Friction(63)

I consider evading his question, but then I release a harsh, painful breath, and I let everything out. It’s like the afternoon I revealed the truth about Tom’s relationship with Shane, but tonight, I detail my ex-husband’s visit and what had happened with my mother. I tell him how Mom had left shortly after I tried to speak to her, and how she hadn’t said a word to me when she returned home a couple of hours later.

I tell him that it hurts.

I don’t realize I’m pressing my palm to my chest until he pulls my hand into his and kisses the inside of my wrist. In one swift motion, he pulls me on top of him, and I drop my forehead to his, blanketing our faces with my black hair. “Are you embarrassed of what you do?” he asks after a beat passes. “Of working with me?”

Without hesitating, I shake my head. “I’m embarrassed that I was too chicken to tell my mother, that I let Tom get me into this mess, but I’m not embarrassed of working with you. You gave me a chance when nobody else would, I appreciate that. And there’s nothing—nothing—I would do to jeopardize that.”

Though I won’t say the words aloud, he must know what I’m saying. That I won’t let my feelings for him, my desire for him, ruin the work I do for EXtreme. I can’t because I’ve assured him all along that I can handle the intimacy.

“I understand, but I think you need to fix things with your mother.” He sifts his fingers through my hair, brushing the ends of my locks between his thumb and forefinger. He does this for a long time before he finally clears his throat. “When we were broke, and the chemo was killing my mum because she couldn’t take what it was doing to her body, I was angry with her for a long time because I didn’t understand why she wouldn’t ask for help. She died knowing I felt like that.” It’s the first time he’s directly mentioned his mother, and I swallow hard at the sharp pang that twists my chest.

“I’m sorry, Jace,” I whisper, but he shrugs it off.

“I don’t have many regrets but that’s one of them. I spent the year after she died homeless, bouncing around and living with neighbors and friends. Gwen’s dad, my uncle, finally found out what was going on and brought me to America. He took me in and gave me some sense of normal. It wasn’t the same, though. Didn’t feel like family. You know, it’s why…” He leans back from me, and I bite down on the inside of my cheek at the ghost of a smile lingering on his full lips. “It’s why there’s that pesky two-year difference between you and I.”

“I haven’t brought that up since our interview,” I say over the lump that’s taken residence in the back of my throat. I still feel pathetic for pointing out that, while I had graduated at seventeen thanks to skipping a grade in elementary school, he was nineteen when he graduated. Supposedly, he missed so much school his seventh year in England that he had no other choice but repeat the grade when he moved to the states.

"Didn't feel like going to school last year, so I fucking didn't," he'd once told a group of girls congregated around him at lunch, explaining why he was fourteen to everyone else's thirteen and my twelve. His flippant excuse only did wonders for his reputation.

Now that I know the real reason he’d repeated that year, my chest clenches and I feel so small for scoffing at his excuse.

My father died of cancer. Though I was lucky enough to have more time with him than Jace had gotten with his mother, my heart still breaks every time I pass the photo of us at my graduation from Brown. I open my mouth, a harsh sound whooshing from my lungs, but Jace shakes his head.

“Don’t say it, love.”

I toss my hair over my shoulder and lift my brows. “Say what?”

“Don’t feel sorry for me.” He moves me away from him for just a moment so he can stand us up, but then I’m in his arms again, straddling my legs around his waist just like I had when I came in earlier. “I don’t want your sympathy. I just want to touch you. I want to taste you. I want to make things right for you so that when you fall asleep tonight—and make no mistake, Lucy, you’ll be doing that in my bed—you won’t think of your ex-husband or your mother giving you shit. You’ll think of me.”

“Okay,” I whisper, a thrill racing through me when he bumps his bedroom door open with his shoulder. The bed in his room is legendary, better than the one in the photo room back at EXtreme, and I have a feeling I’ll become well-acquainted with it tonight.

“And when you go home tomorrow—” he starts, dropping me on the mattress and reaching for something in his nightstand drawer that’s bound to tease me to the point of breaking. “When you go home tomorrow, fix things with your mum.”

I bob my head, moving it until the lump in my throat dissolves. “I will,” I promise just before cold metal closes around my outstretched wrists.





Twenty-Four





Lucy





Repairing things with my mother is nowhere near as easy as Jace made it seem.

And no matter how many times I sneak in quickies with him at work, or how many times I find myself pinned against the wall of his bedroom after business hours, it still doesn't make the next several days in my life any less miserable. I’m so worn down by the situation with Mom that it barely fazes me when the rest of the office realizes that Jace and I are casually … doing whatever we’re doing with each other after Daisy and Theo walk in on our boss kissing me in the breakroom.