THIRTY-TWO
LUCY
FIVE MONTHS LATER
“You know, Williams, I’ve never been to a wedding,” Jace whispers, his warm breath tickling the side of my face, filling my senses with the scent of wintermint gum. “It’s not … what I expected.”
“Not enough metal for you?” I turn slightly to gaze into his blue-gray eyes, and my heart feels like it skips a beat. Or three. His effect on me is still like nothing I ever imagined and it’s breathtaking. He lifts one shoulder, and a slow grin inches across his features.
“Why the hell would I expect metal at a wedding?” he demands, and I draw in a breath when he playfully nudges my ear with the tip of his straight nose. “After, perhaps, but not during the actual—”
“Hush, Exley. They’re giving their speeches to one another.”
Placing one hand possessively on my thigh, he grins and sits back in his seat but says nothing as we watch the bride and groom speak just before they begin cutting the cake.
It knocks me off my axis when I realize that he’s been in my life nearly eight months now. I hadn’t planned to fall for him when I stepped foot into EXtreme in January—hadn’t wanted love because my awful experience with Tom had dug so deeply beneath my skin—but it’s what happened. It’s where we are now.
And no matter how crazy Jace drives me, how many times I want to slap him when he calls me Lucy-I-Know-Fucking-Everything-Williams, I wouldn’t change this.
I couldn’t.
After he forgave me for what had happened at Mr. B’s party, we had launched into a routine. Breakfast before we each went to our respective jobs. Dinner after work. And more often than not, I spend my nights with him, learning and taking and giving. He’s told me more than once that it’s the most orthodox arrangement he’s ever been in—even if I do creep off in the early hours each morning to go back home to Worcester before we start all over again.
“I thought you were unorthodox,” I’d teased him as we ate dinner on his living room floor just last week. He’d slid close to me, wandering his tattooed fingers over the straps of my sundress until a smile tugged at the corners of that mouth that never lost its power to steal the breath right from my lungs.
“In everything else,” he’d said. “But not with you, love. Now … finish eating. I’ve been working on something, and I’ve got plans to show it to you tonight.”
He had.
And the night after that too.
“Your mother looks happy,” he finally says in a low voice, dragging my thoughts back to the present. I glance right in front of us as my mom praises Neil, the man she’s been seeing for months. The “friend” who had quickly become so much more to her. Although I pretended to be surprised when she broke the news to me last month in July that they were getting married in a small, intimate ceremony, I had expected it to happen.
Nobody has made my mother smile like this since my dad was alive.
And now that she has something like that again, I don’t want it to go away.
I swallow back the lump in my throat and bob my head. “She is happy,” I whisper. When I glance up, I find Jace’s slate blue eyes darting around the reception hall that’s full of Mom and Neil’s closest friends, as if he’s searching for someone. I cock an eyebrow.
“Expected we’d see Armstrong at the ceremony or at least at the reception. She’s not been around for ages.”
“She couldn’t take off work,” I say, trying to keep my smile in place at the mention of Jamie having to miss out on today. Jace nods before he looks straight ahead.
“She’ll be at ours, though, right?”
I make a choked noise. Mom’s Bingo friend, Dean, shoots me a glare from the next table over, and I respond with an apologetic smile. Because my heart has become such a fierce drumbeat at his words, I keep my gaze on my mother’s beaming face as I murmur, “Are you asking?”
He spreads his fingertips over my thigh and the sensation of his touch moving the chiffon fabric of my dress around sends tingles down my spine. “Eventually.”
“You know, this is just like that time you got my hopes up during my interview—just to tell me you had to think about giving me the job.”
“I gave it to you, didn’t I?” When I twist my lips to the side, he turns to me and cups my face in his hand. “I want you to move in with me, Lucy.”
Oh, wow.
Before I can manage to get even a whisper out, he leans his forehead to mine and continues, “I love going to bed holding you close and waking up with you in the morning. I don’t like when you sneak out at four am. I love the way you tell me I’m doing it wrong when I don’t follow a recipe and the way you make me feel like I’m doing everything right everywhere else. I love you. I didn’t think that would ever happen for me, but now that it has, I want that.”
I follow the path his finger makes, to where Neil is serenading Mom in the middle of his speech. Twisting in my seat to return my hazel stare to Jace, I feel butterflies swooping through the pit of my stomach at the soft expression he’s sending my way.
Flicking my tongue over my lips, I drag in a sharp breath. “What happened to not liking attachments?” I tease at last.
“Some rules can be broken. And besides, we’ve got plenty of attachments. Stainless steel. Chrome. That little—”
“Jace,” I gasp lightly, stopping him before he has the chance to make my body ignite right in the middle of my mother’s wedding reception. “Yes, I’ll move in with you.”
To be honest, I’ve never wanted anything more in my life.
“Though I should warn you, I can be a bit of an arse at times and you might…”
Now it’s my turn to lift my finger to his mouth, and the edges of his blue eyes crinkle as he holds back his laughter. “I don’t care. I just want … you.”
“Then you have me, Lucy.”