Autumn Adventure (Summer Unplugged #6) (3 page)

After four days of shopping on Beverly Hills Boulevard, looking for celebrities (of which we found none) and taking pictures of the Hollywood sign, I kind of just want something that reminds me of home. Luckily, Jace agrees and we hit up the first McDonald’s we find on the way back to the airport.

I haven’t told him about what I looked up on the tablet last night. As far as he knows, neither one of us have been checking social media at all. After all, this is our honeymoon. We almost didn’t bring the tablet at all, but then Jace got worried that he might have some work emails or something urgent come up, so we brought it just in case.

Not only had I stayed up later than Jace to snoop online, I’d also woken up about an hour earlier than he did. I used this time to stare at the gorgeous silk canopy above our heads and practice the art of telling myself to be cool. Okay, maybe it wasn’t as lame as that sounds, but I just focused on good thoughts and tried to push out all of the bad things I’d read online, things like being called a skank and ugly. I think it helped a little.

And now as I walk into McDonald’s with Jace by my side, I glance over at him for the millionth time today and smile. He is all mine. He doesn’t think I’m a skank or ugly. He thinks the world of me. Yeah, maybe he’s messed up in the head for thinking that and maybe I totally don’t deserve him, but guess what, bitches online? I got him!

“What’s that look for?” Jace asks, nudging me in the ribs with his elbow. “Are you that obsessed with McDonald’s?

“What are you talking about?” I ask.

He shakes his head and stares at me, contemplating something. “I don’t know…for a second there you looked like…well like you were going to kick some ass. And it was when you were looking at the menu, so...yeah, you’re weird.”

I laugh. “I wasn’t looking at the menu like that, I was just thinking those things to my head.”

“And what thoughts are in your head?” he asks, bumping into me in this purposefully annoying way that he does while we stand in line behind an older woman.

I shrug. “You know. Thoughts.”

“Aww, come on! I wanna know.” With record speed, he juts out his bottom lip as if he was a gold medalist in the game of puppy faces.

I roll my eyes and step forward in line. It’s our turn to order, which makes this even more fun because now he can suffer while he waits to find out what I was thinking. I order a coffee, two hash browns, a set of hotcakes and then a third hash brown for good measure. What can I say? I’m eating for two now and I won’t let the opportunity to eat pass me by.

Jace orders the biggest breakfast meal they have and he doesn’t say a word about my embarrassingly huge food order and it makes me love him even more. When we sit down to eat, I shove half a hash brown in my mouth and roll my eyes back at how good it is. “Gourmet five-star restaurant food is good and all, but nothing beats this kind of comfort food.”

“Truth,” Jace says with a nod. “Although your lazy nachos are pretty good, too.”

Lazy nachos are what I call one of my most embarrassing snack food concoctions. It’s where I fill a plate with tortilla chips, then dump a bunch of shredded cheese on top and nuke it all in the microwave for thirty seconds. It’s about as lazy and pathetic as you can get, but as a teenager with a hungry stomach and zero cooking skills, it’s a lifesaver.

I was so embarrassed the first time Jace came over and caught me making some. I almost left them in the microwave until he left, but of course, he smelled them and opened the microwave himself. Then, not only did he
not
make fun of me, he gave me a tip: if you use a glass plate instead of a paper plate, then the cheese won’t stick to the paper and you get to eat more of it.

Yep. He’s a keeper.

“Sorry I’m eating such an embarrassingly huge amount of food,” I say sheepishly, as I start in on my second hash brown and open the syrup for my hotcakes. “I don’t know why, but I’m freaking starving. Hopefully no one you know will see us.”

Jace cocks his head to the side, staring at me while he finishes chewing the food in his mouth. “That is not a lot of food,” he says, motioning toward my side of the booth. “Plus you’re eating for two. So, eat up. I want my son big and strong.” He winks at me as he takes another bite but his reassurances mean nothing.

“I hope I don’t get really fat with this pregnancy,” I say, feeling the thoughts manifest so strongly in my mind that now I suddenly don’t want to eat anymore. “I should have ordered fruit or something. God,” I mutter under my breath as I start to push the tray of food away. “I’m going to get disgusting.”

“Honey,” Jace says, reaching for my arm.

“No.” I pull away. “Don’t say honey and then make me feel better. You can’t make me feel better when I just realized that my terrible eating is going to make me a fat gross cow.”

Jace leans back in the booth seat, resting his hands behind his head while I go on for a few more sentences of self-loathing and shaming.

“Are you done?” he asks a moment later.

“I guess,” I mutter, desperately wanting to grab for that third hash brown.

“Well make sure you’re done, because I have something to say and I don’t want you to shush me.”

I roll my eyes. “Fine, I’m done.”

