Chapter 22
Anna
I expected a restaurant when Jace said he was taking us somewhere. Maybe a drive along the coast. Or one of those overpriced Miami brunch places where the mimosas came in glasses bigger than my head and the avocado toast cost more than a tank of gas.
What I got was a private plane.
"When you said somewhere," I said, standing on the tarmac at a small airfield south of the city, staring at the aircraft, "I was thinking maybe Key Biscayne. Maybe a nice seafood place. Not a private plane ride."
"Key Biscayne has paparazzi."
"And wherever this plane is going doesn’t?"
"Not a single one."
I narrowed my eyes at him. "That sounds deeply illegal."
"It’s not illegal to own a plane, Anna."
"It feels illegal."
"That’s because you still think billionaires should be supervised."
"They should."
The corner of his mouth twitched. "We are going to find her. Miles found out where she is," he said, his eyes finding mine.
I already knew what he was talking about.
Miles’s file had come back two days ago, spread across Jace’s desk while we read it together.
Everything Tobias’s lawyers had buried. The NDA that Diane’s sister signed under duress, and the address where Diane had been living after the accident.
Her grandmother’s hometown, a small island off the Gulf Coast.
Cedar Key. Population under a thousand. A town people disappeared into when they didn't want to be found.
We were going to find her. Give her justice. And make Tobias face every consequence his money had been shielding him from.
My phone vibrated as we crossed the tarmac. Miley.
Miley
So you’re on a honeymoon now? I’m manifesting pregnancy for you.
I laughed. Jace glanced at me, one brow arched. I typed back:
Anna
Wish that for yourself first.
Miley
I don’t have a boyfriend, babe. Unless Christopher Vale is available. That’s the only man I’m getting pregnant for.
Anna
I’ll let Christopher know you’re available when next I see him.
I put the phone away smiling. Jace was watching me.
"What?" I asked.
"Nothing." He turned toward the plane. "Seeing you smile like that… it fills my heart."
The back of my neck heated as we climbed the steps.
The inside of the plane smelled like leather and coffee. Cream upholstery, dark wood paneling, every surface catching light it had no business looking that good under. I buckled myself into one of the seats while Jace sat across from me.
By the time the wheels lifted off the ground, Miami had already started shrinking behind us. Glass towers and traffic and noise folding into each other until the whole city looked unreal.
I looked over at Jace. He was staring at me while solving a Rubik’s cube.
I blinked. "Is that stress management?"
"Yes. I don’t like flying."
I stared at him. "You own a plane and you don’t like flying?"
"Owning things and enjoying them are separate categories."
"Does the emergency puzzle help?"
"Not much." He looked at me over the cube. "But you being here does."
I smiled. "Are you a natural flirt or are you being honest?"
"I don’t believe I was flirting. Just stating facts."
I laughed before I could stop myself. "Yeah, you’re doing it on purpose."
The flight wasn’t long. Barely enough time for me to finish the coffee they brought out before land started appearing below us.
Then the island came into view and every thought in my head stopped.
I pressed my face to the window and forgot to breathe. The water below was a blue I'd never seen outside of photographs, clear and layered, turquoise near the shore fading to deep navy where the Gulf stretched toward the horizon.
White sand. Palm trees bending in the breeze, their fronds catching sunlight and scattering it across the shore.
Small wooden houses sat along the waterline, weathered silver by the salt air, surrounded by wild grass and sand dunes dotted with sea oats.
A single main street ran through the center of town: a bait shop, a general store, and what looked like a café with outdoor seating right on the water.
No high-rises. No traffic. Just ocean and wind and the sound of birds I couldn't name.
"Jace." I turned from the window. "Is this heaven?"
He was watching my face instead of the view, and whatever he saw there brought out that twitch at the corner of his mouth. His almost-smile. The one I'd been collecting without meaning to. "I thought you might like it. We have a three-day reservation."
I liked it. I liked it so much my eyes burned.
The house was on the water. White clapboard with a wraparound porch and ceiling fans that ticked lazily in the salt air. Two bedrooms, a kitchen, and a view of the Gulf that belonged on a postcard. He’d had it cleaned before we arrived.
