Chapter 11: Midnight Confessions
The laugh from inside the apartment—Jace’s laugh, bright and rolling—echoed through the sliding glass door Lilah had just shut behind her. It felt like a physical push, propelling her into the cool, dark quiet of the balcony. She needed a second. Just one second where the air wasn’t thick with the smell of sex and paint and the overwhelming, delicious weight of Jace’s easy affection.
She leaned her hands on the cold wrought-iron railing, letting the city’s distant groan wash over her. The night was heavy, the sky a bruised purple threatening rain. Her skin still hummed where Jace had touched her, where his laughter had vibrated against her back as he’d tried to convince her to stay for another beer. Her body felt used and wonderfully loose, but her mind was starting to click back into its old, familiar grooves of what now.
“Couldn’t breathe in there either?”
The voice came from the deep shadows to her left, near the far end of the balcony. She jumped, her heart jackhammering against her ribs.
Nathan stepped into the sliver of light from the living room window. He held a glass of amber liquid, mostly full. He was still in his travel clothes—dark jeans, a grey henley stretched across his shoulders—but he looked rumpled, like he’d been standing there for a long time. The trip hadn’t creased him; it had hollowed him. Shadows pooled under his eyes.
“Jesus, Nathan. You scared me.” Her hand went to her chest, a reflex. She was suddenly, acutely aware of what she was wearing: one of Jace’s paint-stained band t-shirts and nothing else. The cool night air whispered over her bare thighs.
“Sorry.” He didn’t sound sorry. He took a slow sip of his whiskey, his eyes never leaving her. The intensity she remembered, the one that had drawn her in on the stairs months ago, was there, but it was raw now, stripped of its usual polished control. “The laughter. It was a bit much.”
She straightened, crossing her arms over her chest. “He’s happy you’re back.”
“Is he?” Another sip. His gaze tracked over her—the mess of her curly hair, the faint blue smudge of paint on her collarbone, the way the soft cotton of the t-shirt hung on her frame. It was a forensic inventory. “Seems like he found a decent distraction.”
The words were like a slap. She flinched. “It’s not like that.”
“No?” He took a step closer. The city light caught the sharp angle of his jaw, the tension in his neck. “What’s it like, Lilah?”
The door behind them slid open again, spilling a rectangle of warmth and the sound of The Strokes onto the balcony. “Lilah? You getting abducted by—oh. Hey, man.” Jace’s voice shifted from playful to cautious in half a second. He stood in the doorway, a fresh beer in his hand, his hair gleaming in the interior light. He looked back and forth between them, his smile fading into something more neutral, watchful.
“Welcome home,” Nathan said, his voice flat. He didn’t turn to look at his roommate.
“Thanks.” Jace leaned against the doorframe. “You just get in? We would’ve waited. Kept the pizza warm.”
“I gathered.”
The silence that followed was thick enough to choke on. The distant wail of a siren carved through it.
Jace cleared his throat. “Beer’s here if you want it.” He was talking to Nathan, but his eyes were on Lilah, a question in them. You okay?
She gave a tiny, almost imperceptible nod. Go.
Jace hesitated for another second, his gaze lingering on Nathan’s rigid back. Then he nodded once, stepped back inside, and shut the door. The music cut off, leaving only the low hum of the city and the tense void between her and Nathan.
“He’s being careful with you,” Nathan said finally, his voice low. He drained his whiskey and set the glass on the railing with a soft clink. “That’s new.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means Jace doesn’t do careful.” He turned fully to face her now, crowding her space without actually moving closer. The scent of him—cedar, sharp whiskey, and the sterile, cold smell of airplane—wrapped around her, clashing violently with the memory of turpentine and sex on her skin. “He does fun. He does right now. He doesn’t stand in doorways looking like a worried puppy.”
“Maybe you don’t know him as well as you think you do.” The defensiveness in her voice was too sharp, too obvious.
