Her fingers dug into his shoulders when she came apart, and he captured her mouth, captured her cries.
And he knew that he’d always hold her high.
“Oh my gosh, look.” Faith grinned up at him where her hand was wrapped up in his, the other pointed at the stuffed Belle and Beast dolls strung up over the ridiculous carnival game that was set up so no one could win. “There we are,” she teased, squeezing his hand.
He grinned right back, loving that she was at his side. Out in the open. That she wanted to claim him every bit as much as he wanted to claim her.
He hauled her toward it. “I guess I’ll have to win it, won’t I?”
Faith giggled. “Um . . . those games are impossible.”
“I thought you told me if you wanted something badly enough, believed in it enough, you could have it?”
Her brows lifted, a sweet blush on her cheeks, affection on her face. “I do like the sound of that.”
He was grinning when he stepped up and pulled the five dollars out of his pocket. So maybe he should be saving it. Buying something to eat for his brother and cousin, but if he ever wanted to be good enough for Faith, he had to step out, believe that he could, just like she’d said.
The carnie gave him the balls. He had three chances to knock all the pins down.
He took one ball, closed his eyes, and didn’t even open them as he sent the ball sailing.
He just believed.
He heard a crash and a clatter, and then Faith was clapping beside him, jumping up and down, and shouting, “Oh, my goodness, Jace. You did it! You did it!”
Jace’s eyes popped open, and he was grinning, and then he was kissing her hard right in the middle of the fair.
“Which one do you want?” the carnie asked.
Faith looked him straight on. “I want the Beast.”
Twenty
Faith
I peeled my eyes open against the grogginess still pulling me under. Banging echoed from somewhere outside, the clatter of noises and the lift of voices dragging me from a deep sleep.
It was funny how now that Jace had been staying with us for the last three weeks, the only thing I’d wanted to do was sleep.
It was as if my body and soul were catching up. Given reprieve in the safety that his presence afforded, the months of sleepless nights soothed away as if I were being rocked in the security of his arms.
During that time, I’d grown accustomed to the sound of him getting to work each morning.
But this morning?
Something had changed.
A riot of energy sizzled through the rays of light, as if they were rising with the sun.
Scrubbing a hand over my face to break away the sleepiness, I rolled out of bed and moved for the window. I pulled back the drapes and peered out.
What in the world?
There had to be ten cars parked in front of the house.
I quickly dressed and raced downstairs, jerking open the front door only to stumble in my steps when I saw what was happening.
“Well, if it isn’t Sleeping Beauty,” Courtney said as she lifted her head and cocked a teasing, accusing eye at me from where she was on her knees on the porch, ripping out a plank.
“Hi?” That single word cracked in my throat like a question while I slowly scanned the area. Almost the entire front porch had been ripped out, all thanks to an army of family and friends who had shown up.
Courtney and Felix.
Mack and a few other guys I recognized from the station.
My cousins, Tyler and Shane.
My heart tumbled a little when my gaze moved off to the left where I saw Ian, Jace’s brother, unloading a bunch of supplies from the bed of a truck.
He’d never exactly been my biggest fan. He’d watched me with suspicion as if he thought I might be the one to pluck his brother from his grasp. As if I might steal him away.
As if Ian could ever, for a single second, become less important to Jace.
I wondered if he knew that was impossible. Jace would have done absolutely anything to provide for him.
Protect him.
It made me wonder what their relationship had been like over the past ten years.
That time was an empty gap between us. During those years, I’d been sure I’d never really known Jace at all, the boy I’d thought I’d spent my life with nothing but callous and cruel when he’d walked away.
But I wasn’t so blind and broken not to realize that the two of them had their own histories written in that time.
No doubt, enduring their own hardships, even if on the outside, it looked as if the two of them had risen to the top without any effort at all.
I was pretty sure the lines creased into the corners of Jace’s eyes contradicted that impression. The strain etched there. Years of worry and his own grief.