Maybe One Day, page 18
I blinked back into awareness when Judy shifted in her chair.
“All right, so there’s no easy way to say this, and there’s no point putting it off any longer,” she declared. At first, she focused all her attention on her husband, and he put his arm around her, rubbing her back soothingly.
Amelia and I froze, exchanging a brief glance of mirrored turmoil, and I felt Jace bristle beside me.
Judy paused long enough for our desserts to be delivered.
She swept her golden hair behind her shoulders as she leaned forward, facing us once more. “Geoff and I have made a decision that is probably going to come as a surprise to you, but please know, your father and I haven’t made it lightly. This is something we’ve wanted to do since we were your age, and it feels like it’s the right time now that you’ve both finished high school.”
“Why does it feel like you’re only having this conversation with me?” Amelia’s eyes, cold and accusing, swung to her brother, then to me. “Do you two already know about this?”
Jace tensed again.
The fine sheen of sweat that dotted Geoff ’s forehead didn’t escape my notice.
“I have no idea what’s happening right now,” I said, feeling the need to clarify.
Was this why Jace’s mood had been off all night? Because he’d been steeling himself for this conversation?
Jace was silent for so long that I didn’t think he would speak.
“I knew, okay?” he admitted. “But could you just let Mom finish before you start with the dramatics? This is why people find it hard to tell you stuff sometimes.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize having an emotional reaction was a bad thing.” Amelia chuckled humorlessly, and I couldn’t help but cringe. “You might only like to share your feelings about, uh, anything, once in your lifetime, but I’m not like you, Jace. And I’m okay with that. Please, Mom, continue.”
I tried to concentrate on the uneaten slice of chocolate ripple cake in front of me and not on the fact that these siblings—two people I loved so dearly—clashed so often. The urge to say something—to reveal how badly I would give anything to have my sibling back, that I’d never treat him this way—overwhelmed me, but I knew I couldn’t do that. This wasn’t about me.
“It’s not even that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things,”
Jace added, his voice losing some of its hard edge. “It’s good, Millie. Keep an open mind.”
There was a strained pause, and Geoff chimed in, “Thanks, son. Appreciate that.” He steepled his fingers, pondering his next words. “We planned to tell you both at the same time, but I guess things don’t always work out how we want them to. Jace came home early and met the Realtor we’d hired. They were in the middle of an appraisal. It wasn’t something we were trying to keep from you, sweetheart.”
“We’re at a restaurant,” Amelia pointed out. Her gray eyes were shining with unshed tears, and she blinked fast, as if she was trying to stop them from falling. “Why are you doing this here?”
“Because, honey, tonight should be a celebration. We’re not getting any younger. Life, as we all know, is so short,” Judy replied, and I concentrated on not reacting or reading too deeply into that. “Your father and I, we . . .”
“We’ve decided that it’s time we grab life by the proverbial horns; do the things we’ve always wanted to do,” Geoff supplied when it was apparent his wife had momentarily lost her nerve.
He studied his daughter from behind his wire-rimmed glasses. “As much as we love you and will always be here for you, we think you’re both old enough to take care of yourselves now.”
A smile crept over Judy’s features, and she reached for her husband’s hand. “You know it’s always been our dream to travel around Europe in one of those motor homes, and well, we’re going to make that happen. No more excuses,” she rushed on with a newfound thrill. “Your father and I have decided to retire and sell the house.”
Amelia’s shell-shocked gaze flicked back in my direction, then never left. All communication was through her eyes, and I knew she was ready to go cry somewhere. I recognized the need to escape and flee a situation all too well.
While I knew this news wasn’t all that ground-breaking for me, my best friend’s whole life hinged on that house, on her parents. What they were doing must’ve felt like a betrayal, or at the very least, a transformative shift in her world. I knew grief and change were always relative, and they didn’t come with a manual.
