Part 8 (1/2)

”That's so far away,” I say, letting my imagination take a hold of me. ”We probably won't even remember what we looked like when we were this age.”

Jace shakes his head and says something about how he will have stayed just as s.e.xy as he is today, thanks to modern science and cryogenics or something like that. I take Julie's lead and smile at him, but my mind is really somewhere else, my thoughts lost to the possibilities of the future.

I had been looking at this all wrong. Meeting Jace's parents isn't just a one-time meet them, charm them, and never see them again thing. It's the start of a lifetime of knowing each other. Of holidays and birthdays and vacations to see their grandchild. It's two more people to call if Jace ends up in the hospital again. One day she really will show us that picture she just took. And we'll be older and greyer and our child will be in college. Maybe we'll have two kids. And she'll know all about it because she's family. Because we're family.

As terrifying as it is to meet the people who brought my soul mate to this earth, I now realize how important it is to know them.

Chapter 14.

I always knew Jace came from a wealthy family, but I never knew how wealthy. When we arrive at his parent's house, I have to physically stop my jaw from hitting the floor by clenching my jaw together. We drive up the cobblestone driveway, which is U-shaped around a ma.s.sive water fountain with a concrete angel in the middle. The landscaping around the front yard is so pristine, it most definitely has a gardener who tends to it daily.

Their house is a ma.s.sive brick structure with tons of windows and a high peaked roof. There's two white columns that frame the doorway, rising from the ground up to the roof. It's right about now when I notice that the house seems so huge because it's not just a typical big two-story house. It's three stories.

Julie parks up front and turns down the radio volume before shutting off the engine. ”Gary gets so annoyed when I leave the radio up loud,” she explains, rolling her eyes as if he's a mean old man and she's the cool young kid who loves loud music.

I glance over at Jace to see his reaction to coming home to such a ma.s.sive place. He's just staring at his phone, checking the supercross results. He must sense me looking at him because he looks up, his eyes finding mine instantly. ”Eight bedrooms,” he says, nodding toward the house. ”I'll let you pick which one we stay in.”

”I thought we'd be staying in your old bedroom?”

He shakes his head. ”That's been turned into the trophy room.”

We climb out of the car and I follow Jace to the back of the vehicle even though I know he won't let me carry my own luggage. ”Trophy room? Now I have to see this.”

Julie laughs. ”I wouldn't exactly call it a trophy room.” She grabs Jace's suitcase and he takes mine, carrying it by the handle and not letting it roll.

”You know the foyer part of our apartment?” he asks. I nod. It's a teensy s.p.a.ce between the doorway and the living room where we hang our keys and kick off our shoes. There's also about twenty random dirt bike trophies cluttering the area. Jace mostly teaches people how to ride these days, but occasionally he and Ash will drive a few hours out to race the pro cla.s.s at a local track. ”Pro” cla.s.s doesn't mean the professional supercross racers that Jace was banned from before I met him. It just means people who aren't famous, who are just as fast and get to race for money. The terms are confusing, but I've just learned to accept them for what they are.

”My old bedroom is pretty much like that,” he says, closing the car's cargo door.

We enter through the front door, which I'm a.s.suming is for my benefit. The front door is, of course, two doors that swing open into a marble floored foyer that is seriously bigger than my living room at home.

A ma.s.sive staircase is to the left, taking you up to the second floor balcony. Beyond that, I can just see where another staircase starts, going up to the third floor. It's all so s.h.i.+ny and beautiful that I'm scared to walk around out of fear that I'll dirty the place just by being in it.

Julie leads us up the stairs, which have carpeting so plush that it feels like I'm walking on a cloud, and then to the right and down a ma.s.sive hallway. There are six doors in the hallway, and the square footage of the hall alone is probably more than my entire apartment back at home.

”Let's show her the trophy room', Jace.” Julie makes air quotes around the last two words in a way that is clearly mocking him. She stops at the very last door on the right and motions for Jace to show me inside.

”Are you ready for this?” he says, lifting his eyebrows. ”It's pretty epic in here.”

I nod. ”I'm definitely ready.”

I'm picturing cla.s.s curios lining the walls, carrying various trophies, plaques and ribbons. Maybe a framed picture of Jace holding a trophy. I know he's been racing dirt bikes since he was a kid, so there's probably pictures of him from all ages on the walls.

The first thing I see when I step into the room is gold and silver s.h.i.+ny plastic dirt bikes. A sea of trophies of all colors, many of them taller than I am, line the walls and the floor. I can only take one step inside the former bedroom without cras.h.i.+ng into a wall of trophies that would undoubtedly crumple over like a pile of dominos. Every single s.p.a.ce in the room holds a trophy. Hundreds of them. I was right about the plaquesthe walls are filled with dozens of plaques shaped like a number plate, the number one in the center, and a bra.s.s tag at the bottom, telling which year he won the champions.h.i.+p.