A bitter smile touched Nathan’s lips. “I know him better than anyone. Which is why I know what that look on his face meant.” He took the final step, closing the distance. The railing pressed into her lower back. “He thinks I’m going to scare you off.”
Her breath hitched. “Are you?”
His eyes searched hers, a storm of frustration and something darker, hungrier. “I tried to do the right thing. I left. I gave you space. I gave him space.” He leaned in, his hand coming up to brush a strand of hair from her cheek. His knuckles grazed her jaw, a whisper of contact that sent a current straight down her spine. It was nothing like Jace’s easy touch. This was all potential energy, coiled and dangerous. “And I come home to find his paint on your skin and his shirt on your body.”
She couldn’t look away. The city lights swam in her peripheral vision. “You don’t own me, Nathan.”
“I know.” The words were torn from him. “Christ, Lilah, I know that.” His hand dropped, curling into a fist at his side. “But tell me you don’t feel this too. Tell me you stood on that stairwell with me and felt nothing. Tell me you never once looked at me and wondered.”
She had. God, she had. In a hundred stolen glances, in the quiet moments when he’d fixed her sink or brought her soup when she was sick, she’d wondered. The attraction to Jace was a sudden, brilliant firework. This, with Nathan, was the deep, slow burn of a fault line shifting.
She said nothing. Her silence was the answer.
It was all the permission he needed. With a low sound that was half-groan, half-surrender, he closed the last inch between them. His mouth found hers, not with Jace’s playful hunger, but with a devastating, controlled desperation.
It was a kiss that tasted of whiskey and regret and three months of stifled wanting. It was nothing like the studio. There was no laughter here, only a profound, aching silence broken by the rustle of his henley under her grasping hands and the harsh sound of his breath through his nose. His hands came up to frame her face, his touch agonizingly tender against the roughness of his demand.
She kissed him back. She couldn’t not. It was like tipping over a cliff edge she’d been circling for months. Her fingers tangled in the dark hair at the nape of his neck, pulling him closer. He responded by pushing her firmer against the railing, his body a solid, unyielding wall of heat against hers.
When he finally broke away, they were both breathing raggedly. He rested his forehead against hers, his eyes shut tight. “This is a terrible idea,” he whispered, his voice ragged.
“I know.”
“He’s in there.”
“I know.”
He opened his eyes. The conflict in them was a physical thing. “I can’t… we can’t just…”
The sliding door rattled.
They sprung apart like guilty teenagers. Nathan took two swift steps back, turning to stare out at the city skyline, his shoulders rigid. Lilah smoothed down Jace’s t-shirt, her lips still burning.
Jace didn’t come all the way out. He held the door open just a crack. His voice was carefully neutral, a studied calm. “Nathan. Your phone’s been buzzing off the hook in here. Looks like work.”
Nathan didn’t turn around. “Tell them I’ll call back.”
“It’s your project manager. Sounds urgent.” A pause. “I made coffee. Lilah, you want a ride home soon? It’s getting late.”
It was a lifeline. A peace offering. A line in the sand.
Lilah looked at Nathan’s back, a solitary silhouette against the glow of the city. She looked at the crack of light from the door where Jace waited, giving them an out, giving her an out.
Her heart was a trapped bird beating against her ribs. The taste of Nathan was still on her tongue, the ghost of his hands on her skin.
“Yeah,” she said, her voice sounding strange to her own ears. “I should go.”
Nathan finally turned. His face was a mask, the vulnerability of a moment ago locked away behind a wall of pure, impenetrable stone. He gave a single, curt nod. “Of course.”
She moved past him, her bare arm brushing his. The contact was electric, painful. She slipped through the door that Jace held open, back into the warmth and the light and the scent of fresh coffee.
Jace closed the door gently behind her, shutting out the night and the man on the balcony. He looked at her, his eyes soft but knowing. He didn’t ask. He just handed her her neatly folded scrubs from the back of a chair.
“Coffee’s for the road,” he said quietly. “Let’s get you home.”