Happily Ever Hers

by Delancey Stewart

  Mom's hands were still fluttering, only now she was touching her short gray hair, brushing it out of her face, acting like a teenaged girl in front of Jack. "Hello," she said.

  "Jack and I work together, Mom. He's going to help me move the furniture."

  "Oh, how nice," Mom said, smiling up at Jack, who was intimidating in size. The guy had been a linebacker in college, but had blown a knee out just before the NFL draft and lost his shot. He'd been working security ever since. I guessed he hadn't been in college for the degree, but we'd never really talked about that. "Are you from Los Angeles, Jack?" Mom asked him as we moved into the bedroom to pick up the mattress.

  "No ma'am," Jack said. "Grew up on a farm in Nebraska," he told her with a broad smile.

  "Oh, that's nice," Mom said, and then she launched into a coughing fit that doubled her over and sent her scurrying to the kitchen, embarrassed. I pushed down the worry that rose in me. One thing at a time.

  "Your mom's a nice lady," Jack said. "She sick?"

  "Yeah."

  Jack just nodded, keeping inside whatever he might think or feel about my mom, about my family.

  We moved and lifted things into the truck outside, Mom trying to keep up a conversation with Jack the whole time. I realized Mom was lonely. She rarely left the house and Jarred was never around. Especially now.

  By six o'clock, Mom was fluttering around the new cottage, exclaiming over the window coverings, the little patio out back surrounded with flowers. Juliet had moved her things into storage, but refused to call off the gardener or housekeeper, saying she'd be paying for those things whether anyone was living in the cottage or not. As much as I hated the charity, I felt relief too, that Mom would have more time to rest. Maybe make some friends. Now I just needed to figure out how to get her to go to the doctor.

  I ordered food in, and we spent that first evening at the cottage sitting on the back patio, listening to sounds that were very different than those in Inglewood. Instead of planes approaching LAX, we heard the distant sounds of steadily moving traffic. Instead of sirens and the bass pumping from some passing car, we heard birds and the occasional dog barking.

  Mom was smiling at me across the table. "You always take care of me," she said.

  I didn't want her to cry, and I still needed to get to the hospital today to see Jarred, so I pushed my chair back and stood. "You deserve more, Mom. But I hope this will be a good change."

  She stood and pulled me against her, her frail body like an insubstantial bunch of sticks pulled against my chest. "I love you, son," she whispered against my shoulder.

  "I love you too, Mom. I'll be back Sunday, okay?" I told her. "Call me tomorrow and tell me how you're doing. If you need anything."

  She nodded, the tears ready to fall, and I let myself out feeling like I was still carrying something heavy. Only there was no place to put this load down or unpack it.

  Jarred had looked worse than ever when I’d finally gotten to the hospital but the doctor assured me he was actually getting better.

  "Withdrawal is neither quick nor easy," she had said. "But we'll keep him here until he's through the worst of it."

  "Thanks." I had no idea what to expect once he was moved to county jail. I just hoped he was strong enough to survive there until we could get through the mess he'd made.

  Juliet was waiting for me at the top of the stairs in the darkness when I returned, and without a word, she stepped into my arms and held me.

  "Are you okay?" she whispered finally.

  "Yeah." Being in her arms made me feel like less of a liar.

  She pulled away from me, looking up into my face for assurance, and I wondered what she saw there in the shadowy darkness. Whatever it was, I was happy for it, because she took my hand then, and pulled me into her room, shutting the door as Elvis curled into his satin bed and taking me to hers.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Juliet

  Jace was quieter the next day or two, and each day he asked Chad or Jack to take over part of his shift so he could go to the hospital to see his brother and stop by his mom's new place—my place—on the way back. I didn't mind having Jack inside the house. There was something comforting in his presence, something calm about the atmosphere around him. Chad was still not my favorite, with his penchant for tabloid magazines and the interested looks I caught him sending my way sometimes. But if it made Jace's life easier, I would put up with Chad.

  As long as Jace was with me when he got home. And for those incredible, perfect days, he was with me.

