She grinned up at him. Jace’s heart clanged in the confines of his chest.
She threaded her fingers through his. “Let’s go inside,” she whispered like a secret.
Confusion pulled a frown to Jace’s forehead. “You mean . . . inside, inside?”
She only grinned wider. “Come on, Jace. Dream with me. Follow me.”
She was giggling as she moved around the house to one of the smaller side windows, glancing back at him as she pushed it up.
He choked out a laugh. “Did you know that was unlocked this whole time?”
“Yep,” she said. “I’ve gone in before. This time, I want you to come with me.”
He roughed a hand through his hair and looked around the property. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”
Faith slipped through the window, her hand outstretched through the frame. “Follow me, Jace. Let’s dance with the ghosts. Introduce ourselves. Let them know we’ll be stayin’.”
He couldn’t help but smile. “You’re insane, Faith Linbrock.”
“Insane for you.” She edged back, her gaze sweeping the room where she stood. “This is our place, Jace. Our castle. Let’s claim it.”
How was he gonna resist that? He didn’t want to.
He slipped through the window and into the shadowy, hazy light, watching the way the tender smile ridged her lips.
She backed farther into the darkened silhouettes that danced and played on the walls.
“Can you imagine what it will be like? Living here? People coming in and out the way they used to do? Can you imagine all the people who’ve been inside these walls before us? All their experiences? Their loves and their losses?”
“Would you really want to know all those things?” he asked, following her through the rooms on the first floor, watching her wistful expression as she explored.
She looked back at him. “You can’t know the full goodness of someone without being able to see the bad. Otherwise that vision is distorted. Then we’d never understand what they might have endured. Their hardships and their blessings.”
He stepped forward and ran his fingers through her hair. “You have an astonishing soul, Faith.”
The most beautiful soul.
He was terrified he was going to tarnish it.
The things he’d been forced into the last few weeks made him sick.
Physically ill.
But Steven had warned him that, if he didn’t do as he was told, he’d make what he’d done to Ian look like a walk in the park.
And Joseph would be next.
What else was he supposed to do?
God, Jace had never wanted to be different more than he did right then. Had never wished he’d come from a different world than the one he had more than when he was standing in front of Faith.
She suddenly pulled away, giggling as she raced for the main big room, looking over her shoulder as she went. “I dare you to come find me, Beast.”
Jace froze right there, wrapped in the sound of her laughter ricocheting from the walls as she disappeared at the end of the hall, his heart thundering harder with the echo of her footsteps as she moved upstairs.
Or maybe it was just the howl of the ghosts.
And right then, he couldn’t remember his ghosts. Who he was and what was holding him back. None of the reasons he could never be good enough for this girl.
The only thing he could process was that she was his and he was hers.
He believed.
Believed in the way he loved her. In the things he would sacrifice for her happiness and her joy. The way he would always take care of her.
Right then, that was the only thing that mattered.
That and the fact she was somewhere upstairs waiting for him.
His stomach tight and his pulse a thunder in the darkness, he edged up the sweeping staircase he’d only ever seen through the window.
Inside, it appeared even more massive than the mere picture he’d gotten, the entire place worn from disuse and age, and still screaming with all the possibilities Faith had in it.
He got to the landing and looked down two long halls. Instantly, he went left, drawn that direction as if he could feel her life force bleeding through the walls.
Her energy alive.
That feeling he had been terrified to feel taking over every part of him.
His heart and his mind and his body.
He stopped at the first door on the left. It was open a crack, and he nudged it farther, the old hinges creaking as it slowly swept open.
That feeling radiated back.
Real and alive.
Intoxicating.
He stepped inside.
Faith’s back was to him, and she stood looking out the window. She peeked back at him. “I was gonna hide, but I got distracted.”
He inched up behind her. Her fingertips traced the window. “Look at that. I bet this is the best view in the house. I call this as our room.”
The only thing visible from the window was the garden of roses, the expanse of them seeming to go on forever before they disappeared in the distance toward the trailer where he lived.