by Hazel Parker
“What are you thinking about?” he asked suddenly, almost dreadingly.
“You,” Jessica replied without thinking, and he gave her a quizzical look that made her blush. “I mean, I’m thinking about how it seems like you spend a lot of time alone.” Jace shrugged.
“I like being alone. People tend to exhaust me.”
Jessica hesitated. “Am I exhausting?”
“You’re the most exhausting person I’ve ever met,” he replied, but not in the irritable tone she’d anticipated. He was laughing about it a little, almost sounding fond. More than likely, he was finished with this conversation, but she wasn’t done yet.
“Who are your close friends?” she asked. “I haven’t met any, really.” Jace frowned.
“You met Kirk,” he replied, “and Missy.”
“Those are co-workers, yes. But are you friends with them? I mean, do you hang out with them? Tell them things about your life?”
Jace shook his head. He was still walking straight ahead, not bothering to look back at Jessica and not even a little out of breath at the exertion that had her sweating. “I don’t tell anyone things about my life,” he said.
“What about Nora?”
“What about Nora?”
She was practically jogging to keep up with him. “Do you talk to her about things like that?”
“I tell Nora what she has to know to do her job, but no, I don’t just talk to her about my hopes and dreams and motivations.”
“Why not?”
He whipped around to face her. “Because I only tell those things to people who meddle,” he said, “like you.” She couldn’t help but crack a grin.
“You can’t be telling me that I know you better than anyone else.”
“Ugh, don’t phrase it like that,” he groaned. “You’re just the nosiest person I’ve ever met. Plus, you’ve stuck around longer than most people do because of the contract.” He said it casually, so casually that he started walking again as if it were nothing, but something about the statement didn’t sit right.
“What do you mean by that?”
“Remember that first lunch we had together when you were trying to ask me questions, and I got annoyed and shut you down?” Jessica nodded with a grimace. How could she forget? “Well, if you hadn’t already signed, would you have tried to talk to me again after that?”
Jessica’s eyebrows furrowed. “I guess I wouldn’t have,” she admitted.
“And that’s the point,” he said. “I treat people like that all the time so they don’t stick around. It keeps them from bothering me.”
“Doesn’t it also prevent them from getting to know you and being, I don’t know, friends?”
Jace rolled his eyes. “I don’t need that,” he said. “I’m perfectly happy just to do my job and spend the rest of my time alone. I love acting, so it keeps me fulfilled.”
“Yikes,” Jessica panted, still trying to keep up with his borderline-wild-man pace, “sounds like someone hurt you bad.”
“Can we be done with talking about it?” Jace asked, sounding both desperate and irritated. If it weren’t for the slightly wounded tone in his voice that told Jessica she was right about her assertion, she might have pushed it further, but as it was, she decided to let it lie.
“For now,” she agreed. “If only because I know you can outrun me and I don’t want to be lost on this mountain.”
Jace laughed. “I wouldn’t leave you stranded on a mountain just because you’re annoying,” he clarified. “I’d send someone after you.”
“My hero.”
“Anyway, you could find your way to the top from here, anyway,” Jace asserted, and for the first time, Jessica pulled her eyes away from her feet, where she had been watching, afraid of tripping over a rock or a tree root and looked up in front of them. They’d either been walking for quite a while, or the trail was shorter than Jessica thought, but she could see the top of the hill. The sun rays peeked through the trees in long, golden lines nearer to the top, and she could feel that it was a little cooler up here than it had been down on the ground. Now, she didn’t have to follow him to know where they were going and curiosity overtook her as she pushed ahead to the top. The final part of the hill was much steeper than the rest of the path had been. Jessica found herself having to navigate her way up rocks and turned around in surprise when she felt a hand on the small of her back to see Jace hovering right beside her, waiting to help her if she slipped. She allowed him to support her as she tested each foothold and finally pulled herself up and over the final part of the precipice and onto the plateau of the hill.
“Oh, wow,” Jessica breathed, feeling breathless now from the vastness of the view rather than the vigorous exercise. The flat area was relatively small, but she couldn’t keep herself from taking a step forward to look over the edge. Jace reached forward and gripped her waist tightly.
“Be careful,” he warned gently. “A fall from here will kill you.” It didn’t even seem like they’d climbed this high, but apparently the relative flatness of the trail had been deceptive.
“It feels like we’re in the clouds,” she marveled, not letting Jace loosen his hold on her for the fear of falling. “It’s kind of dizzying.”
Jace rolled his eyes. “Then step back from the ledge, dummy,” he scolded lightly, tugging her back by the wrist and leading her to a small marble bench, brushing off dirt and leaves so they could both sit down. “I picked this place all on my own.”
