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"Sit."
I jump at the sudden sound of his voice. But, before my mind can even think to question his command, my body is following it. I walk to the chair and sit down, back rigid with anxiety and anticipation. And fear, but not the kind I've usually felt with him. This fear is from not knowing how he'll look at me when he finally does turn around, if that anger will still be there. If all of this is an attempt to just go back to the way we were, and I'll have to break my own heart by refusing him. Because we can't go back now, orIcan't.
He continues cooking, without saying another word. And I clench my hands into fists in my lap, waiting, dreading. I look back toward the front of the kitchen, into the dark dining room, wondering where Law is, where anyone is, and if he used the darkness to lure me back here. And if so, why? Finally, I can't take the silence anymore.
"Jackson, what-"
"Silence!"
He doesn't even say it loudly, but the word cuts me anyway, making my back straighten as I snap my mouth shut. Then I get angry. He doesn't get to talk to me like that because he's upset. I open my mouth again, ready to tell him just that when he begins speaking.
"Imagine my surprise when I get to my brother's house and tell him that I'll go see if the baby's sleeping while he puts the boxes of diapers we just brought away, but when I go upstairs, instead of hearing a baby's cries, I hear the woman who just told me to get the fuck out of her life talking about how she loves me."
I thought I was utterly still before. Now, I'm like a rock. My wide eyes watch his back as he continues to stir the food, continues to talk to me with his back turned to me.
"So I stood there, right outside the door, and listened to her explain that she'd let me go to set me free from a feeling she never asked if I shared. That she had assumed, all without a word from me, that it was better to never be with me again than to do it with love in her heart that she felt would be a betrayal to me. That she'd lied to me, deceived me."
He turns off the flame, sets the spoon down, and I know he's about to turn around, finally. I push my guilt for everything he just said aside for a moment. Well, my fear pushes it aside as it renews, becomes more, from me trying to ready myself to seehis face, his eyes. But the moment he faces me, I realize I'm not ready at all.
His eyes tear into me, cutting me with their rage. His chest heaves with heavy breaths as his eyes go over my face, taking me in. Can he see my remorse, for lying, for not giving him a chance to have his say? Can he see that I never meant to... I don't know what the hell he feels right now, other than the obvious anger he's stabbing me with.
"Yes, imagine how I felt standing there, listening to her admit that she'd protected her own heart, without ever stopping to give a single fucking thought about my heart. That she's been so selfish. That she'd done what was best for her and called it doing what was best for me. I stood there and listened to her admit her love for me to someone other than me, because she never gave me the chance to hear those words from her myself."
Is he... hurt? Does this mean... God, I'm so fucking confused. Is he just hurt that I lied to him? That I let him walk out of my house believing I didn't want him anymore? Or is it something more? He said I never thought about his heart. Does that mean his heart was ever a part of this equation?
He turns back around, opens the oven and takes a pan out, continuing to talk.
"Then my brother came, and I had no excuse to linger in the hallway anymore, so I stepped into the nursery, saw this woman I'd just heard talking about me. At first, I felt sad, because this beautiful woman, she'd felt her heart wasn't safe with me. That I wasn't safe. But then, what I felt morphed, became anger, such fucking anger, because why the fuck hadn't she just told me, talked to me, asked me. But no." He quickly turns around and slams the pan on the table. I flinch, but he just keeps talking. "She lied, to my face, looking me in my eyes, and offered me noexplanation when she told me we had to come to an end. She assumed she was nothing more to me than a tight pussy and a body to lay under mine. She assumed so many things. But now I knew the truth."
He nods and turns back to the stove, getting the pan off of it. "I knew why she really ended us. I knew all the things she thought she knew and was dead wrong about. I knew so many things now. And the things I knew followed me as I followed her down the stairs, staring at every inch of the body that had been haunting my dreams since she told me I couldn't have it anymore. Listening to the voice that I'd missed more than any sound in this world. Longing to touch her because she had denied me that, with a lie."
God, his words are killing me, ravishing the very heart that he's saying lied to him. Could I really have gotten things so wrong? Could I have been as blind as he's telling me I was? Could he have felt something for me? And have I fucked it all up now? I need to tell him I never meant to hurt him. Swallowing, I finally get my wits enough to speak.
"I didn't mean to-"
He quickly cuts me off, shouting, "You had your chance to speak, and you withheld your words from me. So don't speak now."
He turns back around, and I watch his every move as he puts some of the green beans on his plate. Then he's coming near me, and I dare not crane my head to follow him. He gets closer, closer, until he's behind me, then leaning down to put green beans on my plate, his mouth to my ear.
"You should have asked, Charlotte," he whispers.
Just hearing my name leave his mouth is enough to make me shiver. He walks to the side of the table, leaning over to put the pot beside the pan he pulled from the oven. Cutting intowhatever it is, I'm too afraid and stunned to look away from Jackson to find out, then he continues.
"Because if you had asked how I felt, I would have told you that I feel like I can hardly breathe when I'm not with you. That you're constantly on my mind and have taken over my thoughts so much that I feel like you've consumed me, and that I was happy to no longer belong to myself. As long as that meant that I was yours."
This can't be real. He can't be saying these things to me. He can't possibly mean these words. That he cares for me too. That he wants me as much as I want him. For the first time since sitting, I move, only to clench the arms of the chair. I feel they're the only thing holding me here. Because my heart wants to take flight, his every word giving it feathers that are forming wings. But somehow, somewhere, there's still a disbelief that this can all really be happening. That he's done everything that's brought us together right now, to have this moment, so I could hear these words.
"If you had only asked, I would have told you that you slowly, and then all at once, have taken over my heart. But no, you didn't stop there. No, you went even further and entered my soul, took complete control of it to the point that I no longer know who I am without you."
He puts something else on my plate, then his. Then he finally sits across from me.
"I would have told you that I have never had another woman in my home, but didn't even think twice about bringing you there, about holding you in my arms all night. That I barely slept because I didn't want to miss a moment of having you so close. I would have told you that I have only ever cooked this meal for two women I've loved. My mother and you."
Lip quivering, knowing what I will find on my plate, I look down at it. Beef Wellington. Even if he had not just declared his love for me, this would have. My eyes are too fixated on my plate, on what him making this dish for me means, to look up at him when he begins speaking again.
"But because you were so afraid of me breaking your heart, you in turn broke mine."
My head does snap up then, just as my breath hitches. I have to swallow to keep from crying at the look in his eyes now. The anger is gone, replaced by sadness, a broken heart.
