Chapter 14 Jace
JACE
Jace found that watching Holly drive in the snow was unexpectedly fascinating, even hot. She really was good at it, steering the old farm truck deftly while hot air blasted from the vents and Christmas carols played on a car radio so old it still had a tape deck.
Of course, by now Jace could have watched her do absolutely anything for hours. Filling out the farm business ledger. Painting fence posts. It didn’t really matter, as long as Holly was doing it.
She had swapped the beat-up old tan coat she wore on the farm for a smart white puffy coat with a hood surrounded by snowy fluff, which made her look like the main character in one of those Hallmark Christmas movies that Jace definitely wasn’t the target audience for.
(If Holly wanted to watch one, he would make popcorn and curl up under a blanket with her.
In fact, that sounded wonderful.) She had a matching white knit hat pulled over her brown hair.
It made him realize that he was seeing City Holly for the first time. This must be what she had been like in her big city job. It made that image of her seem a little more real, somehow.
He kept one hand near her the entire time. His gloves were off, his hands still completely human. When she didn’t need both hands on the steering wheel in the slippery conditions, she laced her fingers through his.
The drive felt much shorter with Holly to talk to than it had on his first trip out to the farm. As Holly turned off the highway into downtown Pine Junction, Jace found himself marveling at how strange it felt to be back here just a few days later.
He hadn’t really been in a position to appreciate the way the town had turned out all their decorations for the holidays.
Jace had been focused on other things, like finding a job and a place to sleep.
He’d been seeing the seedier side of the town, the bus stations and the shelter and employment agency.
Now, when Holly turned into the downtown, he felt as if he was seeing it with entirely new eyes.
Lights sparkled along both sides of the street, gracing storefronts and wound around lampposts.
There were wire-frame reindeer spaced along one side of the street, lit up with sparkling strings of fairy lights, and the large concrete planters that probably held flowers in the summer were now hosting small artificial trees in a variety of colors: green, silver, pink, blue.
Head-in parking lined both sides of the street. Holly pulled in and parked, and they got out.
The heavier snow from earlier had settled into a light shower, drifting down on everything and gracing the scene with winter wonderland magic. You couldn’t create a scene like this for a movie, Jace thought. You’d have to use fake snow, and it wouldn’t have that perfect, drifting quality.
“There are box stores out on the highway if we can’t find what we need here,” Holly said, clasping her hands together.
“But I love shopping downtown at Christmastime. It just feels so satisfying, somehow. All the small businesses roll out the red carpet for the holidays.” She took Jace’s hand again.
He’d put his gloves back on when they left the truck, but her fingers settled in as if they belonged there, and his hand remained human-shaped as far as he could tell.
He was so captivated by the feeling that he almost missed her next words.
“Come on, let’s start at the candy store.
I don’t know if we’ll actually buy anything, but it smells so good, and they always have sipping chocolate around the holidays. ”
“You mean hot cocoa?”
“Oh no. Wait until you taste it. There’s nothing else quite like it.”
She led him past storefronts featuring festive displays of books, toys, gifts.
One store called Pine Junction Hobbies featured a model railroad in its display window, and Jace paused for a moment to look, overwhelmed with sudden memories of a toy store back in Georgia that used to have one of those.
He would gaze at it through the window and daydream.
Of course he never could have had it. Even if he’d somehow managed to get a gift other than the cheap toys and chocolate that all the group home kids got at Christmas, he had nowhere to set it up, and no way to carry it, when all his belongings had to fit in a single bag that he could take with him wherever he went.
Holly paused while he looked. “Do you like model trains?”
The urge to just say no was very strong. Fend off the question before it could cut open his chest and expose the softer places inside. No, they’re stupid. A kid thing.
But he couldn’t disappoint Holly’s soft green-gold eyes.
“Yeah, I used to want one when I was a kid.”
The words were shockingly hard to say. But then they were out, and there was no condemnation, no laughter, just a gentle sympathy as she squeezed his hand, perhaps understanding some of what he hadn’t said.
Snowflakes settled in the wisps of hair escaping from under her hat. He had never seen anything so beautiful as Holly in the snow.
