we like it or not, we’re practically family. You can’t go. You didn’t drive all this way just to leave me on my own, did you? I’m scared, and the last thing I want to be right now is alone,” I reluctantly admitted, ignoring that familiar tug—the crushing weight of heartache. “I understand what you’re saying. I do. You wish the kiss didn’t happen. It was a mistake.
Nothing else is going to happen between us. Message received, loud and clear. But that doesn’t change the fact that Levi is still out there, or that you’re my closest friend at Delaware. It’d really help if I knew you were in the other room.”
I waited for him to respond, half expecting him to argue with me, but he didn’t. “Of course I’ll stay,” he said quietly, then sighed.
“I don’t know what I was thinking. I guess I was just so focused on . . . dealing with what happened back there, between us, that I kind of forgot about everything else.”
I had quite the opposite problem: I couldn’t forget. Lately, my mind was so caught up in the attack, or my brother’s death.
Spending another night with Jace—a ridiculous amount of time with him again—jogged a memory loose, and it knocked so loud on my subconscious, I had to let it in.
“Are you awake?” Jace’s voice found me in the darkness. He hadn’t spoken for a solid thirty minutes, and I figured he’d finally fallen asleep.
I was. Even though I was exhausted from the night’s events, sleep was physically impossible.
Tom was gone—something I still couldn’t even comprehend—and I was a hollow, empty vessel. Stuck here without him, it felt like things would never get better in this world, or the next. If reality was my nightmare now, I wanted to stave off sleep for as long as I could.
Imagine how much worse my dreams would be.
Jace was lying on the air mattress next to my bed, the one I stored in my closet for whenever Amelia stayed over. It was late, and he’d insisted on spending the night while my parents were still at the hospital, so I’d let him. For reasons that escaped me, he wasn’t at Zoe’s, getting her to play the comforting, doting girlfriend. He was in my bedroom, silently reliving tonight with me. The numbing force of everything was weighing me down, drowning me, and I was too tired to come up for air.
I heard the distinctive rustling of sheets, and then Jace’s voice was closer. “Remember something good, Hayles. I know it’s hard, but you have to try,” he murmured, and I recognized that heavy, heavy tone.
He sounded exactly how I felt. “The first thing that pops into your head. Don’t overthink it.”
I stared up at the ceiling. My mind raced back through the years. I wasn’t sure if Jace was trying to distract me, calm me down, or both.
Either way, it was working.
“I’m four years old. Tom bought me a Berger cookie on his way home from school,” I said. My newfound smile wobbled, then fell.
“They were my favorite, and he knew that. Every week without fail, he’d save up his allowance and get me one.” I brushed a few stray tears from my cheeks and pressed my face into my pillow. Childhood memories with Tom no longer made me feel happy anymore. Another fucking injustice. I was so close to sobbing or screaming uncontrollably, but Jace was here, and I couldn’t.
I sensed the change in him as soon as he realized I was crying again—the opposite of what he’d set out to achieve. “Hayley.” His voice, deep and low, felt like a forbidden caress. “Shit. I’m so sorry.
What can I do?”
Hold me , I wanted to say. Never let go.
Instead, I breathed out, “You’re doing it.” This was exactly why I had to keep it together. If I fell apart, and Jace caught me, I’d never forgive myself. I’d never trust him again either. He had a girlfriend, and how he acted was important to me. Integrity mattered. Always.
“Your turn. Keep distracting me. Tell me something, something nobody else knows.”
“Let me think.” It was eerily quiet again as he decided what secret to let me in on. I was desperate for a change in subject.
“I haven’t always wanted to be a photographer,” he eventually told me.
I shifted onto my stomach, peeking down at him. “Really?”
“Is that so hard to believe?”
“Yeah, a little.”
Moonlight spilled in through the gap in my curtains, a sliver of dappled light in my dark bedroom. I could make out Jace’s silhouette, the way his brows threaded together. Even through tears, I could see the arm that was tucked beneath his head, his makeshift pillow.
My hair tumbled over my shoulders as I leaned forward, resting my chin on top of my hands. The position I was in allowed me to admire Jace without him knowing. He was so handsome—so easy to look at—but the depth of emotion I normally felt for him was missing. Watching my brother die had been equal to carving my heart out and handing it over to Death himself.
“What did you want to be?” I asked, mildly intrigued.
I always liked talking to him—the real, unguarded Jace—more than my best friend’s brother who might’ve attended all our family dinners but was so good at putting up a front and feeling out of reach.
“Growing up, I wanted to be a surgeon,” he said, tone devastatingly gentle and certain. “I wanted to use my hands in a different way. I wanted to save lives. I wanted to make a difference, but I wasn’t smart enough. I knew I’d never get into medicine, so I went with photography, because I was good at it, because it was safe.” A sigh shuttered out of him. “I’ve never told anyone that. Never even admitted it out loud.”
His words cycled over and over in my head. “If it’s any consolation, you kind of did.” I forced out the words. “You saved a life tonight. I know it’s not the same, but it counts.”
Jace’s eyes snapped open, fixing on mine. “I can see you, you know,” came his loaded reply. It was like he was daring me to look away, to be the one who broke eye contact first. Dangerous territory , my brain warned. He was slipping past my emotional walls, all my usual barricades and defenses, and I had to keep him out.
Without unlocking our gazes, I said, “I’m just trying to figure you out.” After he came home from Delaware for Christmas, he was different. “I mean, I know you, duh, but I—”
“You’ve changed too,” he admitted. “You’re not the same girl I remember when I left for college.”
Holding his stare burned like I’d been lit on fire, turning my mouth to ash, and I looked away. His whispered response was like a nuclear bomb, intent on reviving my dead heart, but I couldn’t let it—I couldn’t let him. Dealing with my grief while I was numb was hard enough.
Instinct told me it was time to shut this conversation down, so I huddled under the covers and said, “Good night, Jace.”
“G’night, Hayles.”
Pushing the old, intimate memory aside, I followed Jace into his apartment. Even though I’d asked him to stay here with me tonight, I needed space. Starting tomorrow, I’d put some distance between us. Focus on meeting new people and making new friends I could come to rely on. It was the only way forward from here. If we kept this up, it would completely destroy our friendship. I didn’t want that. I didn’t want to lose anyone else I loved.
Jace locked the door, then shrugged out of his jacket, saying nothing for seconds that felt more like minutes. Unable to take the excruciating silence any longer, I wheeled around in the hallway and opened his bedroom door, wide enough for me to slip inside.
Feeling his eyes on me the entire time, I started to shut the door behind me. I hesitated when the door was only open a tiny crack, enjoying the fact that I was hidden from view.
“Jace?”
“Yeah?”
“Thank you for staying.” On the cusp of raw, utter heartbreak with nothing left to lose, it made what I was about to do so much easier. “For being here.”
“Of course.” I heard him collapse on the couch, then the sound of him kicking off his boots.
I wasn’t finished. “While I appreciate everything you’ve done for me, you’re off the hook now,” I told him, forcing my voice to remain level, unaffected. “We both know this needs to stop.”
I didn’t wait for a response. The door closed with a soft click behind me, and I slumped back against it, grateful for the barrier.
• • •
By the time dawn rolled around, I was already wide awake. Sunshine crowned the skyline, filtering through the window of Jace’s bedroom, and I crouched down, cramming my toiletries back into my overnight bag.
The determination to have cleared out before he woke up was what had forced me to haul ass out of his bed this morning.