He’s quiet for a moment and finally he says, “I love you. Do you know what that means? It doesn’t just mean that I love you at the moment I say it. It means I love you forever, in all aspects. Even when you’re being a jerk to me, or when you’ve stolen the remote and make me watch stupid TV shows. Do you get what I’m saying?”

I nod. “I love you, too. I don’t really see your point.”

He leans forward and reaches for my hand. I allow him to take it but it’s hard for me to look him in the eyes. I’m too busy feeling gross and fat. “Bayleigh, my love for you will always be here. If you’re fat or if you’re skinny—I’ll still love you.”

“You don’t know that,” I snap, only to be cut off with a sharp gaze from my husband. “I said it, so it’s true,” he says. “And I’m serious. First of all, you’re halfway into a pregnancy and we both know your body will get bigger because there’s a baby in there,” he says with a smile, which makes me smile, too. “We already read all the stuff about pregnancy. Your ankles will get swollen, your stomach will get huge—pretty much everything that is sucky is going to happen to you. That’s just life and it’s all natural and if you think for one second that you’re gross because of it, then you’re wrong. I think it’s awesome that we’re having a kid. And I’m sorry I get to stay all handsome and you have to go through labor.”

He smirks when he calls himself handsome and I roll my eyes. “I’m sorry, too. I wish you were the one getting fat and disgusting while I just sat back and watched.”

“Bay, you’re not fat and disgusting.”

I look down at my lap. “I feel like it.”

“Eat your food. You have nothing to worry about.”

“Yeah I do,” I say, looking with contempt toward the remaining hash brown and hotcakes. “What if my eating habits stay this bad and I stay fat even after the baby is born?”

“So what?” he says.

I pull my hand away from his and cross my arms. “
So what?
” I say, mocking him. “You can’t say
so what
. My whole life is at stake here. I can’t lose you. We have to start eating better.”

“You’re not going to lose me, babe. You can gain weight and it’s not going to make me stop loving you.”

Arms still folded, I shake my head and look away. “You’re such a liar.”

“Don’t call me that. I would never lie to you.”

“Looks like you just did. You wouldn’t stay with me if I was fat. Not when you could have any pick of any woman you want.”

“Bayleigh, is that really what you think? Even now, when we’re married and made vows to each other and are having a kid together, you really think that I would just walk away from all of that just because you gained weight?”

I nod. “I don’t know why you wouldn’t.”

He sighs and shakes his head. “I love you too much for that and I wish you knew it.”

I sigh, too, although mine is out of resentment for myself and not over Jace. “I know you mean well, babe. But I know what other girls think about you. There are so many girls out there who are way hotter than I’ll ever be. It puts a lot of pressure on me to stay good enough for you. Sure, I can get fat now with the baby but once he’s born I’ll have to bust my ass to get hot for you again. It’s just a lot to worry about. I know you don’t mean to ever leave me, but you might think twice about that when the time comes.”

Jace takes a long sip of his drink and then reaches across the table with his fork and steals a bite of my hotcakes. “Have you ever seen my mom in a bathing suit?”

“You know I haven’t,” I say, recalling the one and only time I met his parents a few months ago, if you don’t count the wedding. No one was wearing swimwear at our wedding. “What’s your point?”

“One day I’m sure we’ll all go swimming together,” he says. “Probably next summer since they’ll be begging to hang out with their grandkid. You’ll see her in a bathing suit and you’ll probably wonder what everyone else, including me, wonders.”

“What’s that?” I ask, afraid to know the answer. Jace’s mom isn’t a supermodel, but for a middle-aged woman, she’s not ugly either. She’s neither fat nor skinny, but a nice average size. But if she’s anything like my mom, she will refuse to be seen in a bathing suit in public.

“She used to be morbidly obese,” Jace says, knocking all of my ideas out of the water. That is the last thing I expected him to say.

“Seriously?” I blurt out.

He nods. “For like, my whole childhood. All she ever did was complain about being fat and gross and I grew up thinking that’s how all women were. I didn’t think my mom was gross, but she pretty much convinced me she was with how much she said it.”

“What happened?” I ask. I barely know the woman but now I’m dying to know her story.

“So Dad was always gone on business and I was always on a dirt bike, so our family barely had any quality time together. But one day we were all free on the same weekend because my race had rained out, so Mom planned this family BBQ dinner thing and said I could invite some friends over to go swimming. So anyhow, everyone was swimming except my mom because she refused to be seen in a bathing suit, but we were all having fun.” Jace smiles as he recalls the memory and I see him for the first time as a little kid in my mind. He continues, “Dad was getting pretty drunk, because he can’t grill unless he’s drinking and they were grilling a ton of food. At one point, I was walking inside to go pee and I overheard my parents talking. I don’t think they had any idea I was in the next room. Dad told her she should go swim and enjoy the water and she said no because the last bathing suit she bought was a size thirty and she didn’t think it fit her anymore. And then Dad said ‘You know you were a size two when we first met’ and I was like oh shit, this is it. Dad’s about to be murdered.”

