by Sherri Renee
Again, I was intrigued. Any other time I would have prodded him to find out what he’d been working on, but I couldn’t today. I was still too raw from Danny’s visit. A cold breeze rustled leaves around my feet and tried to slip under my coat. I pulled my coat tight and shoved my hands in my pockets
Jace stared thoughtfully at me for a minute.
I glanced over at him. “What?”
“I could use a cup of hot chocolate,” he said. “What about you? My treat.”
His offer surprised me. I looked at him out of the corner of my eyes. Was he asking me on a date? The words “no thanks” formed in my throat, but before they made it past my lips he gave me that smile of his, and added, “Please, I can’t take much more of these two.”
Kristen was in Matt’s arms again, and as depressed as I was about Danny, my heart still lifted at the sight of them. I was so glad she was happy. She and Matt deserved to enjoy their new relationship. Kristen knew only too well how short life could be.
But that didn’t mean I wanted to stand around and let their happiness remind me of how unhappy I was. I rubbed my lip between my teeth then said something that surprised me.
“I’d love some hot chocolate.”
Jace’s smile grew wider. “Great. I know the best place.”
Chapter 3
Jace and I sat across from each other at Chester’s Diner. It was in a long, narrow building nestled between a bookstore and a clothing resale shop. Red booths lined the perimeter and a counter with bar stools stood in front of the kitchen.
It had a cozy, old-fashioned feel, and Christmas decorations adorned every free space. Reindeer even flew in the windows pulling Santa and his sleigh in the form of vinyl stick-ons.
I felt just the tiniest bit guilty for skipping out on Kristen without saying goodbye, but as wrapped up as she and Matt were with each other I wasn’t real sure they even knew we’d left. I’d just taken my first sip of hot chocolate and Jace was right it was really tasty.
“Mmmm,” I licked sweet whipped cream off my lips. “You weren’t over-exaggerating about their hot chocolate. This stuff is delicious.”
Jace lifted his blue mug for a drink. He returned it to the table and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. It was kind of endearing. “My sister used to work here,” he said. “She introduced me to their decadent brew.”
I laughed at his choice of words, but it made me remember his earlier comment about writing. “So what kind of stuff have you been writing?” I asked taking another sip.
Jace’s gaze darted across the diner, and he shrugged, looking embarrassed.
I tilted my head. I didn’t want to prod, but he had me really curious now. And while I was focused on Jace, the pain I felt about Danny leaving simmered on a back burner instead of roiling to a full boil out front. I decided to focus on Jace.
I squinted at him. “You don’t write in a diary do you?” I teased. “One of those girly ones with all the sparkles all over and a cute little lock on the front.”
He whipped his head to look at me in confusion. I propped my chin on my hands and gave him an innocent smile. “Well as embarrassed as you’re acting, what do you expect me to think?”
He simply stared at me for a minute. I started to worry that maybe he did write in a diary. Maybe even a sparkly, girly one. I sat up straight and my smile fell.
“Diaries are great,” I said. “I was just teasing about the girly part.” My face crumpled into a worried frown. Here he was being nice and taking my mind off Danny, and I had to go and insult him. So smooth.
I was about to apologize again when he burst out laughing. Really laughing. He was laughing so hard he soon held his stomach with both hands.
I raised my brows at him and started chuckling along. Who knew what was so funny? His deep, warm laugh was simply contagious.
“Oh, wow.” He wiped his eyes with a napkin and dropped his head back against the booth, still chuckling softly. “No,” he said when he caught a breath. Wavy brown locks of hair fell over his forehead and he shoved them to the side. “No, diary, although I might have to get one now just to remind me of today.”
What a relief. I was really worried I’d hurt his feelings. I tilted my head curiously. “So what do you write if it’s not notes about who likes who at school and how you wish you had a date for homecoming?” I playfully batted my eyelashes.
He chuckled again. His eyes met mine, and I felt an unexpected flutter in my stomach. Oh, no, I thought, breaking eye contact. I had enough problems in the romance department to allow any kind of flutters.
