So exciting to see all of the new follows and favorites! Consistently blown away by the love this story is getting. And thanks to all the guests who are reviewing. I can't PM you and thank you personally, but I really appreciate your feedback! You guys are making me feel all kinds of good about myself :)

Here's another chapter, mostly a lot of background information on our main characters. This isn't the chapter I intended on writing, but when I sat down to type, this is what came out. The Rascal Flatts song "Bless the Broken Road" was on constant loop in my head while I was writing. Hope you like it!

Chapter 14

There were very few things that Grace Anderson truly hated; in fact, she could count them on one hand. She hated spiders, abhorred reality television, couldn't stand the smell of cigars, and loathed the taste of pickled anything. And now she could add one more thing to her list…she absolutely hated being hundreds of miles away from Juan Carlos Ortiz.

Juice had only been gone for four days so far, but they had been four of the longest days of her life. She was grateful that she had been busy at work for the first three days after he left for the run, which meant that at least 12 hours of her day were occupied with thoughts other than how much she missed Juice. But that left the rest of the week to sit at home and do nothing but think about beautiful brown eyes and the sexy, amazing man that came with them. He had kept his promise, calling her the moment he reached his destination, which was apparently another clubhouse somewhere outside of Reno. They only talked for a few minutes that first night, just long enough for him to say that he had arrived safely. But he had called and texted every day since and the two spoke for hours each night before they fell asleep…

As Juice sat in the Indian Hills clubhouse, which doubled as a brothel, he couldn't help but laugh at the irony. The very first time in his life he promises to be faithful to a woman, he is immediately sent away to spend a week surrounded by prostitutes.

He had been to the Devil's Tribe clubhouse years before, and it had been like being a kid in a fucking candy shop. But now as he looked around at all the half-naked hookers and sweetbutts, not one of them tempted him in the slightest. One of them had green eyes, but they weren't the right crystal clear shade. One had red hair, but it wasn't the right coppery auburn color. Most of them had nice bodies, but none of them had just the right balance of full breasts, curvy hips, and a tight little waist. None of them were Gracie. Hell, none of them even came close.

His days were spent guarding the gun shipment, hanging out with his new patched-over brothers, and updating the security and computer systems for Jury. But when darkness would fall and the nightly parties would begin, Juice always made his way up to his room alone, locked the door, and spent hours listening to the only voice in the world he wanted to hear before he fell asleep…

The first night they talked about movies; the ones they loved, the ones they hated, and ones that they claimed to hate but secretly loved. Juice admitted that he may or may not have shed a tear at the end of Armageddon, a fact that he had never told another living soul, and made Gracie swear on her comic book collection that she would never, ever repeat. In return, Gracie told him that the only movie that ever truly terrified her was Arachnophobia, and she made him swear on his computer that he would, for the rest of their relationship, always kill the spiders that inevitably made their way into her house and scared the shit out of her. He just laughed. If that was all it took to be Gracie's knight in shining armor, he would definitely kill all the spiders.

The second night they talked about food. Juice went on and on about how much he loved the breakfast that she had made for him the morning before he left for Nevada. Gracie explained that since it was just she and her father, she had to learn how to cook since her dad couldn't boil water. She laughed when she told him that the same theme continued when she moved in with Tara. The girl could perform open heart surgery on a newborn baby, but couldn't quite figure out how to fry an egg. For all the years they lived together in Chicago, Gracie had to cook every day or she and Tara would have lived on nothing but take-out, frozen pizza, and ramen noodles. Juice admitted that he very rarely got a home cooked meal, except for Gemma's Sunday dinners, and knew how to make nothing himself except for his morning protein shakes. He learned that Grace's all time favorite meal was fried chicken and waffles, because her mom was from the south and used to make it for her when she was a little girl. She learned that Juice's favorite food was spaghetti and meatballs because it reminded him of New York and the little Italian couple that lived in his apartment building who would have him over for dinner when his mom forgot to buy food.

