Chapter 139

“I was a catastrophe of a person,” Jackson groans, laughing softly as he presses his eyes shut and remembers his first few days in the city. “I was…so shocked by the noise, Ariel, and the pavement – god, stone and metal everywhere - and the people. God, I didn’t think that there were that many people in the world, let alone one city.”

I stay quiet, letting Jackson tell at his own pace. He moves pretty quickly through the story of how he was chosen from the ranks of the young men in his community to attend the Alpha Academy, to gain what new military knowledge he could and bring it back to his own world.

Jacks leaves out a lot as he tells me about how they barely prepared him and then dropped him at a boarding house in the city three months ahead of time, I think not wanting to remember all of it. But he tells me how he showed up basically with a spare set of clothing, a handful of cash, and the order to acclimate himself.

“I stayed inside for a whole week,” he murmurs, shaking his head with an embarrassed smile on his lips. “Like, inside my room. I had this little window? And I sat at it all day, just watching people walk by, trying to…to figure out who they were, what their lives were like. I felt like a complete alien – like I was from another planet, Ariel. There were just – men and women, walking together, holding hands, in these weird clothes – and just like, kids everywhere…” he shakes his head at what must have felt so bizarre.

“Well, what changed?” I ask, desperately curious.

“The landlady came,” he murmurs, looking down at me with a smirk. “Demanding the next week’s rent. And that’s when I realized that…I was going to run out of money very, very soon.”

“What!?” I gasp, horrified that he was out of money after a week. “Jackson, how much did they send you with?”

“Like, fifty bucks,” he says, laughing and shaking his head. “Which I’m sure to them felt like an insane amount of money to just hand over – we don’t deal with a lot of cash in the community. I’m not sure they knew how fast it would run out? Or maybe they did.” He shrugs like it doesn’t matter.

I curl up closer to him, so sorry for my mate and feeling guilty that I’ve never once wondered about paying rent or whether or not I’d have enough money to get by. “So, what did you do?”

“Some of the other guys in the house noticed how miserable and scared I was,” he says, smiling at me and stroking his hand over my hair, “and that I hadn’t eaten in a week. They took pity - got me a job washing dishes at one of the restaurants in town. It was enough for some food, and the rent, and the utilities. And it made me leave the room, made me go do what I was supposed to do – which is learn how to be in this world.”

I’m quiet again as Jackson continues, telling me that he was basically a little mouse of an employee – always on time, reliable, hard-working, but silent. That he spent his days listening to people in the kitchen talking to each other, learning about modern life, starting to pick up the vernacular and get more comfortable here.

“I was lucky,” he murmurs, “that pretty much everyone in the kitchen was a man. There were some waitresses, of course,” he smiles here and covers his face with his hand like he does when he’s embarrassed. “And I realize now that they may have been…hitting on me. But I refused to talk to them – I was terrified.”

I laugh along with him at this and press myself closer, secretly grateful that none of those other girls got their mitts on him. As hypocritical as it is, the idea of another girl touching Jackson makes me want to bare my fangs and tear her stupid face off. And even if Jackson has hinted that there was another girl in his past…well. I guess I don’t want to talk about her right now, do I?

“I hate that,” I murmur, working to press myself closer to him, even though that’s not really possible. “I hate the idea of you scared, and alone, and talking to girls when I was just like…half a city away.”

“But you were engaged,” he says, his voice strange – I think a little amused? I don’t know. I can’t quite parse it.

“You knew about that?” I ask, looking up at him wide-eyed.

“How could I not?” he asks, grinning at me. “You were all over the media – and it’s all anyone would talk about, especially as it got close.”

“Well,” I say, smiling myself a little too and reaching up to stroke my fingers through his hair. “What did you think about it?”

“You’ll be disappointed in me, Ari,” he murmurs, lowering his face and taking a sniff of my hair. “I didn’t really think about it. It was all very far from what I had been instructed to think was important, what I could understand – a royal wedding…” he shakes his head. “I didn’t have a way to understand it, why it was important.”

“Oh, come on,” I say, shoving his shoulder a little, my smile deepening. “You must have thought something.”

Jackson grins at me for a long moment before he breaks, looking away from me like he can’t hold my eyes while he admits it. “Fine,” he says, heaving a little sigh. “I thought you were…very pretty.”

“Pretty!?” I say, grinning and sitting up straighter with a happy squeak. “You thought I was pretty!?”

“Just in passing,” he mutters, still not looking at me, a faint blush on his cheeks. “I saw a few pictures on the covers of magazines –“

“So then how did you not recognize me when we met!?” I shout, laughing and tugging on his shirt, wanting him to look at me again. My mate, ever obliging, turns his head to smile at me.

“Because you were a boy, Ariel – and you smelled like a boy, and I had no reason to equate the lowest-ranked Candidate at the academy with the pretty girl I’d seen on a magazine cover –“

“You thought I was prettttty,” I sing, a little delighted, wiggling victoriously in his lap.

“And I was right,” he growls, snatching me closer and bending me back a bit in a way that makes heat coil in my core. “You are pretty. Much prettier in person, and not dressed up in all that bride-y gauze.”

“Yes, all that bride stuff really was crap,” I say with a sigh, staring up at him, starry-eyed and swept away by how wonderful he is – at once handsome, and powerful, and cute. God, how does he manage it?

But there’s still so much more I want to know, and I’m being selfish, turning this conversation away from him.

“So,” I ask, quieting down, sitting up straighter and resolving to be good. “How’d you spend your time off? Did you hang out with the guys that you lived with?”

All I want in the world right now is to sit right here in my mate’s lap, listening to him talk for hours, spinning out the story of his life. I’d listen for days, if time and circumstance would let me, even though I know they won’t.

“In my time off,” Jackson murmurs, thinking back on it and raising his hand to my hair, petting me again, “at first, I just sat alone in my room. But then the guys I lived with – they were kind, but…a little rough, you know? They told me I’m a sad sack and that I was being a creep, just sitting in there in the dark. They made me come out into the communal living room, which is where I discovered…television.”

“What!?” I gasp, unable to keep from laughing a little. Jackson laughs along with me, though, giving a self-deprecating little shrug. “You didn’t know what television was!?”