I took a deep breath. Jace was a nice guy. Nothing more. The fact that he was funny and attractive and knew where to find a cup of the most “decadent brew” in the city should not be enough to induce any sort of “flutters” in my recently demolished life.
“I write about my deepest, darkest fears and fantasies.”
Jace’s response jerked me from my personal scrutiny. I stared at him, letting his words sink in. “Um, so, you do keep a diary,” I said but raised one eyebrow in question.
He smiled and bit his lip, turning his cute scruffy look into a sexy one that electrified those flutters I had absolutely no business feeling until my entire body tingled. My eyes widened, and I clutched my hands together on my lap. Uh-oh. I swallowed hard as my heart sped up. I didn’t see that coming.
There had to be some kind of rule about how long it took a broken heart to mend. I was sure it had to be more than a couple of hours. And rule or no rule, I was still dating Danny. I think.
Jace dropped his arms on the table and leaned towards me. “Can you keep a secret?”
He looked so earnest, I forgot about my worries and quickly leaned forward to meet him in the middle of the table.
“Sure?” I knew my answer sounded like a question, but he was acting so strange, so excited, I wasn’t sure how to respond.
“I’m writing a fantasy series,” he said softly, flicking a nervous glance around the diner. “The first book is already published and the second is with the editor. I’m drafting the third one now.”
I raised both my brows. Of all the things I might have expected him to say, this wasn’t one of them. “Wow, impressive! You’re a published author.”
“Shh.” He held up his hand and glanced around to make sure no one was listening. None of the red booths around us were occupied, and our waitress was in the back taking an order. “Please, you can’t tell anyone, okay?”
He looked so worried, I hurried to reassure him. “I won’t tell a soul. Pinky promise.” I stuck out my pinky, and he frowned at it.
“Come on,” I said grabbing his hand and hooking his pinky with mine. “Now, I’m forever sworn to secrecy.”
He looked at our joined fingers. “This is one of those girly things like a diary that you’re going to tease me about now, isn’t it.”
“Absolutely,” I grinned, enjoying him and his cute sense of humor.
He smiled back and for just a second I lost myself in his eyes. Warm brown pools that drew me in, making me want to know what thoughts were going through his head right now. My finger was still linked with his, and I was suddenly overly aware of the contact.
I carefully slid my finger from his and fisted my hand in my lap. I was having some pretty strange feelings considering I’d had myself all but married off to Danny this morning.
I felt my cheeks warm and lifted my mug for another sip, giving myself time to get my feelings under control. “So,” I leaned forward and whispered, “You’re an author. That’s fantastic. You always did pull the highest grades in Mrs. Harrison’s class, dang you,” I teased.
He looked proud of my praise but nervous at the same time.
“Why’s it so secretive?” I asked.
He sat back and rubbed his eyes. A smile played on his lips. “Does that pinky promise thingy count for what I tell you next.”
“If you want it to.”
“Your comment about the diary wasn’t entirely wrong
.” He raised his eyes to the ceiling and shook his head like he couldn’t believe he was about to tell me whatever it was he was about to tell me.
After another glance around he said, “The main character in my novels is a seventeen-year-old girl. She rides a silver unicorn and has a crush on one of my other characters. He’s training to battle dragons, and while he’s attracted to her because, of course, she’s hot and amazing, he’s embarrassed that she can outfight him with one arm tied behind her back. They’ve got some issues to work out.”
I leaned forward, eager to hear more of the story, but he’d stopped talking. “So what happens? Do they work things out? Does his pride keep them apart? Is there a unicorn uprising and all the humans are massacred?”
Jace winked at me. “You’ll have to read the book to find out.”
I groaned dramatically and sat back. “You’re such a tease.”
He shrugged with a mischievous smile.
“Why’s that such a big secret? It sounds really interesting.”