“You did?” Jessica asked, hesitant to believe he’d put that much thought into their hike. She was beginning to wonder what parts of this day he hadn’t meticulously planned. “You must really want me to stay, huh?”
“This part was planned long before you called last night,” he clarified. “This is one of my favorite spots on the whole island. I’ve been here a few times on different episodes of Code Blue. Every time, I come up here to this lookout. There’s nowhere else like it, not that I’ve found.”
Jessica felt warm inside. “Have you brought other people here before?”
He shook his head—of course he hadn’t; what was she thinking? Probably, she was ruining his ritual hike up here just by being here, she thought. However, he had said that he’d already planned on bringing her here.
“As soon as you told me you’d never been to Hawaii, I made Nora set aside a few hours for us to do it. I figured that if we immediately began filming and you didn’t get much of a vacation here, then at least you had to see this place. It’s like all the best parts of the whole island combined.”
That made her almost want to cry. Because Jace was a private person, he probably didn’t enjoy the tourist traps and the packed beaches and the crowded trails. He’d isolated again, found himself an unmarked trail that he could have all to himself where he could still see and enjoy the beaches and the mountains without having to endure the masses. For Jace, this was truly the best experience he could possibly imagine, and his first thought had been to share it with Jessica. A man whose first thoughts were almost exclusively about himself, who demanded to have his privacy protected and pushed anyone away when they got too close to him: he was now inviting her into his space and sharing it with her. Even if she might have preferred a day sunning on the beach, this was possibly the first piece of Jace’s heart that he’d given to anyone in his entire life, and it was hers. And it was beautiful.
She took a deep breath. “I’m going to stay with the contract,” she finally decided. He stiffened against her in surprise, prying his eyes away from the view over the hill to look at her.
“Really?” he asked, and she nodded. “What changed your mind?”
She smiled. “You did,” she replied. “I want to stick around and stay with you. It’s only another month, right?” Jace chuckled under his breath, probably equal parts confused and relieved.
“Right,” he agreed, “it’s just another month.” With nowhere to be and nothing but time to kill until dinner, Jessica allowed herself to settle
against Jace’s body, his arm instinctively stretching over her shoulders and pulling her in close so that her head could rest against his shoulder. After sitting in silence, appreciating the sounds of the ocean and birds and the breeze through the trees, they decided to head back down the hill to get an early start on dinner. After all, she wanted to be well rested when she met the movie producer tomorrow.
Chapter Ten: Jace
Jace wasn’t a stranger to sleeping with women, you know, intimately. However, to share a bed with Jessica in their hotel room had been uncomfortable. She hadn’t seemed too upset by it, or if she was, she at least hadn’t complained, but there was a tenseness that he could feel as soon as she stepped out of the bathroom in her pajamas. The room was warm, which meant that she’d decided against the sweatpants and hoodie that she’d worn to the airport (which she’d told him had been her pajamas the night before) and opted instead for a silk nightie, a thin fabric that didn’t cover her shoulders or much of her thighs. It hugged her curves in a way he hadn’t been anticipating it would, and he knew that she’d caught his gaze lingering on her when she’d stepped out of the bathroom wearing it. Jace himself usually didn’t wear more than just a pair of boxers to bed, and if Jessica wasn’t going to make any extra effort to cover herself, then he told himself that he shouldn’t, either, so as she sat in the bed reading a book on her tablet, he undressed in front of her, secretly hoping that she might object to his near-nakedness.
Unfortunately, it didn’t even appear to phase her. She glanced up when he lay over the top of the covers, but she didn’t move away from the near-center of the bed as he climbed in and fortified a pillow barrier between them. She looked at it quizzically and amusedly.
“Are you really building a wall between us?” she asked disbelievingly, trying to fight back a smile. Suddenly, it felt a bit silly, almost childish. He shook his head, lying.
“I like to sleep with a pillow by my legs,” he fabricated. She didn’t believe him, and he could tell, but he wasn’t about to come clean, so she dropped it. Why was he suddenly so shy? He’d had women in his bed before, and he’d spent more time with Jessica than he ever had with any of them. If anything, he should be more comfortable sharing a bed platonically with her, but he found himself worrying about kicking her in his sleep or mumbling something embarrassing while he slept.
“Do you want the side nearer to the window?” he offered before he got too comfortable, but she shook her head.
“I’m fine here,” she said. She was still studying her tablet, wearing a pair of reading glasses that he’d never seen her wear before.
“I didn’t know you wore glasses,” he observed, and she self-consciously pushed them back up the bridge of her nose.
