Page 168 of Jace
I sit in my dress, cross-legged on top of my dining table, a wedding bouquet of carnations, circa the eighties, by my side. A white cake with sixteen candles glows before me, in front of the bay window to my night-fallen courtyard outside.
“Yep, it won’t break,” Jace assures me, palming the antique table. His lips twisting. His massive body shuffling. His eyes, not so sure. “Nope, we’re good. No biggie.”
“No biggie?” I laugh with a diamond sparkling on my finger. “Big guy, you are six feet, six inches of the hottest, hulking body. And you think you won’t break our table?”
He winks. “Don’t forget hottest, hulkinghusband.” Gingerly, he climbs on top, joining me for the shot.
“Oh shit, it’s creaking!” Nick laughs.
“Thar she blows!” Grant booms.
“Now, if sheblewhim on the table, they’d break it,” Nash jokes, making Axel mutter, “Kids.”
The two exchange a knowing smirk.
Jace told me there’s been some tension between them. Something about Alena years ago, but I don’t sense it. They look like birds of an inked feather.
Everyone’s gathered around them in my dimmed dining room, an eager audience for this final scene.
Awkwardly, Jace tries to mirror me. At least he took his jacket off and loosened his tie. It hangs around his neck, his shirt unbuttoned after our dancing in the courtyard.
It takes him a moment to relax, to wrap his massive body and sit crisscross on the other side of the cake.
“Ouais. Beautiful.” Delphine sighs, aiming Jace’s camera. “Vivian, what aperture for candlelight? F/2?”
“Try 1.4,” I answer her while beaming at Jace. “But we have to hold still.”
Jace listens to me. He always does. He listens. Lusts. Laughs. Loves. Fireworks exploding inside him for this; I can see them lighting up his lapis eyes. The gold wedding band on his finger gleams—Nick let us borrow his—as Jace stills his body for the photo.
Only his smiling lips move, improvising the scene. “Thanks for giving me your undies.”
I fight my laugh. “Thanks for making them wet.”
“Thanks for marrying me.”
“Thanks for asking me.”
“Happy wedding day, Vivian.” He smiles. So damn handsome. “Make a wish.”
A wish.
It blooms in my belly, lighting up my soul. Joy this great shouldn’t be allowed, but it is; it’s abundant.
I’m his wife. I know my next romantic line, but it’s not my story because ours is real.
“You already made it come true, Jace.”
He leans over our wedding cake, giving me a devoted kiss.
The moment is captured in a photo, sitting by our bed.
For the next sixty years.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
JACE
Funnyhow your mind tells you one story, yet destiny gives you another.