Jace’s eyes grew round. “Are you kidding me? Do you know how much crap my teammates would give me if they knew I make up romance stories about girls and their unicorns.”
I laughed. I had a pretty good idea. “Well, when you put it that way. . .”
“I write under the pen name J.C. Freeman to ensure I’m never found out.”
“That’s pretty similar to your name. If someone wanted to find you they could.”
“Sure, they could, but no one’s looking for me. No one, other than my family and now you, has a clue I’ve written anything.”
I was flattered but confused. It wasn’t like Jace and I were close. I hadn’t even seen him since last year. “Why’d you tell me?” I searched his face waiting for his answer.
The waitress stopped by our table and asked if we needed anything else. We told her we were fine, and I wanted to shoo her away so I could find out how Jace would answer my question.
Why would he choose to share something so deep and special with me? We’d visited when we had class together last year, waved at each other in the halls, but we’d never hung out or anything before today.
“I don’t know.” He wrapped his fingers around his mug but didn’t lift it. “I guess seeing you today brought back memories of our writing class. You were very talented. I might have earned better grades, but you could always tell Mrs. Harrison enjoyed your stories more than anyone else’s. I thought you might understand the drive I feel to write, and,” he gave me a half-grin, “the reason I have to hide it.”
“Mrs. Harrison liked my stories?” I wrinkled my nose at him. “I don’t remember making a single A in that class. I think I was lucky to pull a B for the year.”
“You never followed the writing prompts.” Jace frowned at me. “She couldn’t exactly give you an A when she asked us to describe a picture of the lake and you wrote that whole story about the duck who lived on the lake from his point of view.”
I’d forgotten about that story, but I smiled, remembering it now. It had been fun to write. “How’d you remember that?”
“It was great writing. It was easy to feel what your little duck felt about the lake and his struggles to survive even though he loved living there.”
“And you think Mrs. Harrison liked it?” I squinted at him with an unsure smile. I wasn’t sure if I’d even earned a C from her on that one.
“She read it out loud to the class. I think she might have wiped a tear or two from her eye at the end.”
“She did not.” I reached across the table to swat his arm.
“Okay.” He held up his hands in surrender. “Maybe I’m remembering the tear part wrong,” he grinned, “but I do remember that wasn’t your only piece she read out loud.”
“Humph.” I stared down at my hot chocolate. “I never had a clue. I thought I must be a pretty terrible writer since I always tried so hard in that class and walked away with mediocre grades.” I looked up at him. “Thanks for telling me that. It makes me feel pretty good.”
And surprisingly, I was feeling pretty good overall, considering Danny had hacked out my heart only hours ago. Taking Jace up on hot chocolate was turning out to be one of my better decisions of late.
Chapter 4
“So tell me more about your books?” I said. The door opened with a jingle from the overhead bell and a brief gust of cold air as an older couple hurried inside and looked around for an empty booth.
As odd as the thought was, I hoped they’d choose a table far from ours. I was enjoying having Jace to myself.
Jace glanced back at them, and we watched them walk to the back, choosing a booth in the corner before he answered me. “What do you want to know?” He finished his hot chocolate and set his empty cup down with a thud.
“I don’t know.” I thought about it for a second. “Maybe how you got the idea for a girl riding the unicorn into battle.”
“I blame my sister for that,” he said with an affectionate smile. “She loved unicorns when she was younger and had her whole room decorated with unicorn stuff. Posters, sheets, stuffed animals. I think she even had a t-shirt with unicorns on it.” He rolled his eyes dramatically, and I grinned at him. I could picture the room exactly.
“I was three years younger than her and her room was strictly off limits to me. So, of course, I snuck in there any time I could just because it was forbidden.
“You naughty boy,” I teased.
“What can I say?” He lifted his hands palms up in a shrug. “As you can probably guess, the thrill was in the sneaking part. Once I was in her room it was pretty boring. I mean she didn’t have any Legos or toy cars or anything.”
I snickered at the disbelief in his voice.