Navigating any loss was like driving without a destination. There were plenty of blind spots and pit stops, and the darkness was there sometimes, following you like an ominous storm cloud in the rearview mirror. It made it easier when you had other people in your car, a support system to turn to for directions, or just to pass the time as you slowly got better at never knowing what was around every corner.
Amelia was always there for me, a constant source of love and acceptance, and I was more than ready to place myself in the passenger seat for once, to help her navigate this.
sixteen
Shortly after midnight, my phone chimed, and my stomach took a pleasant tumble when I registered the name on the lit-up screen.
It was Jace.
You awake?
The knowledge that we were under the same roof crackled through me like an electric current. I was a coiled live wire, too antsy to fall asleep. His text did nothing to ease the heightened awareness, the endless pull from the invisible tether, I felt.
After we’d left Pavilions, I’d stayed the night at Amelia’s. The two of us had binged the Die Hard series and consumed our weight in gummy bears, just like old times. My best friend had curled up at my side, her hot tears soaking through my sleep shirt. She’d apologized for crying over it, but I’d reassured her it was okay. For years, she’d been the superglue that had held me together—long before Jace had entered the picture—and I wanted her to know how important her friendship was to me. It was something I’d never sacrifice, take for granted, or lose sight of . . . but I was also human. If ever I’d had the overwhelming urge to slip out of her room, tiptoe down the carpeted hall, and crawl into her brother’s bed, it was then.
Chewing my bottom lip, I typed in and sent: Unfortunately.
Can’t sleep.
Within seconds, I got a message back. Same.
I tried to think of a casual response and came up empty.
Another text popped up on my phone, vibrating my palm.
Meet me outside at the spot?
A slow, curling heat flickered in my belly.
Amelia snored beside me, dead to the world, and I momentarily struggled with guilt. My loyalty to her demanded that I stayed put, that I didn’t go to him, but then I reminded myself of two things: She knew about Jace and me. Better yet, she was cool with it. I had no reason to feel like I had to sneak around or choose between them.
Easing out of her bed, I used the light of my phone to illuminate my path. Fumbling around in the darkness, I shrugged on a puffy jacket from my overnight bag, wiggled my toes into my sheepskin boots, and quietly closed the door behind me.
I paused outside Amelia’s bedroom and forced myself to breathe. For a nanosecond, a small part of me contemplated retreating and face-planting into her bed, blaming this on sleep-deprived insanity. But I’d wanted to spend time alone with Jace over the break, and I’d wanted to figure out what was bothering him—if it truly wasn’t about his parents. It felt wrong to pass up on this opportunity.
Stepping out into the cold night, I gathered my hair into a messy ponytail and crossed the Hammonds’ manicured lawn.
Nestled in the branches of a wintry, leafless oak tree, I saw the old treehouse, its white panels glowing iridescent in the moonlight, standing out in the shadowy backyard. The darkness . . . the way my footsteps were silenced by the gust of wind that picked up . . . unsettled me, and I walked faster. Even if Jace was that safety zone for me, where nothing bad existed, I wished I’d told him to meet me in the kitchen instead. That was where normal people crossed paths in the middle of the night when they couldn’t sleep.
“Up here,” I heard Jace call from the top.
An exhale tumbled out of my mouth, my shoulders sagging a little. Tucking my phone into my pocket, I curled my fingers around the metal rungs of the ladder I’d scaled at least a thousand times. Before I could second-guess myself, I started to climb, muscle memory thankfully taking over. When I reached the platform, I accepted Jace’s hand and let him haul me up.
“You good?” he asked, frowning slightly.
“Yeah.” I hugged my jacket tighter around myself, glancing around. Everything was still the same. Smoothing my hand over one of the low-hanging branches, I traced the J.H., A.H., T.D., & H.D. —our proud, scribbled initials—carved into the wood. A sad smile tugged at my lips, my mind caught up in the ghostly memories of a long-ago past. “Wow. It’s been years since I’ve been up here.”