The smell inside felt like disinfectant and ocean breeze, his world and this world overlapping, and I could see the effort it took for him to stand in a space he hadn’t controlled since birth and not reach for the sanitizer in his pocket.
He reached for it anyway. Wiped down the kitchen counter. Then the bathroom handles. Then the light switches. I watched him move through the house in his systematic way, claiming the space inch by inch. He was making the house safe so he could be present in it with me.
We settled in. The Gulf air came through the open windows, warm and heavy, and for the first time in weeks the knot in my chest loosened.
Jace was uncomfortable. The sand got everywhere.
Into his shoes, between his fingers, across the porch floor in a fine grit that he swept three times before giving up.
The humidity made his hair curl in ways he clearly disapproved of, his hand going to the back of his head every few minutes like he could discipline it by touch.
A palmetto bug the size of my fist appeared on the kitchen wall and he was on the porch for a full ten minutes, standing at the railing with his arms crossed, looking at the ocean with the expression of a man who had just been personally betrayed by nature.
I didn’t laugh. Because I loved him. But God, I wanted to.
We walked to the beachside café that evening. Open-air, plastic chairs, paper menus. The fried grouper came in a basket, the iced tea was so sugary it was practically dessert, and nobody bothered with reservations because there was never a wait.
A woman worked behind the counter. Late twenties, thin, with circles under her eyes that had settled in long before tonight. She moved between tables carrying plates, quick and practiced, her ponytail swinging.
I knew who she was before she even glanced our way. Sara. Diane's sister. She looked older than the photos, harder. At the end of the counter, a little boy sat with a box of crayons and a coloring book. Five, maybe six.
Jace leaned toward me. "That’s her. Sara."
"I know." My voice was barely there. "I recognized her."
We sat at a table. Sara came over with menus.
"What can I get y’all?"
I opened my mouth. Nothing came out. Jace ordered for both of us. Fried grouper, sweet iced tea, hush puppies. Sara wrote it down without looking up.
Then she suddenly noticed. Her eyes went from Jace to me and back to Jace. Something shifted in her face.
"I know who you are," she said quietly, setting her notepad down. "You’re the man whose lawyers called our lawyer last week."
Jace nodded. "We’re here to see Diane. If she’s willing."
Sara looked at us for a long moment.
"She’s in the back," she said. "She doesn’t come out front much. The chair doesn’t fit between the tables well." She paused. "Give me a minute."
She disappeared through a door behind the counter. The little boy looked up from his crayons and waved at us with a blue crayon still in his fist. I waved back and smiled.
Sara came back pushing a wheelchair. The woman in it was Diane. She looked smaller than I expected. Mid-thirties, dark hair pulled back, her face tanned and lined by sun and pain in equal measure. Her legs were covered by a light blanket.
"Mommy!" The little boy leaped.
"Marcus, what did I tell you about running?" she told her son.
Marcus climbed into her lap. She held him and kissed the top of his head and looked at me over his hair.
"So you're Anna," she said, her voice warm and unhurried, with a soft Southern pull on the vowels.
"I’m Anna."
She smiled. "Sit. I heard you wanted to talk about Tobias."
Sara brought more tea. I drank while Jace politely refused.
Jace moved to the next table to give Diane and me some space.
Marcus followed, showing him a drawing of a fish he'd been coloring.
Orange and blue with an enormous tail. Jace held it up at arm's length and studied it.
His head tilted. His brow furrowed. He rotated it a few degrees. He was taking this fish very seriously.
"The proportions are excellent," I heard him say. "The tail is slightly oversized relative to the body, but artistically I think it works. It creates a sense of movement."
Marcus beamed, grabbed the drawing back, and ran to Sara to start another one.
Diane watched them, then she looked at me. "He's always like that?"
"Yes. Always."
She laughed softly, watching her son. Then the laughter faded, and so did everything behind it.
She told me about the accident. The ambulance. Waking up in a hospital room with a lawyer already standing at the foot of the bed, papers laid out on the blanket, a pen pressed into her hand before the anesthesia had fully worn off.
"I didn’t know what I was signing," she said.
"They told me it was standard. Medical release forms. I was on morphine and my leg was in three pieces and the man in the suit kept saying sign here, sign here.
