Epic by Ginger Voight Read Free Book Online Page B

Boulevard, as if these two extremes could fit on the same planet… much less the same city.
    We ordered room service because neither of us felt up to going out. It wasn’t like we could go hang out at a fast food restaurant or peruse the buffets. Jace and I were still a hot item for the tabloids, and fans had already tweeted that Jace was in town and spotted at our particular hotel. It was only a matter of time before we were approached, and by “we” I mean Jace. I was still invisible when it came to his many fawning groupies. They didn’t even spare me a glance as they pulled him aside for pictures and autographs.
    This limited our choices to those restaurants that catered to the rich and famous, which – for better or worse – we now were. Neither Jace nor I could face anyone trained to treat us with special regard because of our celebrity, not after what we learned that afternoon.
    Even gambling seemed like an enormous waste of resources. The laughter and boisterous cheering that took place at the tables seemed outrageously out of place in a world that could see such poverty and misfortune.
    We needed four walls and a private room to process it all.
    Of course, Jace understood the ills of the world far better than I ever could. I never enlisted in the military, or was shipped off to a foreign, war-torn land. I didn’t understand the horrors that he had experienced overseas, that culminated in his losing his leg to a bomb.
    No. My disheartening discovery digging around in my family tree couldn’t hold a candle to what he had experienced. And it made me feel even guiltier that I needed to pout about it.
    My eyes lingered on the dessert menu for room service a few seconds longer than it should have. I guzzled from my nearby six-dollar bottle of water to quell the cravings. “ I’m not hungry ,” I repeated to myself. “ I’m feeling. It’s OK to feel .”
    Jace placed our order and then walked over to where I sat in the living room of our suite. The cream-colored sofa faced the window, so I peered wordlessly out over the grid of lights illuminating the inky darkness. That was Las Vegas, I realized. It was a real town, where real people lived. They drove to boring 9-to-5 jobs, bitched about traffic, complained about the weather, waited in line at the market, or joined the PTA. They fell in love, got married, had babies, got sick, got rich, lost fortunes and breathed their last breath just beyond this opulent hotel suite.
    It was life. It was uglier than a fairytale, more complicated than a TV show. It was all we had. And it was imperfect and messy and disappointing.
    But it was also wonderful and unexpected and flawlessly poetic. Each step built upon itself, so that each generation could evolve beyond the limitations of the one before it. I was living proof of that. Maya understood on some level she would never be able to give me the life she wanted for me. She made her sacrifices accordingly, inevitably putting me in the position that I could help her if I wanted to.
    And God help me, I did.
    Jace rubbed my shoulders. “You OK?” He bent down to kiss the top of my head.
    I nodded, but I didn’t want to tell him what I was thinking. He had already cautioned me against trusting anyone new, given our current notoriety. Vanni had issued the same warning, using his own experience with a couple of grifters as an example of what can happen when someone like us buys into the sob stories of those who want what we have.
    “Don’t give them any money upfront,” Vanni had cautioned. “Not until you know for sure what they want from you.”
    Like any of us could ever be sure.
    Jace rounded the sofa and sat next to me, taking me into his strong arms. “I know that wasn’t what you wanted to find,” he said as he cuddled me close. “I’m sorry, baby.”
    I shook my head. “Don’t feel sorry for me,” I corrected. “I have everything I could possibly want or need.”
    “You worked hard for that,” he