“Me too. I wanted somewhere to think. Then I got up here and, I don’t know, I realized I didn’t want to be alone after all,”
Jace admitted, casting me a long glance. “I’m not going to lie—I’m kind of impressed, Hayles. You made that climb look easy.”
“You’re an asshole,” I said, laughing. “It’s creepy as hell out here. I seriously regret not telling you no.”
Jace lowered himself to the floor, and I settled beside him, gingerly scooting forward until my knees were dangling over the edge. I could see everything from this height, the shingled roof of his childhood home, to the faraway city lights, twinkling on the horizon.
“Well, I’m glad you didn’t.” Jace’s shoulder bumped mine, and I held his gaze, inhaling slowly.
Being in the treehouse was like being in a time warp, transporting me back to a collection of moments when life was simpler, easier. Everything about this was reminiscent of our childhood—the summer nights the four of us would hide out here together, playing make-believe, stargazing, and dreaming—and yet nothing about our late-night tryst felt innocent.
Despite the intense family dinner we’d sat through, and the fact that I’d chosen to sleep in Amelia’s room afterward, not his . . . it all just melted away when Jace pulled me into his arms. I nestled against him, letting the warmth of his body soak into mine as I closed my eyes and rested my cheek against his chest.
“We should probably talk about earlier,” he said, his voice rumbling through me.
“Yeah, we probably should.”
“But I’m kind of all talked out, you know?”
“I know.”
For what felt like an eternity, we sat in companionable silence, listening to the ethereal calls of a nearby owl that echoed in the sky, and the sound of our breathing, short and shallow. My thoughts were blissfully empty for a while, until my brain eventually drifted back to everything that had happened tonight. I couldn’t help but wonder, again, the reasons for Jace’s changed demeanor—quiet, serious, moody. I mean, he was never a ray of sunshine, but something felt off.
I withdrew, just about to ask him, when he turned to face me.
“Do you remember the last time we were up here?” he asked.
This close to him, his eyes were crystalline. “Back when we were just friends.”
I nodded. “It feels like a lifetime ago.”
“Exactly. It might be why it took me so long. You’ve always been there, and I . . .” He broke our eye contact, looking off into the distance.
Never in my life had I been so laser-focused on Jace’s profile.
I wanted to absorb everything he was about to say and commit it to memory.
“I thought it was about being ready for another relationship, but it’s not. It’s about being ready for the right person. As rough as my breakup with Zoe was, she wasn’t the right person for me,” he revealed. “I’m not saying it won’t be hard, us being together.
I’ll probably piss you off sometimes, struggle to talk about the shit that matters, but you’re it for me. You’re my person. Probably have been ever since you pushed Payton Reynolds over on the playground.”
A surprised laugh escaped me. “Oh my God, I can’t believe you saw that. You’ve never told me that before.”
He shrugged. “Of course I saw. You stood up for my sister.
Payton had been bullying her since the second grade, and no one was brave enough to go to bat for her, until you. Even when I was twelve, I knew you were a total badass. I mean, you offered to trade your first-edition Pokémon cards with me. You were one of my closest friends growing up. I’ve always cared about you, Hayles, but something changed over the years. I don’t know when it happened, but it did.”
The flutter returned to my chest. For a guy who didn’t enjoy expressing his thoughts and feelings very often, from where I was sitting, he was tremendously good at it.
“What I’m trying to say is, I wish I could go back and tell myself not to run scared from what I felt for you. I had a chance at being with you a couple of years ago, and even though I was with Zoe and not really in a position to start something with you back then, I didn’t take it. I’ve been regretting it ever since,” he went on, his voice gravelly and deep. “So, yeah, I want this—all of it—with you. And I’m not going anywhere, so I need you to stop thinking that I am, okay?”
My breath stuttered. “Okay,” I whispered.
He was right. I needed to have more faith in him—us—and get back to the hopeful romantic I was pre-accident.
