HAPTER ELEVEN
“When you used the time machine to go back to just after the nuclear disaster to pick one of the frozen women to bear your child someday, when you picked me....” Hugging my arms to my ribs, I took a deep breath before continuing. “You picked me based on who you thought I was—what kind of a woman you thought I was—but it was all a lie. You were kind of tricked, in a way. And I guess I’m telling you this, because I just feel like you deserve to know.”
While several of his men in dragon form flew around The Arch nearby, Jackson knitted his dark brows together. “What are you talking about?”
“You thought I was brave. You thought I was bold, fearless, and confident. That’s why you chose me to be the mother of your heir, because you admired those qualities. But none of it was true. It may have appeared that I was confidently volunteering to be frozen for the good of humanity, but that wasn’t the real reason. I was volunteering because I was scared. Terrified, actually. I was fleeing Drago, well, Dan at the time. I was just trying to get away from him. I was just running like a coward. And I knew he’d probably never find me in a cryogenic tank, and if he did, he wouldn’t be able to properly thaw me. Either way, I’d never have to face him again. I just wasn’t brave enough to. I was a coward. So, I did another cowardly thing. I ran. And in doing that, I unintentionally deceived you by leading you to think that I—”
“Not one more word, Vivian.”
Jackson scoffed, giving his head a shake, wearing a most unusual expression, dark brows still closely knitted together but angled upward in the centers. It was an expression that struck me as a strange mixture of sympathy and exasperation.
“Not one more word. You didn’t deceive me, even unintentionally. Not in any possible way.”
“Well, how do you figure? Because—”
“Because you were brave, and you still are. You may have been terrified back then, and understandably so, but I’m positive it took an incredible amount of bravery for you to leave a man who was hurting you and try to get to someplace safe. A person taking steps to save their own life, even in the face of danger, is always brave, and that was you. A woman making a choice to possibly save her own life by being cryogenically frozen? I can hardly even imagine the guts that must have taken.”
“But I was running from Drago, though; I was fleeing. Do you consider someone fleeing to be bold and gutsy?”
Jackson scoffed, brows raised, as if incredulous. “Well... yes. Of course. In this particular instance, definitely yes. Brave, bold, and gutsy. A woman taking steps to save her own life is all of those things. What do you think would have been a gutsier move than the one you made? To stay with Drago Stone and try to physically fight him in one-on-one, hand-to-hand combat? He would have been a shifter by the time you left him to save your life, so obviously, that wouldn’t have been the wisest choice. It wouldn’t have been wise even had he still been a human man.
“The wisest, and most practical, and bravest choice is the one you made. You chose to get out and find safety, any way you could. That was brave. Not to mention...” Raking a hand through his thick, dark hair, Jackson scoffed for the third time. “Vivian, you do realize that you performed an incredible act of bravery up here on this very same balcony yesterday, don’t you? You were absolutely heroic, and I think so, and everyone in this entire city thinks so. I was unbelievably impressed by your actions, though I can’t say I was surprised.
“I did recognize bravery and boldness in you the day I saw you with the other soon-to-be-frozen women from afar. I saw a spark in your eyes, and it gave me a little glimpse of who you were and still are. I didn’t make a mistake when I saw that spark. No matter what your reasons were for volunteering to be frozen, it doesn’t matter. I still think it was a brave choice.
Even before you told me exactly why you volunteered to be frozen, I kind of inferred why you might have, after you told me that you remembered being in an abusive relationship. And it didn’t change my thinking about you one bit. However, now that you’ve told me how you perceive your choice to be frozen, I’m starting to get a clue as to just how profoundly Drago Stone’s abuse probably changed your opinion of yourself over time. He probably all but brainwashed you to think of yourself as helpless and cowardly, unable to survive without him. Which...” Jackson paused briefly, jaw clenched. “Which makes me want to kill him even more now than I already did.”
Jaw clenched again, Jackson surveyed the clear blue sky over the city, where his patrolmen were now circling, as if he expected Drago to break through their line of defense right then. I stood contemplating all he’d said, realizing that he was probably right about one thing for sure. Drago probably had really done a number on my perception of myself over the years. Now that Jackson had pointed it out, I realized that some of my thinking, specifically my thinking about my actions before being frozen, probably had been pretty distorted.
After a short while of listening to very distant sounds of traffic coming from the busy city streets far below, I finally spoke. “So... So, you still want me to make a choice about staying here or going to a parallel Detroit? Me telling you the real reason I volunteered to be frozen didn’t change that at all?”
Jackson turned his gaze from the sky to my face, stern expression softening. “No, it didn’t at all. And yes. I still want you to make a choice about staying or going back. Take your three days to think it over. But same as I told you yesterday, I want you to make that choice based on whatever you think will make you happiest. I wasn’t kidding when I said that my desire to have an heir had taken a backseat to your happiness; it truly has. I’d love to have an heir, yes, and specifically with you. But I want you to be content with your life more. Wherever that life is.”
I nodded, suddenly a bit misty-eyed for some reason. Turning my head to the side, I tried to swallow a lump in my throat without much success. Vaguely embarrassed by my sudden display of emotion in response to what Jackson had said, I stared at the balcony railing, blinking back the moisture in my eyes. I hadn’t even blinked twice, though, before I felt Jackson’s large hands on my shoulders, gently pulling me toward him. I let myself be pulled, and gladly, wanting him to hold me right then, wanting me to wrap me tightly in his arms, needing it.
He didn’t disappoint. For a few minutes, he just held me to his hard chest, smoothing my hair and rocking me almost imperceptibly, not speaking. With my eyes drying against his shirt, I didn’t speak, either; it seemed neither of us needed to. It seemed like we were communicating something unspoken while we embraced, though I wasn’t even sure what. All I knew was that even in the midst of the anxiety I felt about the choice I had to make, I felt safe, and content, and cared for. And for that moment, that was all I needed. I’d debate the pros and cons of a life in D.C. to one in a parallel Detroit later.