Jace stops to laugh and shake his head. My eyes are almost bugging out of my head and I urge him to go on. “Well? She obviously didn’t murder him, so what happened?”

Jace shrugs. “My dad said something that’s never left me. He said, ‘The funny thing is that over the last twenty years, you’ve only gotten more beautiful.’”

Chills fill my arms. How could anyone say that and mean it? As if reading my mind, Jace says, “I believed it, too. My dad always looked at my mom like she was some kind of princess. He taught me what love is. And at that moment, even though I was like thirteen, I knew I wanted to marry someone who would be beautiful to me no matter what. Honestly, I thought that about you when we started dating. I knew a long time ago that I’d love you until the day I die.”

With reluctance, I grab my fork and stab it through my breakfast. “Thank you,” I say quietly. Jace’s insight on life and love started years before he met me. I will have to hug his dad extra hard next time I see him. “So why did your mom lose the weight?”

Jace shrugs. “Over the next year or so, she slowly lost weight. I think she just ate better and she always took long walks around the neighborhood. I never asked her about it, but I guess she just wanted to feel as beautiful as my dad already thought she was. But now she has a lot of loose skin and she never complains about it. She doesn’t mind going swimming either. She just does her thing and enjoys life and it’s made her such a better person than back when all she did was complain about her looks.”

I think I’ll hug his mom extra hard, too.

“Wake up!” I shove Jace’s arm. “Jaceeeee,” I say into his ear. God, if he doesn’t hurry and wake up from his junk-food coma, he’ll miss it. The plane jolts slightly and I grab onto the back of Jace’s recliner to steady myself. He opens his eyes, furrowing his brows.

“Did we just hit turbulence?” he asks, yawning.

“That’s what woke you up? Seriously?” I roll my eyes and grab his hand, pressing it to my stomach as I stand over him on the airplane.

“What are you--?” he asks, stopping the moment our baby kicks his palm. “Oh my God,” he whispers, tears filling his eyes a moment later. “He’s moving!”

“You can finally feel it,” I say, relieved that Jace woke up in time to experience this. Until now, the baby had only moved to where I could feel it inside my body. Now, he is big enough to kick hard enough to be felt from the outside. That’s what woke me up from my junk food coma, because up until a few minutes ago, I was passed out in the leather recliner next to him while our plane flies us across the country.

“This is amazing,” he says, placing both hands on my stomach and moving them around, keeping up with the movement of our baby. “Oh my God, this is so cool. You see this kind of thing in the movies, but I’ve never actually felt it.”

“Trust me, I know exactly what you mean. I’m not looking forward to the giving birth part of what I’ve seen in the movies…”

Jace laughs and I want to punch him in the face. “So not funny!” I snap. He closes his mouth and pretends to zip it shut. “I wonder where we are?” he asks, changing the subject to look out of the window. All I see are clouds and the ground below.

When we left LA after breakfast, I had wanted to fly to Washington but the weather was bad up there, so our pilot suggested we save that for another day. Since the hustle and bustle of LA had worn me out, I thought we should go somewhere with a nature vibe, somewhere without tall buildings and tons of cars causing traffic jams. Somewhere beautiful and warm.

So now we’re headed to the Grand Canyon. Having only seen pictures of it, I am super excited to see such a huge feat of nature up close and personal. I crawl into Jace’s lap, snuggling against him in the large reclining seat. “We can go back to sleep now,” I murmur, resting my face against his shoulder. He wraps an arm around me and slides the other one over my stomach.

I close my eyes, feeling more content than sleepy. Jace kisses my forehead and lets his cheek rest on top of my hair. A few moments later, he nudges me. “Babe? You asleep?”

I look up, blinking and suppressing a yawn. “No, why?”

He points to the window.

We’re flying over the greatest geological structure in the United States and it takes my breath away. I press my hands on either side of the window as I peer out into the vast canyon below. I think our pilot is going out of his way to give us this amazing view, because he turns the plane, making us sway to the left as he makes a wide circle around part of the canyon, giving us extra time to view its beauty.

There are mountains in California and beaches in Texas, but this, this is more amazing than mountains and beaches. This is millions of years’ worth of Mother Nature doing her thing.

“It’s kind of terrifying,” I say, looking over at Jace who has pressed himself against the next window. “It’s so huge.”

“It’s amazing,” he agrees. “You know,” he says, tapping his chin in that way that tells me he’s up to something stupid. “If my love for you were water…it would overflow this canyon in a heartbeat.

I throw my head back and roll my eyes. “I can’t believe you just said something so lame! You are
so
cheesy!”