Satisfied, half of Jace’s mouth tipped up, that dimple I loved finally popping. His low-lidded gaze dropped to my lips, and the air around us seemed to thicken and become charged, heavy. I leaned in out of instinct, closing what little distance was left between us.
Jace might’ve kissed me back, but it was me who deepened the kiss and took control. My tongue touched his, tentative and urgent at the same time. There was no fear, no pain, and no thought of chancing rejection. Not in the shelter of his old treehouse. Not after everything he’d said.
My hands skated up Jace’s biceps and looped around his neck. I needed to be closer than this, to feel every inch of him against me.
We seemed to communicate on some unspoken level, because the next thing I knew, his hands were settling on my waist, tugging me into his lap. His back muscles were tight beneath my splayed fingers as I rose, feeling my bare knees graze against the wood, and my other hand slid into that dark, shaggy hair. Drawing back, he blinked up at me, and I straddled him, another rush of power surging through me.
“Sometimes, I still can’t believe that we’re doing this,” I admitted. “That I get to kiss you whenever I want.”
Jace groaned when I ground my hips down on his. The friction was heavenly. Maddening. His hardness pressed against the sensitive spot between my legs, and reflexively, I rocked into him again. Burning arousal swept through me, an unmistakable drumbeat, growing louder and louder, until it was all I could hear.
I suddenly understood why Amelia always made such a big deal about this—finding someone you could be physically intimate and emotionally vulnerable with.
I cradled the sides of his face, welcoming the prickly tickle of stubble against my palms. “Since we’re being so honest tonight, I should probably tell you that I’ve fantasized about this for an embarrassingly long time.”
He sighed, and I swore I heard relief. “That makes two of us, Hayles.”
“And then there’s that. My nickname.” For as long as I could remember, Jace had been the only person to call me that. Maybe thinking it’d symbolized something, all those years ago, was a bit of a stretch, but still, it had only ever been his term of endearment for me and no one else’s, and that meant more. “It makes me feel like I’m yours.”
“You are mine,” he said simply. “Have been ever since that night at Owen’s apartment.”
And then his lips were capturing mine, unrelenting and sweet.
He knew exactly how to angle my face, how to tangle his fingers into my hair, how to make every part of me ache—the best kind of ache.
In the several seconds that followed, Jace helped me tug my jacket off, then my shirt. His knuckles grazed the undersides of my breasts, raising tiny bumps across my skin. When his hands skated up higher, cupping me through the white lace of my bra, a whimper rolled out of me.
He kissed the valley between my breasts and each swell, setting every nerve ending on fire, and I swallowed another moan that probably would have embarrassed me. He expertly unhooked the clasp of my bra, and I felt the cool air rushing against my chest.
Self-consciousness crawled over me like a shadow, but I refused to cover up. I liked the way he was looking up at me a little too much. It went so much deeper than lust or desire.
I shivered at the first sound of his voice. “You’re so goddamn beautiful.”
If someone had told me at the start of the semester that I would be half-naked in Jace’s treehouse on Thanksgiving break, I probably would’ve said that they were insane. But here we were, and the reality of it settled around me.
“You have no idea how long I’ve wanted to see you.” He exhaled through his nose. “All of you.”
Moving farther from the edge, I eased back, my puffy jacket acting as a makeshift blanket. I got comfortable, tracking the trajectory of Jace’s hands as they explored my body. His mouth lowered to the tip of my left breast, his breath warming me. I cried out when his lips closed over my nipple—a hot, wet kiss as his tongue languidly flicked over me.
Jace moved his mouth from one breast to the other, and I made a happy humming sound, little darts of pleasure zinging through me. Gradually, he began his descent, peppering open-mouthed kisses over my rib cage, then past my navel, and finally, over the flare of my hips. My heart pounded an unsteady rhythm. When Jace’s hands smoothed over my thighs, fingers digging in just a little, I was dizzy.
“God, I love the way you feel. So soft and smooth and perfect.”