  "Hey," he said to me one morning after we'd run. Since I wasn't working on a movie, we'd been able to get out to run a little more often, and I enjoyed being out of the house with him, feeling like we existed somewhere besides the rooms of the property that was both fortress and jail to me. "Would you want to meet my mom?"

  My heart had leapt into my mouth, making it hard for me to answer. It felt important, it felt like a turning point. One that was about to be interrupted by my plans to begin a fake relationship with someone else. "Yes. Definitely."

  "Ready in an hour?" He'd grinned as he said it, like the fact I wanted to meet his mom made him happy too. And that made me ecstatic. I wanted to make Jace happy, I realized. Whenever I could.

  We'd gone in the security company's dark car, me sitting in the back behind tinted windows, wearing a ball cap and dark sunglasses that covered half my face. It was a private enough journey, from here to Brentwood, but the last thing I wanted was cameras interrupting what seemed like an important event.

  When we pulled up to the familiar cottage, there were pots of overflowing Geraniums on the doorstep and the garden beds out front looked manicured and perfect. A woman knelt in front of one of them, a broad-brimmed hat on her head. She turned, squinting at the car as we parked at the curb.

  "Mom's been gardening a lot," Jace said, shooting me a smile that made even my teeth feel glad. A little bundle of nerves popped around in my stomach as we got out of the car.

  We approached the woman and she stood, wiping her hands on her jeans. Jace's mom was little, I thought with surprise. She couldn't have been more than five-foot-two, and she smiled up at us through a lined face that held dark coffee-colored eyes that were an exact match to the ones I adored. "Hello," I said.

  "Mom," Jace said. "This is Juliet. She owns the house, and I work for her."

  Jace's mother smiled broadly then, reaching out a hand to shake. "It's wonderful to meet you, Juliet. I feel a little silly inviting you into your own house, but come inside."

  The house looked so different without my overstuffed furniture and meaningless decor. It looked lived in and loved, even if there were still a few boxes here and there, when before it had only been an impersonal escape. "The place looks wonderful Mrs. Morgan," I told them both.

  "Call me Renee," she said, taking off the big hat and setting it on the back of the couch. "Can I get you coffee? Tea?"

  We accepted coffee and the three of us sat down, but just as we were beginning to talk a bit, Renee erupted into a coughing fit that went on much longer than it seemed like it should. Jace had said nothing about his mother being ill, but this didn’t sound like a cold.

  "Are you sick?" I asked when she'd recovered a bit.

  "No, no," she waved my concern away.

  "Yes," Jace said, his voice flat and ominous. "She won't do anything about it."

  I glanced between them, sensing this was an old fight. But I didn't like the sound of the cough at all. Still, it wasn't my place to say anything else. Not right now.

  We stayed for an hour, talking about Jace's brother Jarred and how they were when they were little boys—Jace the protector, even then. We also talked about their hopes that Jarred might escape the grip of drugs this time, even if it did have to happen in prison. Jace said Jarred had tried to quit several times before, going cold turkey and visiting a free counselor, but each time he’d relapsed.

  "It's so nice to meet you," Renee said later, as the mugs sat
empty on the coffee table and Jace leaned back in the couch, finally relaxing a bit. "I can't thank you enough for allowing me to live here. The neighborhood, the quiet ... the garden ..." tears were welling in Renee's eyes, and I was embarrassed suddenly that a house I didn't even live in could mean so much to her.

  I leaned forward and took her hand. "I wish I could have helped earlier. I'm so glad you're happy here."

  She ducked her head and wiped at her eyes. "You must think I'm such a failure," she said quietly.

  Jace sat up straighter. "Mom, what? No."

  She shook her head, still not looking up. "Can't even take care of myself," she whispered. "My boy... the drugs..."

  "Mom," Jace's voice cracked along with my heart. I thought how easily any family could find itself in this situation, how it could be my own Gran sitting here, feeling like a failure.