The third night they discussed their childhoods. For all the long conversations they had in the past, they had both avoided the darker parts of their histories. But something about being on the phone made it easier for them to open up, maybe because they didn't have to look into each others eyes and risk seeing their own sadness reflected back. Juice went first. He told Grace that he was born in Queens to Carmen Ortiz, a crack addicted mom who was already struggling to raise a little girl, his older sister Maria, on her own. His mom was Puerto Rican and, as far as he knew, he had no other family in the states. He never knew his father, not even his name, and had always secretly suspected that the man was either a dealer or a john. Once when he was eight years old, he asked his mom about his father, but after a solid slap across the face, he never asked again.

Despite having high IQ scores and aptitude tests, J.C. Ortiz, as everyone had always called him, struggled in school. His ADHD kept him from focusing and his issues with authority made it impossible for him to respect the teachers at his school and, as he got a little older, the cops that patrolled his neighborhood. His breaking point came when he was 16. He got in a brawl with one of his mom's boyfriends and she promptly kicked him out of the apartment. His older sister had run off years before and he hadn't seen her since. So he dropped out of high school, packed what little shit he owned, and moved in with some guys he met during one of his stints in juvie. It was then that he started to come into his own. One of his roommates had a computer and when he sat in front of it for the first time and started fucking around with the programming codes, it was like everything made sense to him in a way that it never had before. To most people the lines of script and numbers meant nothing, but to him they represented order, structure, and art. And from there, his life as a hacker began.

A few months later he got a part time job in a garage, learned how to fix cars and drive a motorcycle, stole his first Harley, and his life was changed forever. Every moment of his life was spent in front of a computer screen or flying down the highway on his bike. That went on for a few more years, but around his 21st birthday, Juice hacked into the bank accounts of some pretty bad men and quickly needed to get the hell out of New York for awhile. A guy he'd grown up with had moved to Oakland, California a few years earlier, so he called him up and asked if he could come and hide out for a few months. The next day Juice packed as much as his saddlebags could hold and drove his bike across the country. His buddy had some connections and helped him get some under the table freelance work hacking for some guys around Oakland. Apparently in the short time he was there, he built a pretty solid reputation, because one day a young guy named Jax Teller showed up, saying that he had heard of Juice and asked him to do some background checks. He did the work and Jax was impressed, even more so when he learned that the computer genius was also a Harley rider. He invited him to the clubhouse the next day, introduced him to the other members of the MC, and after two years of hanging around and prospecting, J.C. Ortiz became Juice, a fully patched brother and Intelligence Officer for the Sons of Anarchy Motorcycle Club Redwood Original. The day he got his top rocker was the proudest day of his life. He finally had the family he'd always wanted and the rest was history.

Grace hung on every word of Juice's story and was struck by how differently their lives had begun. She was born in Valdosta, Georgia to two loving parents who absolutely adored her. Her father, James Anderson, was from Pennsylvania. He was the only son of middle class parents who both died before Gracie was born. He enlisted in the military right out of high school and did his basic training in North Carolina. While stationed there he met a beautiful young woman named Rose who was on summer vacation. They always told Gracie it was love at first sight.

Four years later they were married and less than a year after that, Grace Jane Anderson was born. Her father always wanted to be a career military man, and Grace and her mom always moved with him to the various bases where he had been stationed. Most of her early childhood as a military brat was spent on bases in Texas, Germany, and Japan, with her summers being spent with her mom and Grandma Janie on the family farm in Valdosta.

Other than not having many friends due to her constant relocating, Gracie had to admit that her life was pretty close to perfect; that is, until the week after her 10th birthday when her dad came home in tears and told her that her mommy had been in a car accident and had passed away. There was no drunk driver, no other car at fault that she could blame for changing her life forever; just a stupid deer on the highway that caused her mom to swerve into a tree.

