The time of his fucking life.
Yeah, right.
Joseph didn’t have the first clue what Jace had done for him. What he was still doing for him. The sacrifices he’d made.
Jace pointed behind him. “Now get your ass back on that couch. I need to take a shower and meet Faith. When I get back, I expect you to be sitting right there.”
Bitterness bled from the snort Joseph emitted. “That’s what I thought.”
Forty-five minutes later, Jace rushed back out to the small living room.
He was running late.
Quickly, he shoved the blanket he’d washed and folded into his backpack, looking back at Ian and Joseph who were again sitting on the couch behind him.
“I’ll be back in a few hours.” He stood, slinging the backpack onto his shoulder, and pointed between the two of them. “Don’t either of you go anywhere.”
Ian mock-saluted him. “Aye-aye, Captain.”
Joseph just rolled his eyes, and Jace slipped out into the night.
Tonight, the moon was high and full. Washing the leaves and the ground in a milky spray, a breeze blowing through from the ocean filling his nostrils with the scent of the sea and the summer.
Jace raced up the bumpy trail, running through the night toward the one place he wanted to be. He didn’t slow until he was at the base of the porch, staring up at the girl who stood at the door.
His own definition of a dream.
A fantasy.
Wearing this flowy dress, her hair a chocolate river, rolling over her shoulders, her skin glowing in the traces of moonlight.
She curtsied as if she had stepped out of the eighteen fifties. “Why, sir, welcome to the BBB.”
Jace felt the smile twitching all over his mouth, and he did his best to play along. “It’s a pleasure to be here, ma’am. It’s been a long trek, and I’m eager for a comfortable place to rest.”
“Oh, I plan on making you comfortable, all right,” she drawled, sweet seduction on her tongue.
Unable to stay still for a second longer, Jace started up the porch steps, his breaths coming shorter and shorter with each one he took, until he had the girl backed against the wall in their spot.
She grinned up at him. Jace’s heart clanged in the confines of his chest.
She threaded her fingers through his. “Let’s go inside,” she whispered like a secret.
Confusion pulled a frown to Jace’s forehead. “You mean . . . inside, inside?”
She only grinned wider. “Come on, Jace. Dream with me. Follow me.”
She was giggling as she moved around the house to one of the smaller side windows, glancing back at him as she pushed it up.
He choked out a laugh. “Did you know that was unlocked this whole time?”
“Yep,” she said. “I’ve gone in before. This time, I want you to come with me.”
He roughed a hand through his hair and looked around the property. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”
Faith slipped through the window, her hand outstretched through the frame. “Follow me, Jace. Let’s dance with the ghosts. Introduce ourselves. Let them know we’ll be stayin’.”
He couldn’t help but smile. “You’re insane, Faith Linbrock.”
“Insane for you.” She edged back, her gaze sweeping the room where she stood. “This is our place, Jace. Our castle. Let’s claim it.”
How was he gonna resist that? He didn’t want to.
He slipped through the window and into the shadowy, hazy light, watching the way the tender smile ridged her lips.
She backed farther into the darkened silhouettes that danced and played on the walls.
“Can you imagine what it will be like? Living here? People coming in and out the way they used to do? Can you imagine all the people who’ve been inside these walls before us? All their experiences? Their loves and their losses?”
“Would you really want to know all those things?” he asked, following her through the rooms on the first floor, watching her wistful expression as she explored.
She looked back at him. “You can’t know the full goodness of someone without being able to see the bad. Otherwise that vision is distorted. Then we’d never understand what they might have endured. Their hardships and their blessings.”
He stepped forward and ran his fingers through her hair. “You have an astonishing soul, Faith.”
The most beautiful soul.
He was terrified he was going to tarnish it.
The things he’d been forced into the last few weeks made him sick.
Physically ill.
But Steven had warned him that, if he didn’t do as he was told, he’d make what he’d done to Ian look like a walk in the park.
And Joseph would be next.
What else was he supposed to do?
God, Jace had never wanted to be different more than he did right then. Had never wished he’d come from a different world than the one he had more than when he was standing in front of Faith.
She suddenly pulled away, giggling as she raced for the main big room, looking over her shoulder as she went. “I dare you to come find me, Beast.”
Jace froze right there, wrapped in the sound of her laughter ricocheting from the walls as she disappeared at the end of the hall, his heart thundering harder with the echo of her footsteps as she moved upstairs.
Or maybe it was just the howl of the ghosts.
And right then, he couldn’t remember his ghosts. Who he was and what was holding him back. None of the reasons he could never be good enough for this girl.
The only thing he could process was that she was his and he was hers.
He believed.
Believed in the way he loved her. In the things he would sacrifice for her happiness and her joy. The way he would always take care of her.
Right then, that was the only thing that mattered.
That and the fact she was somewhere upstairs waiting for him.
His stomach tight and his pulse a thunder in the darkness, he edged up the sweeping staircase he’d only ever seen through the window.
Inside, it appeared even more massive than the mere picture he’d gotten, the entire place worn from disuse and age, and still screaming with all the possibilities Faith had in it.
He got to the landing and looked down two long halls. Instantly, he went left, drawn that direction as if he could feel her life force bleeding through the walls.
Her energy alive.
That feeling he had been terrified to feel taking over every part of him.
His heart and his mind and his body.
He stopped at the first door on the left. It was open a crack, and he nudged it farther, the old hinges creaking as it slowly swept open.
That feeling radiated back.
Real and alive.
Intoxicating.
He stepped inside.
Faith’s back was to him, and she stood looking out the window. She peeked back at him. “I was gonna hide, but I got distracted.”
He inched up behind her. Her fingertips traced the window. “Look at that. I bet this is the best view in the house. I call this as our room.”
The only thing visible from the window was the garden of roses, the expanse of them seeming to go on forever before they disappeared in the distance toward the trailer where he lived.
“So much beauty in the middle of something so ugly,” he said, words a soft gruff from his chest.
She slowly turned around to face him.
“That’s funny, because I only see the beauty.”
He ran his knuckles down the side of her face. “That’s because that’s what you are.”
“Let’s make more of it,” she whispered, a tremble in her needy voice.
And he wondered if she was as nervous as he was. If she understood he was holding something so precious in his hands.
That she was offering it to him.
Trusting him with it.
She was holding his hand when she knelt, and he sank to his knees in front of her.
He let the backpack slide off his shoulder, and he opened it so he could pull out the blanket he’d washed and packed for them. He spread it out on the floor and helped her lay down on it.
Moonlight poured across her face, and he wondered if he’d ever witness anything so perfect again.
“I love you,” he said, carefully climbing over her.