Hi, guys! This chapter, which I thought was gonna be a nightmare to write, but it was (for the most part) surprisingly easy! Thanks so much to the lovely lightlacedwithbeauty for helping me out with this chapter, and to the lovely maxwaylandgrey for beta'ing. You're both awesome, but you already knew that. :)

Thanks to everyone who keeps reading and even more so to the people that leave reviews/favorite/follow the story! You make me happy. :) I hope you like this chapter! xo


Everything that I thought never would now is happening
A brand new horizon is opening
I'm hoping we Don't miss this moment
You showed me how
Life is worth living I have no doubt
It's all about giving
I'm reaching out
Right here right now
Don't you see?
I'd give you everything

("Everything" by Rob Blackledge)


"God, I've missed you," said Clary for the hundredth time, still not quite believing that she was in Jace's house, seventeen hours away from her own.

"And I," he said, giving her a kiss, "have missed you. Obviously."

"Obviously." Clary smirked at her boyfriend, feeling overwhelmingly happy. She wanted nothing more than for him to kiss her.

But she also really, really wanted to eat.

"Do you have any food?"

"Typical, Fray. You don't see your boyfriend in almost two months, and the first thing you do is raid his kitchen." He takes her by the hand and leads her into his kitchen. "We have whatever you want."

"Do you wanna make tacos?"

Jace frowned. "Since when do you like tacos?"

"I'm really craving tacos, Jace," Clary said with a serious face.

"Tacos it is, then." He shook his head at her. He'd missed her too much. Her face, and her soft, red curls, and her shy smile, and the way she fit perfectly in his arms.

"Do you even have taco shells?" she asked, seemingly worried.

Jace rummaged through the pantry until he found them. His father had wanted Mexican food last week, and Celine, who was tired of being yelled at by Stephen, made him the freaking tacos. She was unhappy the whole time, but Jace tried not to notice, and instead focused on the deliciousness of his mother's tacos.

"This is perfect," she said, kissing his lips unexpectedly. He wasn't complaining, of course; he loved having her lips against his, wrapping his arms around her tiny waist, pulling her up so that their kisses could last longer. He loved kissing her, and there wasn't a single doubt that he could do it all day.

Jace pulled away. "Before you eat my beautiful face off," he said, grinning, "how many tacos do you want?"

"How many can you make, Herondale?"

"You're horrible," he said, taking out everything that they needed to make their tacos. Clary sat on the counter, watching him, her eyes roaming up and down his body, from his legs to his ass to his back to his perfect, golden hair. She kind of envied his hair, which was ridiculous, because, out of all the things she could envy, she envied his hair.

"Stop checking me out, Clary," Jace said, even though his voice suggested the exact opposite. Please, keep checking me out. Check me out all you want. She giggled.

"Seriously, I'm starving," she said, grabbing a cutting board and beginning to chop some tomatoes.

He looked at her. Really looked at her. She was focused, as if she was almost trying not to notice the way he was looking at her. There were a million things that he wanted to say to her. He'd made up so many different speeches about how much he loved her and how the time they had wasn't enough to make up for the time they didn't, and how he wished that he could drive those seventeen hours without having to face the wrath of everybody, because if there was something he wanted to do, it was see her face whenever he woke up.

Clary finally turned to face him, staring at him. "Why are you looking at me like that?"

Jace walked up to her, placing the taco shells next to her. "Looking at you like what?"

"I don't know," she admitted. "It's a very intense look."

"I miss you, Clary," he said, finally letting himself say it. It was one thing to say that he'd missed her before, but it was another to say that he was missing her even as she was standing beside him.

"I'm right here, Jace," she said, propping herself up so she was sitting on the counter. She was facing him, finally somewhat closer to eye level, which was always a hard thing to achieve between the two of them. "I'm here."

The way he kissed her wasn't anything like he'd kissed her before. Not in July, when they didn't know when they would see each other again, when their urgency was driving them insane. Not half an hour ago, when the happiness he felt consumed him entirely, and he felt like the luckiest guy in the world to have a girl that would understand him the way she did. Not when they first kissed, when he felt like the world was finally something tangible, when happiness was something real and when falling in love became a possibility.

He kissed her now with a different kind of urgency. Jace missed her more than she could ever imagine. She was the one person who kept him going when things got too hard, when he felt like the only thing he has going for him was the fact that he was good with people, when he didn't think he was enough for anybody. Clary was always there to remind him that he was so much more than that.

Her hands were fisting his hair, tugging him closer to her. She wrapped her legs around his waist, begging for the space between them to be nonexistent, for them to be pressed against each other. He cupped her face in his hands and brought her closer to him, wanting for there to be no distance in between them. He wanted to make her his.

