Chapter seventeen
~JACE~
I don’t know how long I stay there, breathing her in like I can make her stay with me if I hold on tight enough. But I feel the shift, the stillness, and the way her legs loosen from around me like her body’s catching up to what her brain found out.
She’s slipping, and I can’t stop it. This is the comedown, and now that she’s thinking clearly, I’m terrified of what she’ll say next.
The moment I move off her, she sits up.
“Mel,” I reach for her, gently brushing my fingers down her arm.
She shrugs me off and slips off the bed. Quickly, she grabs the towel off the floor and wraps it around herself like she’s ashamedto be naked in front of me. Like she wasn’t moaning under me a minute ago.
“Please, talk to me,” I plead, sitting up and tucking myself back into my shorts, still semi-hard.
“Get out.” Her voice is quiet, barely above a whisper, but it rings louder than a tower bell.
She doesn’t look at me. Her hands are trembling, clutching the towel to her chest like it’s armor, and I see it in her eyes—the free-fall. I shoved her off the ledge.
“I don’t want to leave you like this,” I say, keeping my voice as soft as I can.
“I don’t care about what you want,” she snaps. “I want you out,” she says, final.
Fuck.
Her shaking hands and the way her body curls in on itself like she wants to disappear tell me that she really means it.
I stand up slowly, never taking my eyes off her, hoping that I’ll see some softness in them. All I see is anger and steel. And all I can feel is the ache and the loss as I turn and walk to the door.
I stop right in front of it, my hand on the handle. I want to say something.
Please don’t do this.
Talk to me.
We can fix it.
But I don’t. Whatever I say right now won’t help. I know how she operates.
She likes to be alone with her thoughts, think things through, and then talk.
So I don’t push. Instead, I open the door and step out, feeling like I’m leaving my whole world inside that room.
I shower, dry off, and throw on some clean clothes. I barely remember it.
Everything I do feels like it’s happening from outside my body, like I’m watching myself from a corner of the ceiling.
When I get downstairs, the guys are already setting the last plates full of food. Loud, obnoxious, normal.
Tanner tosses me a beer when I walk out. I catch it with a fake grin and sit down. Dom’s chair is empty.
“Is Melody joining us?” Matt asks.
Dom reappears a second later, grabbing a plate and piling it high.
“Migraine,” he says. “She’s staying in bed. I’ll bring this to her upstairs.”
Migraine. Right.
