“Stay, Emilia. I know you probably don’t want to work for your dad, if yesterday was as bad as you say, but stay and work with me. Please don’t run off and join the Corps,” he insists.
“I can’t tell you how badly I want to do that, but I need space from my parents; yesterday was ugly and it would probably be good for me to put some distance between me and my parents for a while. Staying in New York and working for a company that isn’t my dad’s is probably a terrible idea. I was able to negotiate them dropping the security detail and getting my mom into therapy, but I had to agree to join the Corps and…give you up. They took my phone, the note that you wrote your number on, everything. That’s why I couldn’t call you. That’s why we drove up here,” my voice breaks and tears threaten at Jackson’s increasingly stony expression.
He holds me at arm’s length, denying me the warmth of his strong body.
“I am not just leverage, Emilia,” he bites out.
“She needs help, Jackson, and I didn’t know how else to make her see reason,” I plead.
“You really aren’t the woman I fell in love with if all you see me as is some tool to negotiate with. Your father will be so proud; with skills like that I’m sure you’ll be an asset when you join Stellar,” he shouts. I can’t stop the tears freefalling down my cheeks.
“Hey, it wasn’t like that one bit,” shouts Dee. “Her mom’s insecurities are ruining Emilia’s relationship with them. It’s suffocating her and there’s no way in hell they’ll allow you both to be together, even in secret, if she’s still being tailed by a security team passing her parents hourly fucking updates. Emilia said what she did to get her mom help, to stop them from controlling her life, and it’s not a bad idea that you both wait until she’s immortal.”
“I can protect her!” he yells. “They’re grown people. Emilia shouldn’t be negotiating away parts of her life to take care of them and she doesn’t need them in her life if all they’re going to do is fucking control it. She’s choosing to run – again – because it’s the easier option.”
“I do need them in my life and I want them in my life, just like I want you. Why else do you think I’m here?” This really isn’t going how I imagined.
“I’ve watched you die. I’ve watched you run out of fear, but I will not watch you leave me again because it’s easier than fighting for a life with me. Go to San Francisco, I won’t be here waiting for you…if you leave, I’m done with you,” he says coldly.
This has the opposite reaction to what I imagine he intended.
My tears stop almost instantly, my back goes rigid and I square my shoulders; I hate ultimatums. And I am done with being manipulated and controlled.
He just found the sure-fire way to get me from heartbroken to furious in a nanosecond.
I push him away so that he’s no longer touching me and all my anger from the last few days, every emotion that I’ve tried to control and keep calm, explodes from depths of my soul.
Considering he’s spent over a century in love with me, you’d think he would be above emotionally blackmailing me; apparently not. Apparently, he’s stupid enough to think that will work, when at this moment in time, I don’t remember my life with him and although my feelings for him are intense, I’m not in love. I could’ve been, quite easily, but he’s ruined it. Every hopeful emotion I had for a loving future with him is now twisted, black and bitter.
“Here’s something you may not know about this new version of me; I hate ultimatums. Are you really stupid enough to demand I choose between you and my parents? You said that I’m not the woman you fell in love with, well you’re right about that. I’m not her and I’m sick of you holding me to the same impossible standard. I refuse to live the shadow of a woman I don’t remember. I am done with my parents dictating how I live my new life and you constantly comparing me to my old one. This is me now. These are my choices and you can all either get on board and support me or get out. My life doesn’t have space in it for people who aren’t on my side.
“You seem to forget that I don’t know you, and you’re obviously so wrapped up in memories of our old life that you don’t know me either. And I’m not going to pick a stranger over my parents. I am choosing the Corps because I want to…my choice; not my parents and not yours. I want that adventure just as I want my parents and you…but these things have to be on my terms. I am not running away from you or my parents; I am choosing a career that gives me the freedom I’ve been denied. It doesn’t mean I don’t want you, even after your dick move of emotional blackmail. I am making a choice for me and when, or if, you decide you can live with that, you know where I’ll be.”
I turn away from him and his stunned silence and walk back towards the car. Dee follows once she’s picked her jaw up off the floor, Jackson doesn’t.
He doesn’t reach for me.
He doesn’t call my name.
He does nothing.
My disappointment hits an all-time low when I find a black SUV parked next to Dee’s convertible and Tristan leaning against the hood.
Great.
“I figured I knew you two well enough to know you’d pull something like this,” he says gruffly.
“So how hysterical was my mom when you told her we’d gone?” I ask sourly.
“She doesn’t know and I won’t be telling her. You had a point, Em. We haven’t been fair to you and for my part in that I’m sorry. I can’t promise I won’t do it again if I’m ordered to by my employer, but despite what you might think of me, I do care about you. That’s why I followed you both and it’s also why I’m not informing your parents. I will contact Matron Price and tell her that we are out together having breakfast and trying to mend bridges or something. That way she won’t get suspicious over your absence.”
“You have our backs?” Dee asks, her disbelief clear.
“I do,” he says simply.
Chapter Sixteen
SIX YEARS LATER
My heart beats rapidly in the darkness of the new apartment I share with Dee and Alex, my breathing struggling to even out after yet another Jackson-induced dream.
I get up from my vast and empty bed and open my sizeable, but mostly empty, walk-in closet. Hidden on one of my highest shelves at the back is Jackson’s stolen sweater. The smell of him disappeared years ago, but I still seek comfort from the soft, oversized garment when I have trouble sleeping.
I don’t sleep well because even after all these years, I’m still thinking about Jackson and the irony is that it’s only when I put his clothes on that I actually get some peaceful sleep.
He could also give me the fucking of my life – I’m sure that would send me to sleep.
I roughly pull the sweater over my head roughly, fucking exhausted from never having my head to myself…of always sharing it with thoughts of him.
Dee and Alex are right; I need serious help as far as Jackson is concerned. But deep down I know that the only person who can help me with my Jackson obsession is Jackson himself. Since he’s never reached out or tried to make contact with me once over the past six years, I think it’s safe to say that our ship has sailed.