The Way He Looked at Me의 모든 챕터: 챕터 161 - 챕터 170

Jace povThe stranger with the dark hair wouldn’t leave my mind.Days had passed since I went into town, yet I still remembered the way he looked at me. His eyes stayed with me the most gray, distant, and painfully sad, like life had already broken him long ago.I didn’t know why I kept thinking about him.People in town usually looked at me with fear, disgust, or suspicion. Others looked at me with hunger, the same way Bruce always did whenever he wanted me in his bed again.But this man had looked at me differently.Like he was trying to understand me.Like he saw something beneath the silence.

That was genuinely one of the kindest things anyone had done for me in a while, especially after I'd basically told her I was bad at being a person. We exchanged numbers, and then I grabbed my drink and slipped out of Tranquil Brew before I could make things any more uncomfortable.The morning air hit me, and I exhaled.My skin felt too tight, the way it did whenever I let someone in even just a little. And underneath that, something quieter: a familiar guilt. My mother would have loved Sarah. She would have told me to hold onto people like that, to let them in, to stop building walls around myself and calling it protection.Instead, here I was, walking down the sidewalk to sit on a bench across from my workplace, sipping iced coffee, watching the hardware store like it owed me something.

Pain radiated through my knuckles, raw and steady the only thing keeping me anchored to reality. If it hadn't hurt so badly, I wouldn't have stopped.Nobody in Tranquility wanted anything to do with me. Fine. The feeling was mutual. But three men Desmond, Chuck, and Hank couldn't just leave it at that. They had to push. Had to remind me who they thought was in charge. They were wrong, and if it came down to it, I'd make sure they learned that lesson with their last breath. Nobody would ever own me again. Not in this lifetime.I trudged back inside, leaving a trail of blood across the floor with every step. I grabbed a bottle of alcohol from my shelf and poured it over both hands one, then the other. That was as much care as I was willing to give myself. Even so, something violent was churning inside my chest, a storm that had nowhere to go. I wanted to tear the whole room apart. My emotions had always been too large for my body to hold, too heavy, too loud. Sometimes I wondered why I

An apology tumbled out of my mouth hollow, automatic, the kind that meant nothing and everything at once. What was I even sorry for? Breathing, maybe. Taking up space in a world that kept making it clear I wasn't wanted in it.His movements were unhurried as he gathered the bags, sealing them shut without so much as a glance in my direction. The straps went over his broad frame with practiced ease, and then nothing. Just silence pressing down on us both like a third person in the room.My lungs forgot their job when he walked toward me.Thick fingers closed around mine, and the ground rushed up to meet my feet as he hauled me upright in one clean motion.He was waiting. Was he actually doing this for me?Probably not. Dead girl in the woods meant paperwork, questions, trouble he didn't need. That was all this was. I repeated that to myself twice.A curse slipped between my teeth the moment my eyes landed on his knuckles torn up, darkening with color but his expression didn't flicker.

Cold met warmth, and he shuddered beneath my fingers.My gaze dropped without thinking.His foot lay across my thigh like it belonged there. Like it had always been there. The skin lighter than mine had been kissed raw by years of open sun. His toenails were trimmed close, almost careful. A thin scatter of hair sat on his big toe. Veins pressed faintly against the surface, threading upward into legs that were rough and unshaven.Nobody had ever sat this close to me and made it feel like something.I had learned early what bodies were for. A girl named Hillary had taught me that, though the teacher was generous. I was sixteen. She was nineteen. New to the group, still finding her footing on the path Dave had laid out for all of us. She had been around six months when things started between us. The truth was, I had not wanted her the way Dave assumed. I had just wanted someone near my age to talk to. A friend. That was all.Dave had twisted it into something else. He sat me down and exp