Look back up.
Then I take his wrist.
His hand hanging at his side, fingers slightly curled, the only part of him he hasn't been able to keep completely still. I take it slow — unhurried, giving him every single second to pull away.
I turn his palm up and guide it toward me.
Press it flat against the bulge in my jeans and hold it there with both hands, fingers wrapped around his wrist, and I watch his face when he feels it. Watch his throat move. Watch every carefully constructed wall he has strain against the weight of what his own hand is telling him right now.
The heat of his palm through the fabric. The way his fingers twitch once — involuntary, immediate, completely honest — before he locks it back down. "Feel that?" My voice is barely anything. Just for him. "That's not nothing, Jamie."
His hand goes motionless. Then it trembles. His eyes snap up to mine.
"Scares you," I say. "Doesn't it?"
And there it is.
Right there in the open. His eyes — god, his eyes — the desire sitting in them clear and real and unguarded in a way I've only seen once before, in a locker room, right before everything went wrong. Three full seconds of Jamie Nash not pretending. Not slamming it into a box.
Just there.
Wanting.
Lust.
All out there for me.
Then it's gone, as quick as it came.
I watch the wall go back up in real time. His face hardens instantly. The shoulders squaring. The green of his eyes going controlled and careful and locked. Brick by brick. The shutdown of a person who has been doing this their entire life.
"Go fuck yourself, Callahan."
He shoves me back. Hard. I take a step. He yanks the door open and the noise from downstairs floods in cold and loud and he's through it before I can say anything.
Gone.
I stand in the dark room.
I won this round. I know I did.
But standing here in the dark with the music bleeding through the walls, I keep coming back to those three seconds. That look. The real one. The thing about winning is it only feels good if you know what you're winning.
I'm starting to lose track of that.
Chapter 27
Jamie
I take the stairs two at a time, shoving through people, out the door before anyone can stop me. Cold air slams into my lungs, but it doesn’t help—nothing does. I call an Uber, fire off a quick text to Kowalski with an apology for leaving, and shove my phone away like it burned me.
What the fuck just happened? How did I let it get that far? My skin still feels wrong—too hot, too aware—his mouth, his teeth, the way he looked at me, like he knew exactly what he was doing, how he felt, hard and thick in my hand.
“Fuck…” The word comes out low, wrecked.
The ride home is a blur. I don’t remember getting out of the car, don’t remember unlocking the door —just the slam of it behind me and the silence that follows. Finally. I pace immediately, restless, energy crawling under my skin, tiles echoing with every step. I can still feel him. That’s the problem. The way Rhys got in my space like he owned it, as if he owned me.
I didn’t hate it. I was basically begging for it.
