Chapter 4: The Last Person I Expected
1239 Words
Tessa's POV
I couldn't move.
My hands were still pressed flat against the windowpane, my breath fogging the glass in short, shallow bursts. Below me, in the driveway, Hardin was already heading toward the front door — jacket sharp, posture perfect, completely unbothered by the world the way he always was.
But my eyes weren't on Hardin anymore.
They were on the man still standing beside the car.
He hadn't moved either. He was looking up, almost like he'd known exactly which window to look at. Like he'd expected to find me there.
And he was smiling.
That smile. That warm, easy smile that had once made my stomach flip in a Parisian café while I was pretending to read and failing completely.
"No," I whispered to the glass. "No, no, no, absolutely not."
Jace Rivers?
The same Jace Rivers I had just blocked on the plane less than six hours ago. The same Jace Rivers I had spent four months dating in Paris because Elowen said it would help me move on. The same Jace Rivers who had texted Tessa, " Can you please give me one more chance,” while I was thirty thousand feet in the air, trying to prepare myself emotionally for this exact house.
He was standing in Hardin's driveway.
Looking up at my window.
Still smiling.
I stepped back so fast I knocked into the bedside table, sending the face-down photo frame clattering to the floor. I didn't pick it up. I pressed my back against the wall beside the window and put my hand over my mouth.
Think, Tessa. Think.
How did he know Hardin? How did he even know where I lived? Had he followed me here? Was this some kind of—
A knock at my bedroom door made me jump clean out of my skin.
"Tessa."
Hardin's voice. Low, even, controlled. The same voice that had been living rent-free in my head for two years.
I blinked at the door for a second.
He came up by himself.
Not Mrs. Chen. Not a quick text. Not a message passed through the housekeeper, the way he always did before I left for Paris, just so he could keep his distance from me.
He had a whole house full of staff for exactly this kind of thing, and yet here he was, personally standing outside my bedroom door like it was the most natural thing in the world.
I smoothed down my shirt, pushed my glasses up my nose, took one breath that did absolutely nothing for my nerves, and opened the door.
He was taller than I remembered.
That was the first stupid thought that went through my head. He wasn't taller; I'd just spent two years shrinking him down to a manageable size in my memory, and he'd refused to stay small.
He stood in my doorway in a charcoal suit, grey-blue eyes moving over my face with that infuriating calm of his, and every carefully constructed wall I'd spent twenty-four months building crumbled a little at the foundation.
I hated him for that. Genuinely.
For a moment, neither of us said anything. He just looked at me the way you look at something you've been waiting to see for a long time but won't admit it, and I looked back, cataloguing every detail I'd tried to forget.
The sharp line of his jaw. The slight tension in his shoulders that he thought nobody noticed. The way his grey-blue eyes were a little too careful, like they were always deciding how much to give away.
"You look well," he said finally.
You look well. Two years, and that was what he had for me.
"You sent me one word," I said. "After two years. One word, Hardin."
Something flickered behind his eyes. Not quite guilt. Not quite amusement. Something in between that he locked away before I could read it properly.
"You said you didn't need picking up," he said.
"That's not—" I stopped. Exhaled. Reminded myself I had bigger problems than relitigating the Ok text. "Who is that man in the driveway?"
"Come downstairs," he said. "I'll introduce you."
"I don't want an introduction, Hardin. I want an answer. Who is he?"
He studied me for a moment in that way he had, like he was calculating exactly how much to give me and how much to keep back. It used to make me feel safe when I was younger. Like someone was always thinking three steps ahead, so I didn't have to.
Now it just made me want to scream.
"His name is Julian," Hardin said finally. "Julian Cole. My brother."
The words landed like stones in still water.
"Your brother," I repeated.
"My mother had another son before she met my father. She never told anyone. He found us through a DNA registry six months ago." He said it the way he said everything, clean, factual, no room for follow-up questions. "I've been verifying it. The results came back last week."
I stared at him.
Downstairs, I heard the front door open. Heard the housekeeper's warm greeting. Heard footsteps, easy, unhurried, crossing the hallway below us.
"Tessa." Hardin's voice dropped just slightly. Just enough that I noticed. "Are you alright?"
"I'm fine," I said automatically.
I was not fine.
The man downstairs, the man Hardin was calling his long-lost brother, had spent four months bringing me coffee and calling me beautiful and kissing me in the rain outside a bookshop in Paris.
He had held my hand through a terrible French film I'd pretended to enjoy. He had been the first person after Hardin that I'd let get close enough to matter, even a little.
And now he was here. In this house. With a different name.
I followed Hardin down the stairs on legs that felt like they belonged to someone else.
Julian — Jace — was standing in the middle of the living room when we walked in. He'd taken off his jacket. He looked relaxed, comfortable, like a man who had exactly what he came for.
His eyes found mine the moment I appeared at the bottom of the stairs.
That smile again. Slower this time. More private. Like we were sharing a joke that no one else in the room was in on.
"Tessa," Hardin said, with the careful neutrality of a man defusing something he didn't fully understand. "This is Julian. Julian, this is Tessa. She's—"
"We've met," Julian said.
The room went very quiet.
Hardin turned to look at me. I felt the weight of it on the side of my face without having to meet his eyes.
"Have you," Hardin said. It wasn't a question.
"Paris," Julian offered easily, like it was nothing. Like this was all perfectly normal. "Small world."
I looked at him then—really looked at him, and searched his expression for something. Surprise. Discomfort. Anything that suggested this was as unexpected for him as it was for me.
There was nothing. Just that steady, warm gaze and that smile that I now understood had never been as simple as it looked.
"Small world," I echoed quietly, tearing my gaze away from Hardin.
And then, because I was Tessa Morgan and I had survived worse than this, I smiled back.
But behind my glasses, my mind was already working.
‘Who are you really? And what exactly are you doing here?’
- Writer