“One day I was in there bored out of my mind, but I didn’t want to leave because that would’ve been like admitting defeat. Out of desperation I picked up her stuffed unicorn and started pointing its horn at the posters on the wall, pretending it was a laser gun annihilating all the other unicorns. My imagination took over from there.”
He looked down. “She eventually outgrew her unicorn phase, and I outgrew sneaking into her room. But the idea stuck.”
He shrugged. “And there you have it. The secret to my success: Be a sneaky disobedient kid.”
“That’s a pretty cool story,” I said. I was really enjoying visiting with him. More than I would have expected. “Did you ever get caught?”
My phone gave a beep, and I forgot all about Jace. I yanked it out of my purse so fast my wallet and a couple of pens spilled out with it. My heart pounded as I fumbled to open my texts. It had to be a text from Danny telling me he’d made a huge mistake and wasn’t going to move after all because he couldn’t stand to live that far from me.
It was from Danny! I grasped the phone with both hands, holding back an excited squeal. Everything was going to be fine. He was probably at my house right now, wondering where I was.
Heading to practice. Sorry I hurt you.
I stared at the screen with my brows drawing low over my eyes. I blinked a couple of times certain I had to be missing something. I’d bared my heart to him, admitted I loved him, and this was his response?
I read the lines a couple more times then slipped my phone back into my purse without replying. I absently gathered everything I’d dumped out while trying to get to my phone and shoved it in my purse too.
My lip gloss dropped and rolled under the table. Jace quickly ducked down to get it, offering it to me across the table. I reached out to take it, but he didn’t let go. I looked up with a frown.
“Everything okay?” His face held a look of such true concern it almost broke the tentative hold I had on my emotions.
I drew in my lips and lowered my eyes with a nod. What could I say? No, things were not okay? I was an idiot who confused a casual relationship with true love? Oh my gosh, that sounded so pitiful it made me feel even more sorry for myself. Not only was I naive, I was stupid too? I gave the lip gloss tube a gentle tug, and Jace
let it go.
I stuck it in my purse with everything else and closed and snapped the flap.
“Let me guess. That was Kristen and she’s so disappointed you left she’s cutting you out of her life forever.”
He was teasing. I knew that, but his words made me think of Danny. He hadn’t officially cut me out of his life, but it felt like it. I sniffed and rubbed a hand over my mouth, squeezing my lips together to hold in the sobs that hovered just behind my tongue. I tried to give him a smile, but when I met his eyes they were so kind, so worried, that one of those sobs snuck out.
That sob, of course, led to another, no matter how hard I tried to hold it back. I covered my eyes and let the tears flow. The vinyl covered booth dipped as Jace came over and sat beside me. He wrapped his arm around my shoulders, tugging me against his warm chest.
I sat stiffly for a minute. It was strange to cry in an almost stranger’s arms, wasn’t it? Instead of fighting I collapsed against him. He didn’t say a word, just ran a hand over my hair and occasionally patted my back as he let me cry.
And cry I did. I cried over what I considered Danny’s betrayal. I cried from the scare Kristen had just had and the fact that Laurie had been missing since the game Friday. I even shed a few tears for my unknown dad and the family that could have been.
I don’t know how long Jace held me, but when my tears turned to sniffles he was prepared with a handful of napkins. He pressed a wad in my hand, and I dabbed at my face without moving away from him.
I felt safe in his arms, as if none of the things I’d cried about could hurt me while he held me close. I also knew my makeup would be smeared from here to high heavens, and even with my life in tatters, I was still just vain enough that I didn’t want him seeing me looking my worst when he was being so kind.
I ran a napkin under my eyes until I felt I’d cleaned the black streaks of mascara and eyeliner as best I could. Deciding I’d held Jace’s chest hostage long enough, I let out a deep, wavering sigh then leaned away from him with an embarrassed smile.
“I’m so sorry.” I blinked and darted a glance at him before looking away. “Believe it or not I’m not much of a crier.” I let out a short laugh and shook my head.