“You can, um…watch your football now,” I said, my voice barely above a whisper. My eyes were still locked on the slowly growing fire.
The game came to life on the flat screen as Jace pushed buttons on the remote, the soft hum of the commentators mixing with the gentle pop of the fire. This time, the pop didn’t startle me or make my skin crawl—progress.
A few minutes passed before the cushion dipped beside me. Jace inched closer, stretching his long legs out, the faint smell of cedar clinging to his flannel.
He ran his fingers through my hair, probably trying to ease my nerves.
“You’ve got a knot,” he said, fumbling with a section of my hair near the end of my red strands.
“Usually I braid my hair to keep it from getting knotted up,” I explained, pulling a hair tie off my wrist. “Or put it up in a bun.”
“I got it,” he said shifting closer to me, his calloused hands surprisingly gentle as he divided my hair into three sections.
“June Bug makes me braid hers all the time,” he said with a chuckle. “She made me watch YouTube tutorials until I got it right.”
I smiled, staring at the fire. “That sounds exactly like something she would do.”
“So I’ve had plenty of practice when it comes to braiding hair. You’re my first redhead though,” he teased.
“Better be the last, too,” I shot back playfully.
“The next red head of hair I braid will be June Bug’s cousin,” he said, nonchalantly as if that one sentence wasn’t enough to make me melt on the floor and evaporate into heaven.
“Better?” he asked, tying off the end of the braid with the elastic from my wrist.
I pulled the braid to one side, admiring his work. “Jace, this is so good,” I said, surprised at how well he’d twisted my hair.
“What? Did you think I was lying?” he asked, laughing. “You know those braids June Bug wears in her hair for all her recitals. Yeah, that’s me,” he said, beaming with pride.
“I always thought Ellie did her hair,” I said, shocked by his confession.
“She did in the beginning, but June Bug convinced Ellie to let me do it one day after my eyeballs almost fell out from watching hours of tutorials. Her hair came out really good and held in place for the whole recital, so from then on, I was the honorary hair braider,” he said, flipping my braid between his fingers.
“What other secret talents do you have?” I asked, my curiosity piqued.
“Well, you discovered one of them last night,” he said, inching closer with a cocky grin.
“Besides your talents between the sheets,” I said, giving him a sly smile.
“I’m pretty good at drawing, actually. Sometimes when I’m bored, I sit in front of the windows and draw something on my sketch pad. Sometimes I go to Crowley’s Ridge and draw what I see out there, like the stars,” he said, catching me off guard again.
He pointed to one of the tattoos on his forearm, pulling up his sleeve so I could see it better. It was a picture of mountain peaks, the horizon dipping behind them.
“I sketched this too,” he said, tracing it with his finger.
I held his arm in place so I could study I better. “What made you want to draw that?”
“It reminds me that the climb’s worth it. That some things take time.”
I traced the outline with my eyes, following the faint lines that marked each ridge.
“I got it after rehab. My sponsor said recovery’s not about racing to the top. It’s about taking one step at a time and not giving up when the path gets steep.” He paused, glancing toward the fire. “Guess that stuck with me.”
I swallowed, my chest tightening in that achy, tender way it did whenever he let me in. “It’s beautiful, Jace.”
He smiled a little. “It helps me remember I’m still climbing. Still choosing to.”
I could feel Jace turn his gaze towards me. “You’ve been climbing too, Cassie. You just don’t give yourself enough credit.”