" She looked down at her hands. "I found out what I’d actually signed a month later when I tried to take it to court. "
Sara pulled up a chair. Her face was harder than Diane's, her jaw set tight.
"I'm the one who fought it." Her voice was clipped, angry. "Diane was still in surgery. I hired a lawyer with money we didn't have. Filed complaints. Made calls." She didn't blink. "Tobias's people buried everything. They had more lawyers than we had savings."
She looked at Marcus, who was showing Jace a second fish, this one with a purple tail. "They called me at two in the morning. Every night for three weeks. Blocked numbers. Never said anything threatening. Just called. Let the phone ring. Hung up. Called again."
"Sara," Diane said gently.
"Three weeks." Sara’s voice thinned with the memory. "I stopped sleeping. Started having panic attacks. Lost my job. Couldn’t take care of Marcus anymore."
"We came here," Diane said. "Grandma’s house. It was falling apart but it was ours. Sara got the café running. I handle the books. Marcus thinks this is just where we live." She looked at the boy. "He doesn’t know why."
I sat across from her and the guilt I’d been carrying since Charlotte rose up from the place where I kept it and I couldn’t push it back down.
"I knew," I said. "I found the file and overheard him talking.
" My hands were shaking. "I tried to go to the police. And Tobias destroyed me for it. He ruined my career. I was afraid if I stayed he might even harm my family. So, I ran instead of fighting for you and I’ve been carrying that every day since. "
Diane reached across the table and took my hand. Her grip was warm and firm, her fingers rough from years of gripping wheelchair rims, holding a little boy, and rebuilding a life one day at a time.
"You don’t need to apologize to me," she said. "Running was survival. Not cowardice. I ran too. Everyone runs from men like Tobias. The brave part isn’t standing and getting crushed. The brave part is what comes after. Rebuilding, getting up."
She squeezed my hand. I squeezed back. Sara was quiet beside us, her eyes wet, her jaw still set.
"That man is really getting us justice?" Diane said. "You’re certain?"
I glanced at the next table. Jace was sitting awkwardly as Marcus migrated back to him with the crayon box. The boy was showing him another drawing. Jace was holding it up, studying it, brow furrowed.
As though feeling my gaze, his eyes found mine across the café.
"Yeah," I said to Diane. "He’s a man of his word. You’ll get justice."
"Hold onto that," she said. "Good people like him are rare. I hope you’re always happy together."
"Yeah, I hope we always will be."
Later, we walked back to the house barefoot, the sand still warm from the day and the Gulf stretching silver and endless to our left. Jace told me about the trust somewhere between the café and the front porch, his voice steady, his eyes on the water.
A fund for Diane. Medical expenses covered, including the surgeries the insurance wouldn't pay for. Marcus's education, elementary through college. The café properly funded so Sara could hire help and stop working fourteen-hour days. A house that didn't leak when it rained.
He listed it all the way he'd list a quarterly projection. Clinical. Routine. As if rebuilding two women's lives was just another line in a budget.
"Why?" I asked.
He stopped walking and turned to me. His gray eyes were lighter out here in the Gulf light, almost silver, and for a moment he just looked at me.
"Because someone should have done this a long time ago and nobody did." His voice dropped. "And yes. It's also about you. I want you to let go of your guilt. Everything is about you now."
He scratched the back of his neck. "I don’t know how to explain it without sounding obsessive."
I took his hand. His fingers laced through mine, and we stood on the white sand with the blue water behind us.
"It's not obsessive," I said softly. "You care. Intensely and truly. I've seen it in everything you do, even the things you think no one notices."
My throat tightened. I looked at him and felt my vision go soft at the edges, but I held his gaze anyway.
"You make me happy." My voice cracked on the last word and I let it. "Thank you, Jace. For taking care of everyone."
He looked at me for a long moment, a small smile settling on his lips.
"Good," he said quietly. "That’s all I needed to hear."
The wind moved gently through the palms, and for a moment, neither of us spoke—like the world had finally gone still just for us.
He leaned in slowly, giving me every chance to pull away.
I didn’t.
The kiss was soft—barely there at first—like a question neither of us needed to answer out loud.
When he pulled back, he didn’t let go of my hand.