“I usually don’t,” she blushed. “I’ve been wearing contact lenses for years, but I like to read in bed before I fall asleep, so I have to take them out first.”
He nodded. “They look good on you,” he complimented before realizing that he was staring at her while lying in bed next to her and staring at her, shirtless, and should probably tone it down. She smiled, though.
“You think so?” she verified incredulously. “I always hated them. I thought they made me look nerdy.” The glasses were big for her face and bright blue, a little gaudy maybe for most girls, but which added to her quirky, cute vibe.
“I like them,” he said again, flopping onto his back to stare at the ceiling.
“Well, thank you.”
The pull of exhaustion was strong, tugging his eyelids shut as he lay on his back. Jessica reached to the armchair that sat near the bed and took off the extra blanket that had been set on it, tossing it in a ball onto Jace’s body.
“If you’re going to sleep on top of the comforter like a weirdo, now at least you won’t freeze to death,” she explained. He didn’t say anything, but he knew that it was probably going to get cooler over the course of the night, so he untangled the fabric and threw it over his torso and closed his eyes. After probably ten minutes of lying there unable to fall asleep, whether from the heat or excitement or something else, Jessica turned off the lamp on the bedside table and lay down. “Goodnight, Jace,” she whispered, likely thinking that he was already asleep, then turned on her side.
“Goodnight, Jess,” he replied sleepily, not bothering to wait for her reaction before falling asleep.
He hadn’t remembered ordering a wakeup call, especially not one so loud and demanding, but at eight the next morning, Jace woke up to someone pounding on the hotel room door. He dragged himself out of bed to go check to see who it was, peeking through the peephole and sighing when he saw her.
“Nora,” he greeted, opening the door without being awake enough to remember that he was still in his underwear and Jessica was wearing a silk nightie. Nora, ever unflappable, merely raised an eyebrow.
“I thought that this contract didn’t include any physical contact,” she shamelessly judged, turning Jessica’s cheeks maroon.
“We didn’t—”
“Knock it off, Nora,” Jace shut her down, knowing full well that she’d mostly said it to embarrass him. “What’s up? I didn’t know you were coming here.”
Nora sighed long-sufferingly. “You didn’t?” she asked, sounding unsurprised. “Because I emailed you about it. The producers want me to sign a few things, so I told them that I’d come with you. I just got in.”
“How was your flight?” Jessica tried asking politely, cowering beneath the blanket so she didn’t have to show off her skimpy pajamas. Nora, unfortunately, didn’t do small talk.
“Long,” she said coldly. “Get dressed, both of you. You’re supposed to be at the studio in half an hour, and it’s fifteen minutes away. I’ll be waiting in the lobby.” With that, she slipped back out the door, and Jace shut it behind her, turning to rummage through the dresser which he’d filled with his clothes.
“Is she always… like that?”
Jace chuckled. “You mean abrupt and borderline rude? Yeah,” he said, “she is. It’s why we’ve gotten along for so many years. She doesn’t talk to me unless she’s got something important to say, and I don’t bother her unless I want something.”
Jessica nodded, taking the comforter with her off the bed to walk to the closet and look for what she wanted to wear. Luckily, she’d packed her bag before she had decided that she was leaving, so she had a few outfits formal enough to wear to meet her new bosses. She picked a blue and purple jumpsuit, modern and light, with a short-sleeved cardigan and a pair of sandals, while Jace went with his usual khakis and a button-up.
He hadn’t slept well, and it showed in the way his body felt heavy and stiff. Jace knew it wasn’t just the mattress of the resort; places like this tended to have very nice beds, anyway, and the ache was deeper than that. This felt more like he’d barely slept at all, likely from the fact that he’d kept waking up every time Jessica’s arm brushed against him in her sleep or because he’d been chilled without being able to get all the way under the covers for fear of being pressed right up against her barely-clothed, sleeping form. He knew it was stupid and that it didn’t make sense. Not only had he slept with a lot of women before and shared a bed afterward, he’d had non-sexual occasions, too, in various episodes of shows and in movies. It wasn’t just the sheer fact that he had to share a bed with a woman that he knew well—it was that it was Jessica. And even then, it wasn’t because he didn’t want to, but because he did. More than anything, Jace had wanted to crawl under the covers and lie next to her, to spoon her small frame for warmth in the cool night air, to wake up next to her this morning.
If Nora hadn’t woken them both up early this morning, he’d have been the first one to get up, he’d told himself. He’d planned to beat her to the shower and to remain there until she finished stretching in bed because he wasn’t sure he had the self-control not to stare at her chest as she did so or to avoid watching her get up out of bed in her too-short night dress and bend down to get her clothes for the day out of their drawer
s.