  "No," I said, forcing my own voice to be strong, cheerful, reassuring. "No, Renee. If there's one thing I learned from my Gran, it's that we don't always control what happens in our lives. We can only control the way we weather the things that happen, we can only try to hold onto ourselves through the hard stuff."

  She looked up at me, then her eyes darted back down to her hands.

  "And you've done well, I'd say." I paused, and Jace dropped a big hand on my knee, a silent thanks. "Jace is an incredible man. And I haven't met Jarred, but I'm willing to bet the drugs don't define him. We all make mistakes, but I'd bet that Jarred has just as true and strong a heart as either of you. And that's something a mother can take credit for."

  Renee wiped at her face and then smiled up at me, and Jace squeezed my leg lightly. His tender touch made me feel like we were a real couple, like I could be part of this family. I had a sudden longing to introduce him to Gran, to Tess.

  Soon, we were heading back home, but I felt like something had grown inside me, made more space. In a life where so much of what I saw and did was a construction, merely make-believe, it was incredible to spend a day feeling like part of the real world, like a part of something that mattered. I liked Jace's mom a lot. And I wanted to help her.

  "I have a doctor who makes house calls," I told Jace in the car on the way home. "I can send him over to see her."

  Jace looked at me for a long second without speaking. Then, as if it was hard for him to do it, he said, "okay."

  It was just the two of us in the house those evenings as darkness settled outside, swathing the property in dark drapery and silence, and what felt like privacy. Jace set the walkie talkie nearby, but kept it turned down low so if anyone outside needed to reach him he was still there, but Chad's incessant chatter was less irritating at low volume.

  We ate together, talked in my room or his, and spent a lot of time in bed.

  It was just a few perfect days and nights, hiding from reality with a man who really saw me, who wanted to really know me. A man who didn't care how well my last movie did, but who wanted to know about me as a person.

  Only, it couldn't last.

  When I hadn't made weekend plans to go to Maryland by Wednesday, my agent called me to ask.

  "Juliet, this is what we got Ryan on board for. And the magazine piece is all set up. You need to go. Make a long weekend of it. See your family."

  I sighed and moved away from Jace, staring up at the ceiling. Ryan. Right. I hadn't spoken to him since he'd been at the house. My stomach churned as I glanced at Jace and then sat up, wishing I could stop time from advancing so we could continue this, continue pretending real life could ever be this good. "I know. I'll go. I'll buy tickets today."

  "Leave tomorrow. Alison Sands from Hollywood Entertainer wants to speak to you Friday morning and take some pictures, and then return Saturday evening for the party."

  The party. Gran. The magazine. My disaster of a brewing scandal. Ryan.

  Real life came rushing back and smashed into my chest like a train, forcing a deep sigh from me. I heard Jace roll toward me and felt him put a comforting hand on my back.

  "Okay. We'll head to Maryland tomorrow." I put down the phone and texted my sister to let her know I was coming out. I didn't give her any specifics, since I didn't have them yet. Then I texted Ryan McDonnell, asking him to be ready to go tomorrow. He had already known the date of the trip, and his reply didn’t indicate any surprise at being called last minute.

  "Taking a trip, huh?" Jace's voice came low and deep like rocks tumbling over one another, and my stomach leapt in response. I turned my head and then gave up the pretense of getting up and crawled back into bed, pushing myself along the ridges of hard muscle of his body as he wrapped me in his arms.

  "I'll need security," I murmured into his chest.

  He didn't answer, and when I pulled back my head to look up at him, my hair on the pillow between us, his eyes were cloudy and worried. I wondered what he was thinking, how he would handle seeing us play out the pretense of this fake relationship. But I wondered if he was worried about more than that, about his family.

  "You thinking about leaving your mom? Your brother?" I should tell him I didn't need him, that he should stay here. But the thought of spending the weekend across the country, out of his arms and away from the sense of complete understanding I felt around him was almost impossible to bear.

  He chuckled then, and some of my worry skittered away. "No. I should be thinking about them. But I was thinking about you. About how things will go out there. With him."

  "Ryan."