With a sneaky smile, Jace steps over to me and wraps his arms around me. “I’m married now. I can be as lame and cheesy as I want.” I roll my eyes yet again, and he ignores my insult and kisses me instead. At first, I want to pull away from the kiss and go back to staring at the window, but then his tongue grazes across my bottom lip and suddenly I’m digging my fingers into his back, begging for more.

It’s funny how that boy’s tongue can get me to do almost anything.

Diving back into the kiss, I chase his tongue with mine, pulling him closer to me. He sits back in the recliner and pulls me on top of him, straddling my legs on either side of his lap. I wrap my hands around his neck and kiss him hard and soft, fast and slow. He tastes like the pack of Twizzlers we just shared and his hair smells like hotel shampoo. I love making out with him in a private jet, hundreds of miles from home.

His hands slide down my thighs, the warmth of his skin making my legs tingle from his touch. I meet his gaze and lift an eyebrow. “Do we have time to…you know…?”

Jace smiles and glances down at my cleavage, an instinctual act that he can’t stop once he’s turned on. “Let’s find out,” he says, his voice raspy as he lifts me up a few inches so he can lean forward and kiss my chest just above my bra.

As if on cue, the plane immediately begins descending. The change in elevation makes my stomach tighten, or maybe I’m just that turned on by the idea of ripping off Jace’s clothing. He slides his hands further down my thighs and around my butt, suggestively pulling me closer to his pelvis.

I bite my lip and glance out of the window. “We can’t,” I say, feeling the plane descend even closer to the earth. “We’re about to land.”

“We could try,” Jace says, leaning in to kiss my neck in the spot that he knows will drive me insane. My breath catches in my throat and I want him so, so bad, but now I can actually see the runways beneath us as we get ready to land.

“I am not going to be caught having sex by our pilot.” I lean back in his lap and shake my head to clear it of its naughty thoughts. “It’s too risky and I would absolutely die if he caught us doing it.”

Jace makes a little puppy frown, but then he sighs. “You’re right. But now I don’t give a shit about the Grand Canyon. Now I just want you.”

“Too bad,” I say playfully as I stand up and head back to my seat to buckle my seatbelt for the landing. “If you want this hot pregnant body, you’ll just have to wait until tonight!”

Jace tosses his head back against his seat, staring at the ceiling as he says, “Mean. So mean.”

We fly into the Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport and I’m surprised to find that this airport is just as busy as the one in LA. Airports are fun for me, probably because I haven’t been to that many of them. At least that’s what Jace says. There’s a ton of interesting looking people fluttering here and there and the shops have everything from bestselling books to funky souvenirs.

There’s even an electronics store selling tablets and cell phones. “Who goes to the airport to buy a cell phone?” I think aloud. Jace shrugs. “Someone who lost their phone on vacation.”

While Jace rents a car, I find a kiosk with tourist brochures and grab every one they have about the Grand Canyon. We’re visiting the South Rim, which as the brochures tell me, is the most popular part of the Canyon. I flip through information about helicopter tours (awesome!), white water rafting (hell no!), and hiking trails (maybe...). There are many hotels available and although I get a bit panicky trying to choose which one we should go to, it’s kind of fun having a vacation with no itinerary.

“What if all of the hotels are booked up?” I ask as Jace loads our suitcases into the trunk of the rental car. The thought of being in the middle of nowhere without a place to stay is a little terrifying.

“We’ll figure it out,” he says, sounding zero percent worried about the ordeal. On the plus side, it’s mid-August and that’s when most people are getting ready to go back to school or college. It’s not like it’s a busy tourist season, so hopefully we’ll be fine.

Besides, I’m pretty sure I can get through any problem as long as I’m with Jace.

Once we’re out of the busy airport parking lot, we pull over at a café that’s a combination diner and souvenir shop. From here, I spread out the hotel brochures that looked the coolest to me, and Jace and I pick a place to stay that has an onsite bowling alley and a game room.

“Not that we’ll have any time to play arcade games,” Jace says with a wink. “If we’re at the hotel, I’ll be in bed, enjoying my wife.”

“I dunno,” I say. “Playing some Skee-ball sounds like a lot more fun than hooking up all night…” Jace makes a pouty face and I grab the front of his shirt and pull him in for a kiss.

We set the car’s GPS for our chosen hotel on the South Rim of the canyon and it calculates the route.

“Three hours?” I burst out. “Are you kidding me? We just flew over that damn canyon, how it is so far away?”

“Christopher mentioned that it was a long drive from the airport to the actual canyon,” Jace says. “I thought you heard that?”

I shake my head and slip a pair of sunglasses over my eyes. “If I had known I’d be spending so much time in a car with you, maybe I would have opted out of this whole honeymoon thing.” I stick out my tongue and he gives me a smirk that’s so hot it makes my toes tingle.