When Jackson’s phone began going off, I stifled a groan. With my face against his chest, allowing me to breathe in his masculine, woodsy scent deeply, I really could have remained in his arms for the next hour. But it was one of his lieutenants calling, and there was a skirmish with some of Drago’s men just to the north of city limits. Jackson had to go. And maybe that was best. Now that I’d given myself a three-day time limit, I knew I had some serious thinking to do, and I knew that in Jackson’s arms was probably not the best place to try to make a clearheaded decision.
After giving me a light kiss on the mouth, he said he’d try to check in with me as soon as he could. “Though if you don’t want me to check in with you over the next few days, I understand that, too. I understand if you think us spending any more time together will only make you feel more conflicted and get in the way of you making the decision that’s right for you.”
Conflicted right then, I took my time in responding. “I-I’m really not sure, I guess. I do want to spend time with you, but...”
But I was afraid of lust clouding my judgment, to be honest.
Jackson gave me another light kiss, letting his lips linger on mine a little longer this time, though. “I understand. But call me if you need me. And maybe I’ll still check in by phone.”
I said okay, and he soon left, leaving me alone out on the balcony.
Because the gardens were sixty-some floors above the ground, a stiff wind was always whipping across the balcony, but despite this, it was still warm on this particular day, and I spent maybe a half-hour sitting out in a lounge chair, just thinking and watching Jackson’s men circle the skies. Eventually, I realized I was relieved. Relieved that Jackson hadn’t seen my actions pre-freezing the same way that I had, and relieved that he still wanted me to make a choice, and presumably, the choice to stay in D.C.
I wasn’t a hundred percent sure about that, though, that he wanted me to make the choice to stay in D.C. Or, I was, at least on a cerebral level. I knew he wanted me to stay in D.C.; he could have encouraged me to go back home in the time machine that very day, no decision needed, if he didn’t. But while I appreciated his consideration of my wants and my happiness, there was a tiny part of me that almost was beginning to feel like he was being too polite about the whole thing, if that was even the right way to describe it. Too something.
It wasn’t as if I wanted him to get on his knees and beg me to stay in D.C. or anything; I didn’t. And I did truly appreciate his encouragement for me to do what I wanted. But I just wanted something else from him that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. Just, more, maybe. Though more of exactly what, I wasn’t quite sure. Maybe just more of an indication from him that he really wanted me to stay. Though at the same time, I realized that I was glad he wasn’t trying to manipulate me or beg me to stay with him in D.C. either.
Once back up in my apartment to eat lunch, my thoughts turned toward my mom, and other people I’d loved back in Detroit. I’d recalled that I’d had many family members and friends who were all very special to me, and I contemplated how wonderful it would be to see these people again, and see my home again, and to see it the way it had been before the nuclear explosion. The way it would stay if I went back through a parallel that would make it so.
It was tempting. It was unbelievably tempting. It actually gave me butterflies just to think about returning back home to the place and time I remembered, the place and time where my mom hadn’t been killed in a nuclear blast, and a place and time where Drago Stone didn’t even exist, by any name.
Though at the same time, even as my butterflies whirled, it made me feel somehow sick to think about how if I chose this option, I’d never see Jackson again. It made me feel nauseated to think about how entering the parallel would even erase all memories of him from my mind. I’d continue on with my life in “normal” Detroit, where a nuclear blast would never happen, not ever remembering that I’d once been frozen, had been thawed, and had developed feelings for a man who was a dragon shifter. Not to mention that I’d never remember the night of passion we’d shared, or the near-soul-shattering heights of ecstasy that dragon shifter had brought me to.
I wasn’t sure how I was ever going to make a decision. My feelings of being conflicted were amplified further still when I realized, while eating lunch, that if I did choose to remain in D.C., eventually I would be pressured to produce an heir for Jackson. And maybe not even pressured by him, directly, so much as pressured by his people, the nation as a whole. They wanted an heir for their commander-in-chief, and sooner or later, I’d be questioned as to why I couldn’t, or wouldn’t, deliver. Maybe I’d even be disliked, maybe even hated.
But I knew myself well enough by now to know that I’d never have a child with someone I wasn’t in a committed relationship with, someone I didn’t have a future with as a couple. Despite the praise from the citizens of the UFS that bearing an heir would surely bring me, it would never be enough for me to just be the frozen woman who’d become impregnated by Commander Wallace. I could imagine it even hurting me, probably even deeply, to be just that to him.
Celeste had pointed out that a child could bring two people together, and I knew she was right, of course. I knew it was possible that bearing Jackson’s heir might lead to a long-term romantic relationship between us. But I just couldn’t be sure. And the prospect of finding out and having that not be the case, scared me. I couldn’t imagine having a child with him, possibly developing even stronger feelings for him during the process, and then having to deal with him possibly having romantic relationships with other women. Even if none of them could ever give him a child like I could, I knew it would still cut me to the quick to think about Jackson in bed with anyone but me. It was causing a little ache in my chest just to think about it at present, and he and I had only slept together once.
I wanted to talk to someone, specifically a female someone. But Irene, although I appreciated her friendship, just didn’t seem like quite right to spill my angst to her. And Celeste was still recovering and experiencing her own emotional turmoil about what had happened on the balcony, I was sure. And other than them, I really hadn’t had the chance to make any other female friends. So, since a heart-to-heart with anyone wouldn’t be happening, and since I didn’t want to mope around in my apartment all day, I decided to go shopping at the many stores and boutiques in the lower levels of The Arch. Though once I made my way down in the elevator, shopping wasn’t exactly what happened.