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SIX

JACE

My boy was out the moment his head touched the pillow. He snored once or twice within the first ten minutes, sinking deep into sleep and giving me the space to think.

Here I was, under a pretty damn good roof. And the way I saw it, it was owed to me. Ma and Pop had given me up at an age when nobody would have adopted me again. They’d sent me off to live in a home when we all knew it wouldn’t last. I’d run away a year later, just after turning sixteen. I ran with a crowd all across the Midwest, stirring trouble in the eyes of some, until I finally gravitated toward Chicago. Here, options were limitless, especially when the family that had left me homeless had a nice little apartment with a spare bed in the city.

Easton would grumble and protest, but he would put up with me. He was just that kind of guy. And I…

Well, I hated to admit it, but I cared about his well-being. Or, if not his entire well-being, then about the bones I intended to ensure remained unbroken.

The trouble was that he wouldn’t just tell me who wanted to harm him. I had a list of suspects, thanks to DJ. The guy worked in maintenance on Easton’s campus—the kind of type you didn’t notice if he didn’t want to be noticed. But DJ saw you when you thought nobody was around.

Easton’s former roommate had thrown the duffel into a dumpster today, and I had fished it out before a garbage truck could spirit it away for good. A guy doing lowly pranks like that didn’t seem like a criminal mastermind, but the whole thing had a strange odor. Why had he left the apartment? Why would he then pull pranks on Easton? And, after leaving practice, Easton had appeared ruffled.

I needed to hear it from Easton before I could put this matter to rest.

The night dragged on. Easton slept, and I watched. He turned around at some point, stirring himself awake with the pain it must have caused, but it lasted only a moment, and he drifted again.

The thin cover that draped his naked torso shifted in the movement. He had moved his arm around and pulled the hem of the bedsheet down to his waist. Bruises painted his torso in large red, blue, and yellow blotches, like watercolors on a tan canvas. Other than that, his skin was smooth and taut over his defined muscles. Little good those muscles did him when four fuckers jumped him out of a dark alley. Dirty, dirty tricks.

But Easton wasn’t a fighter. He was an athlete. Those muscles had a completely innocent purpose away from the mess of real life. He was built for some roughing around on the ice and for an aesthetic appearance once he reached whatever level of fame he desired. They all said hockey was a violent sport, but no sport could rival bare fists and hidden knives in terms of roughness.

I didn’t care how much testosterone there was in driving guys like Easton to charge at big hunks on the ice; it was nothing like a street fight.

Fighters like that didn’t benefit from fine definition and swollen muscles. Those things got in the way of your mobility.

Still, as the moonlight slanted through Easton’s window and fell on his bare chest and abs, I decided an aesthetic like this wasn’t the worst thing in the world—even if it was useless.

Shaking my head, I got out of the armchair. His sleep was fine. In the two hours I’d spent here, he hadn’t exhibited any signs of serious injuries. I’d been in worse spots plenty of times in my life, not least of which was at the hands of Easton’s father, and I knew what dangerous wounds looked like.

I transferred myself to the living room couch, kicked off my shoes, tucked a pillow under my head, and fell asleep.

The morning sunlight pierced through my eyelids and woke me up. With a grumble, I searched for my cigarettes on the coffee table before the couch, put one in my mouth, and lit it. Sitting up, I stretched the muscles in my back that had knotted and tightened in sleep.

I inhaled the smoke and blinked myself awake, then walked over to the kitchen in search of coffee. Easton’s coffee maker was already filled, so I pressed the right button, waited, poured myself a mug, and turned to the kitchen window.

I rubbed the small of my back as I stretched, my body still waking up. An annoyingly present hard-on bulged in my pants, inviting a hand. Unable to resist, I pressed the ball of my hand on it and pushed it down, holding my breath as tension traveled through my entire body.

Fuck , I thought. Been a while .

“Is there coffee?” a groggy voice from behind me.

