Page 92 of Jace 4Ever
“Done.”
“What?”
“I have a plane, Helene. We can rent rooms. Tell me when.”
“In January.”
“Get the time off and I’ll block it out as a vacation and make myself completely unavailable to Hollywood. And for now, my boyfriend and I are going to crash at the hotel that was booked for us. You don’t need us hanging in your space.”
“We don’t mind you in our space, Nils.”
“I swear, we will be there,” I said. “But we can sleep in our space.”
She grabbed me and hugged me. “I missed you, Brother.”
“I missed you too, Sis.”
Freya was waiting for us with the car in the short-term lot. She started to climb out to open the doors, but I waved her off and opened them for us myself. “No need. I don’t mind opening the doors. I usually only let Mike do that when we’re at an event.”
“Your call.” She nodded. “Where to?”
“The hotel, please,” Jace said. “We need showers and a good night’s sleep.”
I nodded and slumped against Jace. “Thank you, Jace. Thank you so much for handling this. Handling me. I froze and…”
“Nelson, you had to know I would.” His smile was sweet as he ran his fingers through my hair. “But I can’t take all the credit. I had to ask Maddox for help. I didn’t know what to do with aplane.He was the one who thought to book the hotel.”
“But you still knew to do that.” I nestled into him. It was a switch from our usual, but I needed to just rest on him for a while. “Thank you.”
The hotel wasn’t far from the hospital, which was good, but I knew getting to my family’s house in Hvolsvollur would be a trick. I hoped there was a shortcut instead of going all the way down to the coast and back up, but I would leave that to Freya.
She also would have dragged our bags up to the room if I’d given her a chance, but both Jace and I managed to convince her we were fine and could handle our one bag. We planned to head to the hospital about nine in the morning. That would kick me and Jace into local time.
The hotel had only ten rooms. I was a little frightened when I saw that, but then the elevator opened and instead I was delighted.
“Good evening, Mister Siggurdson,” the clerk at the desk called without looking up. “It’s a pleasure to welcome you to—eep!”
That was when the clerk looked up. His eyes went wide, and he slapped a hand over his mouth, taking a second to gather himself. He pulled his hand away as I heard Jace chuckling next to me.
“I apologize, sir. I didn’t expect to see…”
“I know, no one does,” I answered in Icelandic. “Please, we’d like to just get into our room. It’s been a hell of a day and we could use showers and sleep.”
“Of course.” He nodded and opened his ledger. “Your room is ready and there’s a light dinner waiting. We’ll have a full breakfast in the Skylounge available until ten in the morning. The cleaning service comes through at about noon. I have you in for five nights, but there’s a note here that you might want to extend that.”
“We’ll know more tomorrow, but I don’t see us extending it.”
“Very good, sir. I’ll check in with you tomorrow about that. Otherwise, you’re set.” He held out two cards. “You’re in the Esja suite in the corner. You have a full bath with tub and a wonderful view. I believe you are all turned down for the night. So please, enjoy yourselves.”
“Thank you.” I wondered why Jace hadn’t taken the keys when I realized everything I had just said in the past two minutes was all in Icelandic. “One simple request, please? Always in English when I’m with Jace?”
“Oh, my goodness. Yes. I apologize. That was incredibly rude of me.” His words were in English this time, and he held the cards out again for the rooms. “Here you are. Have a pleasant evening.”
Jace took the cards as I grabbed the bag and wheeled us down to the end of the hallway. He swiped the lock open and pushed the door in.
“Maddox, what did you do…” he hissed.
We walked in, the door closing quietly behind us. The view was amazing. The city of Reykjavík was spread out below us, with the harbor and mountains beyond. It glowed in the falling darkness of the extremely short summer night. The southwestern horizon glowed with the end of the sunlight for the day.
