Page 25 of Entangled

“Sure.”

He watches as I plant my ass next to him before pulling a weed pen from the pocket of his shorts and taking a hit.

“You smoke?” he asks, holding the pen out to me.

“God, yes.” I take the pen and sigh happily. Damn Southern states are so stingy about the stuff I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to find any while I was here.

We sit there in companionable silence while we pass the pen back and forth, sipping our ranch waters and watching the waves crash in an infinite stream. I take one final puff of the pen before passing it back and lie back to look up at the stars, feeling more relaxed than I have since I got here.

Thank you, Mary Jane.

Jace pockets the pen and drops back onto his elbows, giving me an amused look. “Don’t even lie. You loved that shit with Sam.”

“I kinda did,” I admit with a grin.

He chuckles softly, firework eyes sparking as they dance over my face in appreciation. “You’re trouble, Blondie.”

“Funny. That’s exactly the word that comes to mind when I think about you.”

“You think about me, huh?” He flashes those dimples and brings a hand up, playing with the ends of my hair where it falls over my shoulder. “Knew it.”

The connection between us pulls taut as our eyes lock, causing my heart to beat a faster pace in my chest and my stomach to flip wildly. The thread of anticipation in the air is palpable and I know what’s about to come next. And some part of me wants it to happen, knows it would probably be mind blowing based on the chemistry flying between us… but a bigger part of me doesn’t want to spoil what’s actually turning out to be a pretty good night with a possible breakdown on my part. So I break our gaze and look back up at the stars before he can make his move, sighing in both disappointment and relief when I see him dip his head back to do the same.

I feel a twist in my gut as I look up at the unfamiliar constellations, knowing deep in my bones that I’ll never again be able to look up at the stars without being filled with some degree of pain. Not after last summer. Not after Coop.

Trying to fill the silence, I ask the first question that pops into my brain. “Do you believe in fate?”

“I believe…” Jace starts slowly, as if he’s ordering his thoughts. “That it’s more complicated than simply having a singular fate. Think of our collective existence like a lake, right? You throw one rock and it can cause a ripple that affects the whole thing. I think that our decisions are like rocks, each of them causes a ripple, and then someone else’s decision can affect our ripple. Everyone’s course affects the whole thing and is affected in turn. All of it building into a never-ending action and reaction of our life.” He drops down from his elbows to lie in the sand next to me and I turn my head, eyeing him doubtfully. “But I do think there’s some higher power looking down on the lake, occasionally dropping a rock of their own when the whim strikes to change the course for someone.”

“So the short answer would be…” I squint my eyes at him teasingly.

Turning his head to look at me, a soft laugh leaves him at my expression. “Yes and no, I guess. I believe that our fate is as much up to us as subject to the decisions of others. But that there is some overall brilliance to the ripples, a higher power dropping rocks here and there. Some things are just too coincidental for there not to be.” He pauses, playful eyes turning more serious. “Take you for example.”

“What about me?”

“Did you know… that our moms were friends?”

“What?” Shock runs through me at his words.

“I wasn’t sure how much you remembered from before…”

“Almost nothing.”

“Right, well, yeah.” He takes a breath and looks up. “So I can’t speak for your mom, but mine always said Nadia was her best friend. That it was like finding a long-lost sister when she moved here with your dad. I’m a couple years older so I probably remember more than you.”

I’m almost too scared to ask, to hear whatever memories he has. As if he’ll speak her into being and make the whole tragedy more real. But after a moment the quiet question is pulled from me, the need to know more about the woman who gave me life winning out.

“What do you remember?”

“I remember…” He smiles softly and pauses for a moment, eyes flicking across the sky as if lost in memory. “Our moms were always hanging out, sitting on the front porch, having a glass of some pink wine and talking for hours.”

“Rosé,” I whisper softly.

“Yeah. Rosé, I guess. Which meant I was forced to put up with you a lot of the time.” He turns his head back to me, raising his brows and giving me a look. “And you were a little terror, constantly bugging me to play with you and following me around, much to my horror at the time.” Reaching up, he tugs at my hair playfully. “I remember this one day, you walked in when I was playing with some army men and I told you that you couldn’t play with them because they were boy toys. You looked down your little nose at me, called me a misogynistic asshole and walked right out, leaving my seven-year-old self sputtering.” A quiet, melodic laugh leaves him. “Of course I ran straight to our moms, because while I didn’t know what misogynistic meant I knew you had said a bad word and I figured now was my moment to finally do away with you. They called you in there and you didn’t even deny it, just said that’s what your daddy called the boys who wouldn’t play with you. My mom just looked at me and told me if I didn’t want to be called a misogynistic asshole then I shouldn’t be one.”

A shocked laugh leaves me and Jace joins me with a chuckle of his own as I relish the story of an apparently happy childhood I never knew existed. The story leaves me with a sense of longing I’ve never experienced before and part of me is hungry for more.

“I’d love to meet her,” I say once the laughter fades. “Your mom. To hear more stories.”

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