They had only really done this a handful of times, because he was Clary's first boyfriend, and rushing things seemed like a way for their relationship to fail. When she finally told him that she was ready, he made sure that things were special. At around the fourth time, though, things were more casual. Now, with the new tension and urgency between them, she just wanted it to happen. Wherever they were, and whenever it was that she had these thoughts.

He carried her upstairs to his room as she giggled. She was nervous and ecstatic and obviously turned on, and, when he tugged at her shirt, it took her a while to get it off. He laid her down, leaving a trail of kisses from the space between her breasts down to where her pants covered her skin. He tugged at her sweatpants' drawstrings and slid them off with ease. He peppered butterfly kisses up her stomach, stopping just shy of her breasts. Jace slipped a finger under her bra, and and felt the skin underneath. His fingers slid to the back and Clary's body automatically arched up to give him access. He unclasped her bra, and she tugged at Jace's shirt, begging for it to come off, for there to be more skin-to-skin contact. Slowly, they began peeling off pieces of clothing, forming a pile on his bedroom floor.

Jace cradled Clary's waist between his legs. He trailed his hands down her body and gripped them tightly at her hips. A small moan elicited from Clary's mouth, giving him the encouragement he needed to slip himself inside her. Jace looked at Clary. He looked at the way she stared up at him with adoration. As if he was the only person she loved in the world. Her cheeks were flushed, and her red curls were all over the place. She looked the most beautiful he had seen her in a long time.

He kissed her gently on the lips before lowering himself inside her. He groaned quietly as he pushed himself in and out of her, both of them reveling in the bliss of being with each other.

Jace loved Clary more than he could show her, even though he tried. He filled her with kisses and touched her where she wanted to be touched, and she told him that he was the best thing that she had, and he believed her. He trusted her when she said that she loved him, and when she told him that she never wanted him to stop.

She was scared, though. Having sex with Jace may have distracted her from the fact that this was only temporary, that she would have to return to New York in approximately twenty-four hours, but now, as she laid beside him, with his arms wrapped around her, she was scared.

He stirred next to her, opening his eyes slowly. She didn't even bother pretending that she was asleep. "Hey, you," said Jace, wearing a lazy smile.

"Hi," she said, turning around so the two were facing each other. "Did you sleep well?"

He nodded, yawning. She giggled at his response, planting a kiss on his cheek. "Do you wanna keep sleeping?"

Jace shook his head. "I wanna spend some time with my beautiful girlfriend before she leaves."

Clary smiled, biting her lip. "That can be arranged." She sat up, positioning herself on his lap. "As long as we finish those tacos."

They stayed up all night watching movies, both knowing that they could sleep later on. They wanted to spend as much time together as they could before they had to go their separate ways.

Jace wondered if this was going to get any easier. If missing her would hurt less. If, maybe, the fact that she was here would help him realize that her love for him wasn't going away.

He hated the fact that he couldn't wake up with her lying next to him every day. When he did, a few hours before they started watching their first movie, it felt like he was really, truly happy, a feeling he hadn't experienced in a couple of months. He wanted more than anything for his girlfriend to come back. He wanted to watch silly movies with her and make tacos and kiss in the dark and have lazy sex and talk all night long.

"A penny for your thoughts," said Clary, and he noticed that she was looking at him with curiosity. He was lost in his own mind, and that scared her sometimes. She'd told him as much a long time ago.

"I don't wanna miss you." He tried to smile for her. He tried to make it seem like the thoughts that ran through his mind, sometimes too fast to grasp all at once, didn't make him feel like he was being punched in the stomach, like he was gasping for air.

"I miss you like hell, Jace, but it'll be over soon." She rested her head against his shoulder and grabbed his hand. "You know I love you, right?"

"I might need some reminding," he said teasingly, and she slapped his hand.

"Jerk," she mumbled as he ran his hand through her hair.

"Seriously, though," he said as he began playing with her hair. She smiled against his shoulder. "I just wish I could be with you more."

"So do I," Clary said, lifting her head and giving him a kiss on the cheek. "But, hey, I'm here now."

Jace nodded, then yawned. The clock said it was just past four in the morning. In a couple of hours, the sun would rise. He wanted to watch it with her—you know, to be romantic and all that—but he was too tired to function. He didn't even want to think about what would happen after she left the next day—or, well, later that day. He had to go on with his life—do homework, ignore Kaelie's desperate messages, make sure his girlfriend got home okay.

Clary patted her lap. "Come here," she said, letting him lie down and rest his head on her lap. She ran her hands through his soft, golden hair. "Get some sleep. I'll still be here when you wake up."


Thank you for reading! Let me know what you think. :)