Jace doesn’t sleep.
He lies on his back in the dark, phone facedown on the nightstand like it might explode if he looks at it again. The ceiling fan ticks overhead. The silence presses in, thick and unrelenting.
Every time he closes his eyes, he sees the photo.
Not the angle.
Not the comments.
Her.
The way Rina’s chin tilted up toward him. The way his hand fit at her waist like it had always belonged there. The way his body moved without permission—without calculation, without the contract whispering rules in his ear.
That’s the part that scares him.
He’s spent his life controlling the narrative.
The athlete.
The image.
The win-at-all-costs son.
But last night, there was no strategy.
There was only instinct.
And instinct chose her.
His phone buzzes.
COACH EZAN: We’ll talk i