”Holy c.r.a.p,” I mutter under my breath. ”I don't think this room is big enough.”

”That's what the attic is for,” Julie says. ”Trust me, you do not want to see the attic.”

”I can't believe you kept these,” Jace says, shaking his head. To me, he says, ”I quit caring about the trophies when I was twelve. I wouldn't even go pick them up after the race because I had so many but Mom insisted on getting them.”

”Of course I wanted them,” Julie says. ”My son won them and I was proud.” Her eyes light up a moment later. ”Oh my G.o.d. Jace! I just remembered the greatest thing. We have to show her your first!” We shuffle back into the hallway and Jace mutters, ”Oh G.o.d,” under his breath. I have no idea what she's talking about but I am excited to see it if it makes Jace this embarra.s.sed. Not many things embarra.s.s him, so this should be good.

Back down stairs, through fancy entryways and around a spiral staircase in the kitchen that goes up to some mysterious level, Julie stops in the dinette. I had noticed a ma.s.sive dining table in a formal dining room down the hall, but this room is just off the kitchen and has a round gla.s.s-top table with only four chairs. This must be where Julie and Gary eat their meals together when they're not entertaining.

The room overlooks the backyard which can been seen through floor to ceiling windows. There's a porch, tons of palm trees and tiki torches, a gra.s.s roofed hut that looks like a full bar, and then the most magnificent swimming pool I've ever seen.

There's a pool at my mom's house, but it's small and she rarely had the money to get the water cleaned so we could swim in it when I was a kid. Mostly it sat half-empty, with green water. Sometimes we'd get it ready for summerthose were always the best summers. Something tells me Jace has never had to worry about their swimming pool's water going green.

I glance up at Jace and he slides an arm around me, a simple gesture of love, something he does automatically whenever I am around.

”Let's get this over with,” he says. ”Where is it?”

Julie's smile stretches from ear to ear as she walks across the small room, to where a few shelves line the walls in a random pattern. There, in the middle shelf, sits a framed picture of a little boy. Next to it is a trophy that's not even as tall as the picture frame. I walk up to it, studying the picture of what I know is my fiance.

”This was Jace's very first race,” Julie explains. ”There were fifteen other kids in his cla.s.s and he was so nervous and so excited.”

The picture is slightly grainy from having been blown up larger than the standard size for photos back when we were kids. No doubt this photograph was taken with an actual roll of film in a camera and not digitally. A young Jace, no older than five, stands in front of a tree holding the same trophy that's on the shelf. He has bright blonde hair and pudgy cheeks that smile so big you can see his missing front tooth. I recognize his clothing as being motocross gear, but it looks nothing like the style of gear today. The colors are bold and tacky, the pants look like they're straight from the eighties. I squint my eyes and try to make out the surroundings in the grainy photograph. I can barely see an old score tower near a row of trees. Mountains fill up the distance and I know he's not in Texas.

”Fifth place,” I say, reading the bra.s.s on the tiny trophy.

”He was so proud to get that trophy,” Julie says. ”It was his prized possession. It's funny to think that just two years later, the boy would have died if he got fifth place. He was always winning or coming in second.”

”Yeah I can't imagine Jace getting fifth place now,” I say. ”He'd probably be mad for days.”

”That's because it'll never happen,” Jace says, throwing me a confident smile.

”Maybe not after you've raced a million times. Just getting a trophy out of fifteen other kids on your first ever race was pretty impressive,” Julie says. She seems ten years younger when she's bragging about her son. And Jace seems ten years younger with how shy he gets when she talks about him like this. It shows a vulnerability to the man I consider my rock, the man who always knows what to do and always has my back. I love seeing this side of him.

I take a step backward and lean my head back against Jace's chest. Julie's phone rings and she excuses herself to answer it.

”Let me show you my favorite place,” Jace says, sliding his hand down my back and guiding me back toward the big part of the kitchen.

”And where might that be?” I ask. He nods toward the metal staircase that spirals sharply up a pole and disappears into the ceiling above. ”Is this the place you bring all the girls?” I ask, trying to play it off like I don't care, but I do. I really do.

”Does my mom count?” he asks.

I shake my head and climb up the stairs quickly, more eager to see what awaits at the top now that I know it won't' be Jace's secret make out spot. The stairs lead to a tiny room that overlooks balcony on the second floor. We push open the sliding gla.s.s doors and step out onto a covered porch. There's a hammock to the right and a plush outdoor couch to the left. The view is amazing. It faces the back of the neighborhood, which unlike the front, it doesn't face another row of houses. All I can see for miles is the beauty of Sacramento.

Jace plops down into the hammock and steadies himself, resting his hands behind his head. I lean my hands on the balcony railing and look out at the world beyond, taking it all of the beauty the landscape has to offer.

”Mind if I join you?” I ask Jace a few moments later.