roomy the back seat of their borrowed car was—or how much fun they could have in the tight quarters.
Before he could suggest they find out, Cruz steered the car around another block onto an open street lined by houses instead of businesses—or maybe houses that had been businesses, as picturesque as any nostalgic artwork featuring pre-Flare suburbs and their too-perfect Main Streets.
Of course, the crap art Eden churned out glorifying the good old days didn't have ivy growing up over the roofs or trees poking through living room windows, but that had always been the ugly truth of those too-perfect neighborhoods—how quickly they went to hell when shit got real.
Cruz passed a few before turning into a parking lot in front of a towering gray building that looked like it had been designed by an architect tripping on some of Five's best drugs. Pieces were crammed together at odd angles he could only assume were meant to be artistic, and he couldn't tell which of the jagged gaps in the upper floors were dramatic embellishment and which were straight up broken off by wind and rain.
Cruz parked the car in front of a massive steel door and released Ace. “Wait here.”
He slipped from the car, and Ace frowned as he watched him pull a key from his pocket and set to work on a set of chains. “I give up. What the hell can be in there?”
Rachel eyed him solemnly, her eyes twinkling. “Our surprise, I'm guessing.”
“Brat.” He kissed her nose. And only her nose, even with Cruz's unspoken promise thrumming in his veins. Because it would be so much better when it was all three of them. “He's gonna be so smug that we didn't figure it out.”
But Cruz wasn't smug when he returned to the car. The steel doors had given way to a steep decline into a cavernous parking garage, and he was all business as he navigated the empty space, the car's headlights bouncing off bare concrete.
Even worse . Smug Cruz was hot. All-Business Cruz was a goddamn volcano of dirty, sexy danger. And both Ace and Rachel were helpless when he parked and started prowling around, locking up and double-checking the empty guard room, every movement swift and efficient, a soldier assessing his surroundings with obsessive thoroughness.
Ace imagined it might get old someday. When they were seventy-five, maybe. Or already dead.
When Cruz stalked back toward them, Ace adjusted his estimate. It would take a few centuries in hell before Lorenzo Cruz stopped turning him the fuck on when his growly, protective warrior instincts were running hot.
“Upstairs,” was all he said, but he smiled at Ace before taking Rachel's hand.
Rachel trailed her fingers over the chipped white paint as they made their way up the stairs to the main level. But her eyes went wide and she gasped as she opened the door.
They were in a huge lobby filled with sculptures. A fucking maze of sculptures under a drooping banner with fading letters that declared, SCULPTURE: A CELEBRATION OF FIVE CENTURIES. Marble busts gave way to fantastical creations of welded iron, which bled into found-object masterpieces made from bottle caps and random bits of pre-Flare tech.
Each had a dusty card crediting the artist and describing the piece, which was when it hit Ace with a swiftness that stole his breath: he was in an art museum. An honest-to-God pre-Flare museum full of art —not the stilted, soulless bullshit popular in Eden, but pieces crafted in the unbroken world that had spawned his own, by artists hundreds of years dead and dozens of years forgotten.
Cruz's surprise. Not for them , whatever he'd said. For Ace, because this was as close as a sector brat artist could come to a religious experience.
For the first time in his life, Ace was utterly fucking speechless.
“It's beautiful,” Rachel murmured. And that word was probably enough for her, for most people. Art could make them feel all sorts of things, but mostly it was nice to look at.
It didn't steal their breath, not like
Before he could suggest they find out, Cruz steered the car around another block onto an open street lined by houses instead of businesses—or maybe houses that had been businesses, as picturesque as any nostalgic artwork featuring pre-Flare suburbs and their too-perfect Main Streets.
Of course, the crap art Eden churned out glorifying the good old days didn't have ivy growing up over the roofs or trees poking through living room windows, but that had always been the ugly truth of those too-perfect neighborhoods—how quickly they went to hell when shit got real.
Cruz passed a few before turning into a parking lot in front of a towering gray building that looked like it had been designed by an architect tripping on some of Five's best drugs. Pieces were crammed together at odd angles he could only assume were meant to be artistic, and he couldn't tell which of the jagged gaps in the upper floors were dramatic embellishment and which were straight up broken off by wind and rain.
Cruz parked the car in front of a massive steel door and released Ace. “Wait here.”
He slipped from the car, and Ace frowned as he watched him pull a key from his pocket and set to work on a set of chains. “I give up. What the hell can be in there?”
Rachel eyed him solemnly, her eyes twinkling. “Our surprise, I'm guessing.”
“Brat.” He kissed her nose. And only her nose, even with Cruz's unspoken promise thrumming in his veins. Because it would be so much better when it was all three of them. “He's gonna be so smug that we didn't figure it out.”
But Cruz wasn't smug when he returned to the car. The steel doors had given way to a steep decline into a cavernous parking garage, and he was all business as he navigated the empty space, the car's headlights bouncing off bare concrete.
Even worse . Smug Cruz was hot. All-Business Cruz was a goddamn volcano of dirty, sexy danger. And both Ace and Rachel were helpless when he parked and started prowling around, locking up and double-checking the empty guard room, every movement swift and efficient, a soldier assessing his surroundings with obsessive thoroughness.
Ace imagined it might get old someday. When they were seventy-five, maybe. Or already dead.
When Cruz stalked back toward them, Ace adjusted his estimate. It would take a few centuries in hell before Lorenzo Cruz stopped turning him the fuck on when his growly, protective warrior instincts were running hot.
“Upstairs,” was all he said, but he smiled at Ace before taking Rachel's hand.
Rachel trailed her fingers over the chipped white paint as they made their way up the stairs to the main level. But her eyes went wide and she gasped as she opened the door.
They were in a huge lobby filled with sculptures. A fucking maze of sculptures under a drooping banner with fading letters that declared, SCULPTURE: A CELEBRATION OF FIVE CENTURIES. Marble busts gave way to fantastical creations of welded iron, which bled into found-object masterpieces made from bottle caps and random bits of pre-Flare tech.
Each had a dusty card crediting the artist and describing the piece, which was when it hit Ace with a swiftness that stole his breath: he was in an art museum. An honest-to-God pre-Flare museum full of art —not the stilted, soulless bullshit popular in Eden, but pieces crafted in the unbroken world that had spawned his own, by artists hundreds of years dead and dozens of years forgotten.
Cruz's surprise. Not for them , whatever he'd said. For Ace, because this was as close as a sector brat artist could come to a religious experience.
For the first time in his life, Ace was utterly fucking speechless.
“It's beautiful,” Rachel murmured. And that word was probably enough for her, for most people. Art could make them feel all sorts of things, but mostly it was nice to look at.
It didn't steal their breath, not like
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