4. Jace
four
Jace
I would’ve laughed due to the look on Sienna’s face when our eyes connected in the mirror, had this moment been funny. The deer caught in the headlights look works for her.
As if realizing her frozen state, she inhales sharply. Her shoulders relax as her eyes soften around the edges.
“What’re you doing here?” Her angelic voice warms my skin as her attention flickers back and forth between my face and the sketchbook on my lap.
Had I been over the stunt she and that asshole in the tacky green sweater pulled earlier, I would respond to her with something along the lines of “waiting for you, babe,” or “sitting here like an idiot because I bought a dance studio for you even though I haven’t seen you in 615 days.”
But I don’t…Instead, I say, “Is this not a dance studio?” My tone is clipped as my hard gaze locks yet again with hers, daring her.
The fire beneath her hazel eyes blaze alight, her jaw sets as they squint down at me.
I’ve never talked to Sienna like this. Cleo and Georgia, yes, but never her. She’s always been the angel of my dreams, the Alice that I yearned for in Wonderland. But I know that’s not the truth.
She’s been a stranger to me since the day she walked out of my life two years ago.
I watch as she ducks back into herself, placing the mask I’d always pulled away as a kid back on. Sienna had been smiling when she first entered the studio until she saw me .
I take my time analyzing her differences in the mirror. In almost two years since laying my eyes on her in person, Sienna has only made one change to herself.
Her hair, once a long wild mane of Cherry Cola curls, is now a slicked back bun of pink delight.
I tilt my head at the freshly dyed hair.
Pink isn’t even her favorite color, lavender is.
“Yes. It’s a studio, but you’re no Alvin Ailey. Why are you here, Jace?” She folds her arms over her chest, and my eyes immediately flicker to the way they push up in her shirt before flickering back to her face.
Sienna has the face of an angel, the face of someone you’d be grateful was the last person you’d see before the darkness of death takes over you. The cold, dead thing in my chest beats fast as she pops her hip out, giving me the stern look of an annoyed authority figure.
I smirk at her. I can see it in her eyes, the hidden amusement, the questions.
Trust me, angel. I have millions of questions for you, too.
“What does it look like, angel? You’re a teacher, I need teaching. So teach me.”
As if I had stunned her, Sienna’s eyes widen and she reels back before rolling them.
My smirk grows into a full blown smile as she scoffs at my rude tone. Some things never change with her.
As kids, whenever I’d gotten annoyed with either Cleo or Georgia—which was basically all the time since my closest friends were two annoying girls who wanted to practice their makeup on me all the time—Sienna would always stand up for them, or roll those honey-like eyes at me.
I’ve thought about this moment for years. The day that I’d see Sienna Jones again after she’d left me on a rooftop in Manhattan on her 18th birthday, dazed and confused with the feel of her plump, pink lips still lingering on mine.
I bet she’s still wearing the same lip gloss, too.
That expensive raspberry flavored one that almost every girl in the world wears because it’s ‘lip oil’ not gloss…or whatever the fuck that means .
I just know it felt good against mine.
That night that she’d left, I’d been trapped with the knowledge that there was a possibility I’d never see her again. She was living in New York and so was Cleo. Georgia, Ryan, and I stayed here in Maryland, and the Jones girls seemed like they were living their life in the Big Apple.
Cleo had met some guy, Marcelo, who I’ve played against a few times, and Sienna was doing spectacular at NYU.
The kiss was something you could only dream of. At the top of a skyscraper in the heart of the city, fireworks for the New Year went off and her lips met mine in a dance I hadn’t known was already engraved into my mind and soul.
It was slow and needy like a kiss before war. Your last chance at goodbye.
Until Georgia found us on the rooftop.
The blonde she-devil equivalent to Hades found us in the most secluded corner of the world, on our little island in the midst of the New Year celebration.
She’d yelled, “Happy New—” until she realized what she’d been seeing.
And that was how I found myself alone on a rooftop, crowded with people who knew and loved me. Sienna ran away from the scene faster than a burglar and ignored my every attempt to reach out to her since.
Hell, Georgia even tried to get her to talk to me once.
But now, two years later, in an old unused dance studio alone without any barriers between us, we watch each other like hostile strangers.
“Seriously, Eros. I have a student I’m meeting. My boss is on my ass about this kid…so please just do me this one favor and leave.” Her voice softens as does her brows as she takes her bottom lip between her teeth.
Her boss?
Does she not know that I’m the boss now?
“I’m the student,” I say, my voice deadpanned as I tilt my head at her.
I see it in her eyes, the annoyance. It bubbles over like hot water on a stove. Sienna huffs, her chest rising and falling rapidly as she turns on her heels, snatching up her bag to leave, but I’m already ahead of her .
This was not how this reuniting was supposed to go. She was supposed to walk in and see me sitting here, and we would’ve christened the goddamned room. Instead, my angel’s running away from me…again.
“Stop, Sienna.” My voice is stern as I bark my words at her, mentally hating myself for being so cold towards her, but it gets the job done as Sienna stops in her tracks.
She looks bewildered as she eyes me.
“I booked you,” I say with a shrug as her eyes widen.
“You…what?”
“For the next,” I look down at my watch, smirking, “116 days, you’re mine, angel.”
Her eye twitches as the truth of my words assault her brain. “You did what ?”
I sigh, blowing out an air of annoyance as I lean back on my hands.
“Cleared your schedule.”
Sienna’s brown skin reddens like a tomato as the twitching of her eyes increases.
“You self-centered, spoiled brat. How dare you come into my space and mess it up to suit your needs? I teach four-year-olds , for crying out loud! Do you know how hard it is for a kid to adjust to something like that? They probably think that I abandoned them because I’m not there to teach them right now since your cocky ass decided to come in here acting like you run things and taking up my time.
Time is precious, and you’re wasting mine right now!
” She curses, pacing around the room with her bag held angrily like a vice in her fist.
My eyes widen as I take in everything she’s said.
Maybe she was the hot dance teacher Derek and Blake said ripped them a new one after all.
I don’t think I’ve ever heard Sienna swear in our decade of knowing one another, but as her words sink in, I realize not only have I fucked this up—I probably ruined something great before it could’ve ever started.
She drops her bag beside mine. I watch as a slip of paper falls from it onto the floor, but she doesn’t notice it. Instead, she’s gearing up to rip me a new asshole .
“You know what you are, Jace Heart?” she asks, her voice calm as her eyes narrow on me.
No…I actually do not want to know—
“You’re an entitled rich boy who needs to be knocked down a notch. Find yourself a new dance teacher.”
Woah… What?!
I didn’t spend nearly three hundred thousand dollars on this studio for her to quit …Somehow my mind hasn’t connected with my mouth, because instead of being reasonable and explaining my peace to her, I say, “You’re rich, too!” like an idiot.
Sienna rolls her eyes, throwing her head up to the sky as if asking God for mercy as she snatches up her bag yet again and leaves the studio, slamming the door behind her.
Well…that went great.
With a deep sigh, I clean up the studio, grabbing the box she’d left in the room and the small white paper that fell out of her bag.
Though that wasn’t how I expected our first meeting to go, it could’ve been worse. She’s kinda cute when she’s mad anyways. Like an angry chipmunk.
My hand itches to read the note that’d fallen, and as soon as I’m safely in my SUV, I do.
“Sienna’s 21 before 21?”
My eyes skim over the list, growing wider and wider as they do until they land on one thing in particular.
Have a New Year's kiss.
If anyone in this world is kissing Sienna Jones on that day, it’ll be me. And I know just how I’ll make it happen.