JACE
FOUR MONTHS AGO
The morning light slid in through the slats like it didn’t know better. Soft and gold and too clean for the s**t I was about to do.
He was still asleep beside me, breathing deep and steady. The kind of sleep people have when they don’t expect to be disappointed. When they don’t expect you to be gone.
I didn’t move at first. Just laid there, watching him in the silence. His face in profile, his lips parted, that scar curving over his shoulder and into his tattoos like a line someone else had drawn. I hated that I liked the way he looked in sleep. Hated that I’d memorized it.
Then I shifted, slowly and carefully, easing out from under the blanket like I hadn’t just spent the night wrapped up in him. My feet hit the tile, cold as always. The air in his apartment neve