“You know, there’s a train for the model village,” she said. “We never set it up anymore, because the toy village was really more Merry’s thing, and Noelle’s son isn’t old enough for the train yet. But I can see if I can find the boxes when we get home.”
It took him a moment to find the words to reply. “That .... that would be great.”
Holly squeezed his hand and led him onward. He stumbled behind her, aware of some part of him that wanted to claw his way out of his skin and escape this beautiful, idyllic downtown and the family Christmas beginning to close around him like the jaws of a trap.
It was everything he’d ever wanted.
It was too good to be true.
Things like this didn’t happen to guys like him.
He was going to have his heart ripped out of his chest when all of this inevitably fell apart, and he didn’t know if he could bear it.
And yet, his wolf was strangely content with all of this.
It was hard to put his finger on exactly what was different, just that he had a general sense of his primitive, instinctive shifter side simply being there, not controlling him or bursting out of him in unexpected ways, but moving with him.
Right now it wanted him to be here, to follow Holly, to simply be near her, wherever she went.
It abruptly occurred to him that her ex might be here in town somewhere, and he quickened his step, closing up with her as they went into the candy shop.
Inside, he was promptly lost in a sensory glory of rich chocolate smells, jewel-colored candy boxes, truffles in cases with their perfectly round tops dusted with salt, sprinkled with coconut, or lightly dotted with raspberries.
Jace wasn’t really a dessert guy, in general, but Holly was right, this place was a chocolate wonderland.
“Why, little Holly Porter, I can’t believe it!” exclaimed the plump older woman behind the counter, and Holly gave Jace a rueful grin. “How old are you now?”
“I’m thirty-one, Miss Simmons,” Holly said politely.
Miss Simmons leaned forward. “What’s this I hear about you kissing some fellow at the Christmas clothing swap in the community center? Is this the fellow here?” She winked. “Very nice.”
Holly turned bright pink. “Never mind that. Could we have two sipping chocolates, please?”
As Miss Simmons went into the back, Holly whispered, “Remember when I told you everyone in this town knows everything? See what I mean?”
“But they’re not wrong,” Jace whispered back.
Holly turned pinker. “Well ... no.”
“You’re lucky there’s no mistletoe in here.”
“Stop,” she whispered, poking him, as Miss Simmons returned with two tiny cups.
Jace eyed his uncertainly when Holly passed it to him. “That’s just one swallow, isn’t it?”
“Try it before you say that.” She closed her eyes, raised it to her lips, and took a small sip with an orgasmic expression.
Jace tried the same. Oh. It wasn’t hot cocoa, it was more like straight up melted chocolate. No wonder you didn’t need much. He could only imagine what an entire cup of this would be like. But in small sips, lingering on the tongue, decadently rich and not too sweet, it was amazing.
“I need to buy something for Carol,” Holly explained. “My sister who’s a nurse. We do a family gift swap every year, like a secret Santa except it’s not so secret. Each of us buys a present for one of the others. I’ve got Carol this year.”
She picked out a box of chocolates and watched as the storekeeper wrapped it up in colorful ribbons. “Carol adores the fruit truffles from this shop, and she says she misses them where she is now,” she explained to Jace.
“Where is she?”
“Washington, D.C. She works at the veteran’s hospital there.”
“That’s a long way.”
“Yeah, it really feels like it sometimes,” Holly said.
“Carol and I used to be especially close. We’re the two oldest, and the other girls were just ‘the little ones’ for the longest time.
Carol and I used to share a bedroom when we were younger and living in on-base housing.
We’d stay up late giggling and talking . ..”
She trailed off and shook her head, accepting the pretty shopping bag—black with pink letters—that the chocolatier handed her, containing her purchase.
“Aren’t you still close?” Jace asked quietly. He didn’t know what having real siblings might have been like. The closest he had come to it was the two other shifter kids he’d known at the group home, and he had long since lost touch with them.
“I don’t know. She’s different now.”
“Will she be coming home for Christmas?”
“Probably not,” Holly said. “She usually takes the holiday and weekend shifts, since she’s single, with no family living close. That’s Carol, always carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders.”