Page 49 of His Wilde Little
“You’re adorable,” I told him.
“How adorable?” he asked, tilting his head and blinking with those big eyes. “You gotta tell me how adorable you think I am.”
“On a scale of what?”
He looked around and his eyes settled on the animals in front of his plate. “Between like a baby chicken and a baby pig.”
“Well, that’s tough, piglets are adorable, but so are chicks,” I said. “I think I’d probably say somewhere in between, that’s where you fit in, all sweet and stuff.”
Jace giggled. “I’ll take it.”
“Are you happy with the present?”
“So happy, I’m kinda glad you didn’t let me come with you now. As much as I’m not a fan of surprises, this one was actually not bad.”
“And by not bad, you mean absolutely incredible, right?”
He nodded. “Exactly.”
I reached out and took his hand, pulling it to my mouth, I gave it a kiss. “Good, I don’t know what I’d do if you already had it or hated it.” He still had another huge surprise to come when the alpacas arrived, although his mother would take credit for those since she had wanted to get him something as well for all the work he’d done.
Slowly, sitting at the table, the playful life in Jace’s eyes vanished and he sighed. “I’ll probably have to head off soon, but I’ll be back tonight. You made other promises to me.”
“It’ll give me time to shower and put some fresh bedding on,” I told him. “But I expect you here before I got to bed, otherwise I don’t know what I’ll do. Maybe just cuddle up to that pillow you’ve been hogging.”
He continued to giggle. “I’ll try and come over sooner, tell my folks that I promised I’d make you bread, and that’s not a lie, plus, they’re usually in bed early anyway. The only people whowill question it are Olivia and Max, although Max is probably glued to his phone.”
I’d met Max only a handful of times, he didn’t do anything to help, but he was still in school, and we already had one of his siblings interfering with us, we didn’t need a second who could potentially blow the top off this secret relationship. Even if, maybe, I wanted it to be out there.
Jace left shortly after in his regular clothes, promising he’d be right back over. And while it was nice spending time with him all day, it was also nice to have this time alone. I’d always lived a pretty solitary existence. My parents had a huge family back in Mexico, but I’d never visited them, I was always put to work from the moment I had free time, and then, that hyper independence struck me, and I left home, worked my way through a couple smaller ranches, learned to wrangle animals and ride horses.
I sat out on the small porch, watching the sun go down and make the orange trees look even more magical.Vermont was no Texas, sometimes it felt like I was in an alien world surrounded by all the greenery. It was nice to have fresh air and cool breezes whip around me at all times, but part of me missed the scorched ground, cracking in places, and the small dust storms that would cake my boots. Now it was just dirt from the soggy earth.
There was a moment, while sitting outside where I thought about how the world was so big, yet so small. To have come from somewhere in the south where I’d only been able to see the hardened earth, to now, in the same country, seeing much more than that with the green space. It was a miracle almost that I was living at the same time as well of this, and to make it all the more better, I was also living at the same time of being able to meet Jace and there was nothing greaterthan finding someone who I meshed with on such a level that I couldn’t help thinking about him constantly.
It was almost completely dark out, except for the light above on the porch, the same one that would’ve been there in Texas for all the gnat and mosquitos. Jace was sneaking over, not that he had to sneak, I already knew his folks were in bed or preoccupied.
He carried. a large bag on his back and walked over, stomping through up worn dirt path. As he got closer, the light illuminated the biggest smile on his face, and it also revealed a blanket bundled up beneath his arms.
“I’m ready for the sleepover,” he said. “And a little fun.”
I stood, my knees cracking from being sat for a while. “Come on then, I wanna say we have all night, but we both know that isn’t true.”
Since we were both early risers, we had to get some of the fun stuff out of the way sooner so that we didn’t collapse on top of each other and fall asleep before the grant climax of it all. Not that Jace would allow sleep until either of us had finished.
“You’re practically moving in,” I said to him.
“Don’t’ forget, this place would’ve been mine.” I don’t think I’d forget that he’d told me it several times before this whole thing started with each other. Him telling me he wanted this place, and he deserved it, but in reality, I think he just wanted to live with me. That made the most sense given how much he liked to curl up beside me.
21. JACE
At Daddy Lorenzo’s side, he watched as I played with the toys, and he quizzed me on all the different animals that were there. They didn’t yet have names, but they were all my new friends. I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about my new toys ever since I unwrapped them. I’d found these at the hardware store in town, they hadn’t been sold for a while, so I still had time—until he surprised me with them.
“I knew you had it in you today,” he said.
“I didn’t.” It was the truth, after eating all that cake, throwing up, and then the whirlwind of anxieties surrounding riding the horse, I didn’t know if I would actually get through the day.
“You think you’ll be able to do it again tomorrow?”