I slipped my hand away and shook my head regrettably. “Not your maid.”

“Hard to tell,” Easton said, moving slowly through the kitchen as I turned around to face him. He glanced at me, gaze dropping from my eyes to my feet and climbing up slowly. His cheeks turned red a moment after he snapped his gaze away from my unfortunately positioned bulge. Some things never changed. Yet if I had indulged in scanning his body so thoroughly, he’d have called me out. Hypocrite. He washed the coffee container and replaced the filter, his breathing artificially calm and his ears turning red.

“That’s a mean-looking bruise.” I pointed with my mug.

Easton was still wearing the same sweatpants he’d fallen asleep in. Only his sweatpants. “I’ve had worse getting checked against the boards.”

“I seriously doubt that,” I said. My gaze lingered on the bruise on his rib cage, but it kept slipping away from it, too. His arms were well-defined, with long, curving muscles stretching from his round shoulders to his elbows. The triangular forearms he had must have required a specific kind of exercise. Perhaps he switched hands. Who could tell?

As if feeling my gaze on his body, Easton looked firmly at the coffee maker, willing it to squeeze the liquid quicker with the power of manifestation.

“So,” he said in a tight voice. “You got what you wanted.”

“I didn’t want this,” I said, glancing over the cuts on his face.

“A place to crash? That’s pretty much what you asked for,” Easton said. “Here you are.”

“You don’t sound too happy,” I said.

The tension between us had always been electric, but the time of maturing and growing up had only intensified it, it seemed.

Easton took hold of the edge of the kitchen counter. “What does it matter?” he asked. “Not like I can drag you out.”

Oh, so that was about last night. “I left you alone when I was sure you weren’t going to choke on vomit or your own tongue.” My temper flared, and my voice didn’t hide it. “If you want me to leave, say the word.”

Easton’s gaze snapped to mine. His upper lip curled in anger. “Like it’s that easy.”

“I don’t see why it wouldn’t be,” I said.

“Really, Jace?” His eyes shone like emeralds if emeralds could catch fire.

I placed my mug on the counter. “I’m not holding any leverage over you, Easton.” I crossed my arms and leaned back against the counter. “You know my situation. You know I have nowhere to go. And you know you can trust me—” I ignored his scoff at that and continued. “—when it comes to this little situation you’re in.”

“That’s just incredible,” Easton said and looked at me. “Not a word you said is true.”

“Sticks and stones, Easton,” I said.

“What’s your situation, Jace? Huh?” Easton’s coffee was ready, but he seemed to have forgotten all about it. “Where have you been for the last seven years? And why are you here, of all places? This can’t be a coincidence.”

I picked up my mug again and took a sip of coffee, reminding Easton of his. He rolled his eyes, one perfectly clear and the other still bloodied from the split eyebrow. His face was more orange than not with all the iodine I’d rubbed on him.

“You always knew how to hold a grudge,” Easton said.

“What do you want?” I asked. “Because it seems to me like you just want to reopen some childish spats we had when we were completely different people.”

“Don’t pretend you’ve changed so much that I can’t recognize you,” Easton said.

I narrowed my eyes and inspected the speed with which he glanced here and there, pouring himself coffee nervously and resisting the urge to bite his swollen lip. “If you lived in fear of this day, that’s entirely on you. As for me, I just need a favor, and I’m running low on people I can ask.”

“Yet you’re still refusing to tell me anything,” Easton said with contempt, carrying his coffee out of the kitchen and into the living room. His sweatpants were stained down the outer side of his leg and all over the front. His hair was matted and darker than it had been yesterday morning.

I sighed and followed him into the living room. “What’s up with you?”

“With me? Jesus, Jace. You just showed up out of nowhere, and the worst twenty-four hours of my life followed.” He sounded like a helpless child when he said that.

