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"Pretty cool?" My eyes drift over the walls lined with framed jerseys and photos, signed banners and finely etched metal. Pictures of baseball heroes and legends. Photos of people whose hopes have become their realities. "This is crazy. You walk past all of this every day?"

He shrugs, staring at a collage of images matted and framed. "I guess you stop noticing after a while."

Maybe he's right. But I notice all of it—awards, accomplishments.

A wall full of dreams.

"Incredible," I whisper.

I stop in front of a glove mounted in a glass shadow box. It's signed, L. Montgomery #23 scribbled in black marker across the leather.

Immediately, I want the details.

Who is L. Montgomery?

What position did he play?

Where is he now?

I want the story behind the glove—the chapter it represents in the larger story this wall is trying to tell.

"Coming?" Jace asks from the next doorway. "We didn't even get to the good stuff yet."

"Oh—yeah, sure." I glance at the glove one more time before joining him. "Where to next?"

Jace pushes the next door open and walks to the first room in the new hallway, which I recognize already thanks to the four glass walls.

He types in the code. "This is the gym."

I step inside, taking in the treadmills, bikes, and racks of dumbbells ranging from five pounds to ones that look more like a pair of car tires on a bar than weights.

"So what? You gonna show off for me now, Holloway?"

Jace's steps stutter as he crosses the mats. "You'd like that, wouldn't you?" He glances over at me, offering a cheeky smile that makes my legs feel about as reliable as they would if I tried lifting most of this.

I roll my eyes, avoiding his gaze and staring at the squat rack loaded with a frankly disrespectful amount of plates.

"You lift that?" I ask, walking toward it.

He lifts his brows. "That? No."

I huff out a laugh. "I was gonna say that's—"

"That's nowhere near as much as I lift."

His tone is even, his expression sincere, and as if he plans it, he pulls up the sleeves on his hoodie. His shoulders seem to grow as he stretches each arm across his chest, and when the veins that run from his wrists to both elbows are fully exposed, I look away rather than memorize every line of the muscle.

"It's crazy to think you're somehow in even better shape now than you were when we met," I admit, running my hand across the bar.

"It's all relative," he says, picking up a loose plate and reracking it.

Hot and responsible.

"I look back now and feel like I looked scrawny as hell."

"You didn't," I answer quickly. Too quickly.

Jace watches me for a beat, a small knowing smile growing on his face. "You weren't in bad shape yourself." He leans against the side of a Smith machine. "Still aren't."