  A look of distaste curled Jace's lip, wrinkled his brow. "Him. Yeah."

  It wasn't right, but my heart warmed at the look of jealousy on Jace's face, and when his arm tightened around my waist ever so slightly, I smiled. "It's just pretend."

  "So if we go to Maryland, what will that look like? At night, will you be in my bed?"

  "Of course I will," I said quickly, but then my mind began to work through the idea. It would depend, I guessed, on how far I had to take the pretense with Ryan. Did I have to make my sister and Gran believe we were together? Gran had a tendency to blurt things out, and if she blew my cover while the magazine people were around ... I looked into the dark eyes I'd begun seeing in my dreams, tightened my grip on the body I felt even when he was away from me. "Oh shit. Actually ..."

  "That's what I figured. You'll need to make them all believe it. And if you're with me ... if you even look at me ..." He trailed off, the storms rolling back across his face. He closed his eyes. "Even the idea of him putting his hands on you ..." Jace pulled me more tightly to his body, and I let my hand slide between us, grasping him gently and stroking until he let out a pained groan.

  "This," I told him, continuing the motion and then sliding myself over him until we were lined up, until I could feel him right against my entrance. "This is what you need to remember. I'm yours," I told him, sliding myself down his length as he blew out a sharp breath. We’d abandoned condoms when I’d told him I was on birth control and my doctor had confirmed I was clean, despite Zac’s best efforts.

  "Fuck," he groaned, the sound coming from him like an involuntary prayer, rasping and pained and desperate.

  As I moved, I whispered to him. "I want you to think about this while we're there. About what's real. Because being with you? It's the first time I've ever felt like there's something real in my life, something that matters, something I can't give up." I spoke as I pressed my hands into his chest, moving in rhythm, and his big palms wrapped the sides of my hips, holding me there and guiding me.

  Jace opened his eyes when I'd stopped talking, stopped making promises. And the look in them sent flames racing down my spine, bursting to life at my center and in my chest. Want, need ... something else ... At that second, I knew I could live the rest of my life happily if only Jace would look at me like that now and then. Like I made the earth turn for him. Like I was important. Like this was everything.

  "Yes," I whispered as he began thrusting up beneath me, holding me with his huge hands so he could use me the way he needed to. "God, yes."
<
br />   I ground myself on top of him, seeking the pressure I needed to release, never dropping his gaze as every cell inside me seemed to align with him. I was making him a promise with my body, with my heart, and I was sealing it with the shared release we found as we stared into each other's eyes.

  And though neither of us said the word, I was certain as Jace held me fixed with his hands, his cock, his eyes—that what passed between us was the culmination of a year of quiet confidence and a couple weeks of building trust. It was the outcome of quiet nights sharing truth and long days spent believing in one another. It was something more than employment or protection and it lived outside the complications that lay between us.

  Jace loved me. And I loved him.

  And it wouldn't matter what ridiculous charade we had to go play for the world to see.

  Love was strong. I was sure of it.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Jace

  Juliet and I packed, my efforts taking about fifteen minutes before I went in to watch her struggle to decide what she needed over the course of several hours. When she’d finally finished, she had several hard suitcases and an overnight bag.

  “Think you forgot anything?” I teased.

  “I’m terrible at packing,” she moaned. “I know it.”

  We'd be gone four days, but she was bringing half her closet.

  "The weather in Maryland is unpredictable. And I don't know how I'll feel," she added.

  "My clothes never seem to care how I feel," I told her, laughing.

  "I mean I'm not sure what I'll feel like wearing," she said, poking me in the chest and then dropping another hand low to give me a teasing squeeze.

  "Don't start something you can't finish," I warned her.

  In the past few days there'd been a lot of finishing. For both of us. But I'd begun to see that the more I had of Juliet, the more I wanted of her. Every time I held her in my arms, my mind started working through future scenarios, ways we might be able to make this thing between us work in the long run, while my heart just hammered out words that echoed inside my skull relentlessly. Words like: Forever. More. Love. Mine.