Part of me wanted to defend myself, but I knew it wasn’t a literal accusation. “I doubt these were the worst twenty-four hours of your life,” I said. Easton was adopted out of foster care, where he had spent the first seven years of his life. Families would bring him in, give him hope, then leave him to rot in the home again. Besides, it wasn’t like he had been given a happy, loving home when he was adopted.

But he looked up, his face cut and bruised, and I said nothing else on the matter.

“I was on the move,” I said after a time of silence in which I had carried my coffee over to the living room window facing east. “I never stayed in one place for too long.”

“Why not?” Easton asked.

I shrugged. “People get sick of you, Easton. They act like they’re your friends, but it doesn’t last. I had to keep moving to avoid that.”

“And when you came to Chicago? What happened?” he asked. He was particularly demanding this morning.

“Nothing,” I said and turned to him. “I didn’t come here because of you.”

“But you knew,” Easton said, almost like the two were the same.

“It’s a big city, fuckface,” I said, my voice lighter. “Plenty big for both of us.”

“Except you’re right in my goddamn living room, Jace,” Easton said.

I barked a laugh. “Only after I ran out of options. Believe me, you’re not my first choice, either.”

He didn’t believe me. He never had. But that didn’t matter. He took a sip of his coffee, sighed, and rubbed his hands together. “Dad is bringing some of my things next week. You have to be out by then. Sunday night. Okay?”

“Sunday night it is,” I said and opened a window, searching my pocket for my cigarettes.

I felt his gaze on the back of my head as I blew the smoke out of the window. And when I turned around, I caught it. Easton blinked but kept looking into my eyes, his lips forming that devastating pout.

Ignoring the bait, I turned back to face the city outside the window. He had always been my downfall. Since the moment I understood what the nightmare of feelings within me meant, Easton had been the eye of the storm.

I wished he hadn’t been. My life would have been infinitely more pleasant had I simply hated him. This way, things were far more complicated.

How did two boys live in the same house, adopted by the same couple, and taught they were brothers above all else when the truth was incomparably worse? Although it had only lasted a year—my final year with the Harpers—it had felt like a lifetime. A lifetime in which I had discovered far too many truths a teenager should. Not only did I like boys instead of liking girls—as the Harpers would have demanded, had they had a say in it—but the other boys paled into nothingness when compared with the brilliant appeal of the very one that I could never have. The other truth, a much more formative one, was that there was something deeply broken in me.

I couldn’t fight it, so I had to accept it.

As the years went by, the unshakable fact that I wanted Easton only strengthened. I looked him up from time to time, discovering him in small pieces and then putting the pieces together. He was a rising star on his hockey team, making a few headlines throughout his high school years. He went to Westmont University. He was the team captain.

Each bit of information that came my way was a precious thing. I stashed them away for myself. I screenshot the photos I could find to see what he looked like and to keep track of where he was in his life.

I burned with the desire to see him in person again. The way we’d parted had been rough in all the ways, but it was in line with the years of forced proximity.

Although I hadn’t come to Chicago for the sake of seeing Easton—I was smart enough to know the difference between reality and fantasy—his presence here was a plus. I never could have resisted it, but I had delayed it until the final hour.

Here I was, standing a mere four paces away from him, feeling his gaze on the back of my head. Easton sat on the couch where I had slept, shirtless and dirty with crusted blood, bruised and vulnerable, and I couldn’t do a goddamn thing about it. I couldn’t avenge him or flirt with him or even convince him that I wasn’t here on a destructive quest to settle the score between us.

The worst part was that he infuriated me. He annoyed me instantly when I was near him. For all my fantasies of stepping up to him, looking into his eyes, putting my hand around his throat, and pulling him in to ruin all the other guys for him, I couldn’t keep my temper down with him.

Easton got up, grunting as he stood, and I looked over my shoulder. His broad, muscular back was turned to me as he slowly walked to the bathroom. A few minutes later, I heard the shower, and I pressed my brow against the window frame, holding my breath as another thunderous wave of anxiety threatened to rock me.