Her father put in for a training command after her mother's death so that he could be home with Grace on base. Her Grandma Janie begged her father for custody but he wouldn't hear of being separated from his daughter. Although never fully escaping the grief and loss from her mom's death, Gracie had a very happy life with her father. He was everything to her, and she was his world. James never remarried, instead choosing to devote his whole life to his daughter and his career.

When Gracie turned 18 she decided to go back to the states for college, even though the only person she really knew there, her grandmother, had died a few years earlier. With Gracie out of the house, her father once again began combat deployments. The day she arrived on the University of Chicago campus, thrilled to be starting her nursing program, she walked into her dorm and met her roommate, Tara Knowles, and the two almost instantly became best friends.

Gracie saw her father every time he had leave, talked on the phone with him as much as possible, and they emailed each other almost daily. She became worried when she hadn't heard from him for over a week and then, a few days before her college graduation, her worst nightmare became a reality. Her father had been killed in action.

After graduation, Tara started medical school and Gracie got her first job as a registered nurse. From there, Juice already knew the rest.

When Gracie had finished speaking, she heard Juice sigh. "Jesus, Gracie. I'm not sure what's worse. Being raised by a shitty mom and never knowing your dad, or loving both your parents and then having them ripped away from you."

Gracie wiped a tear away. It had been a really long time since she had talked about her mom and dad's deaths. "I decided a few months after my dad died that I would live with my parent's memories, not with their deaths. I wouldn't be sad about the time I lost with them, but I would be grateful for every single wonderful minute that we had together. It's the only way I keep going."

Gracie took a deep breath and paused before she continued. "You know, I'm not one of those people that believe everything happens for a reason. I think shitty things happen to good people for no reason all the time. But I do believe that everything that happens in your life makes you who you are, either in spite of those things or because of them. I could have decided to be angry at the world, but in spite of my losses, I made a choice to live a life that would honor my parents, because more than anything I know they just wanted me to be happy. And even though you went through all the shit in your past, you moved across the country and started a whole new life for yourself, surrounded yourself with a whole new group of people that love you, and you decided to devote your life to your club, something you truly believe in. Do you have any idea how inspiring you are, Ortiz?"

Juice had to swallow the lump in his throat before speaking. How can someone be so fucking beautiful inside and out? How does she consistently make me feel like I'm worth a damn? How the fuck did I live 28 years without her? God, I fucking love this woman. He said the only words that came to his mind. "I don't deserve you, Gracie."

Grace's voice was quiet but full of sincerity. "Juice, you and I have both been through a lot of shit, but I honestly wouldn't change any of it. Because every choice we ever made in our past led us both to Charming, somehow led us both to the bakery that morning…you know, I don't know if I really believe in anything that I can't see, but maybe God or karma or something decided that you and I had been through enough shit and that we needed something good. I don't think it's a matter of you deserving me or me deserving you. Maybe fate decided that we both needed a break and deserved something that makes us happy. Maybe fate decided that we deserve each other."

Juice's heart was aching in his chest with love for this girl. In that moment, he wanted to tell her he loved her more than he ever wanted to say anything. But he knew he couldn't over the phone, knew that he had to be looking into her gorgeous green eyes when the words finally came out of his mouth. So he fought to hold those three little words back and said this instead. "You know sweetheart, I actually do believe in God. I always have, but I always thought the 'God loves you' stuff was bullshit. I figured because of the fucked up life I had that maybe he didn't care about me very much, or maybe he just forgot that he ever fucking created me in the first place. But I'm pretty sure I've been wrong, that he must love me…because there is no other explanation for why he would give me you."

A few minutes later after they both said their goodnights, Juice laid awake in his room at the Nevada clubhouse, staring at the ceiling. His mind went into rewind as he relived every single minute he had ever spent with Gracie. And as he thought about all the moments of true fucking happiness that he had experienced since meeting her, he felt the need to do something that he hadn't done since he was a little boy back in Queens. He closed his eyes, clasped his hands, and prayed, thanking God for his angel, Grace Jane Anderson.

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