Asunder 1/5
Mar. 30th, 2012 01:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
deeperwondermentTitle: Asunder
Author:shadowcat
Rating: R.
Word Count: 33,279
Fandom: Original Work
Characters/Pairings: Jhaidan Matthews/Reid Jacobs
Challenge: Written for![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
angstbigbang
Summary: Once upon a time, Romeo met Juliet and they thought they were soulmates that would be together forever. Then Juliet did something that Romeo disapproved of and Juliet disappeared. Thirteen years later, Romeo has turned into the Big Bad Wolf and he's going to make Juliet regret breaking his heart. Or something like that. Reality being that after a fight where her boyfriend told her she shouldn't come around for awhile, eightteen year old fantasy writer Jhaidan took him further than his word and left town without a word to anyone -- including him. Thirteen years later, Reid is the most powerful man in the state and when their paths cross once again, Reid is going to make Jhaidan regret ever running away like she did.
Disclaimer: The characters and world belong to me. Maggie Grace and Naveen Andrews belong to themselves.
Author's Notes: I've wanted to write this story for awhile and am relieved that I fnally did so. Thanks to everyone who kept pushing me to finish it and special thanks toenochiansigils for refusing to let me drop out no matter how worried I got about writing original fiction for the first time in years.
YESTERDAY
Jhaidan Matthews stared at Reid Jacobs, trying to gather her thoughts and deal with the anger that she was facing. It hadn't been until Reid had yanked her into his apartment that she realized how much time had passed since she walked thoughtlessly into a bad situation.
Well, no, that wasn't exactly true. She had thought about what she was doing. She had known very clearly what she was doing and didn't let the dangers of the situation deter her from making the decision she made.
She wasn't sure what she had been expecting to happen in the aftermath of her fight with her ex, but this certainly hadn't been it. She wasn't prepared for another fight -- and especially not one with that she was so in love with. She stared at her boyfriend, her emotions waging a battle within her.
"Why, damn it?" He demanded for the second time since pulling her into his bedroom and shutting the door. "Why couldn't you have let someone else handle it? Why couldn't you have waited for one of us? You know that any one of the guys would have gone with you if you couldn't wait for me."
"Because he wasn't your problem, Reid! He was mine and I don't expect anyone else to handle my problems. That's not who I am!" She struggled to keep her temper reined in. The last thing that either of them needed was for tempers to make the situation even worse. "I don't hide behind my friends and I definitely don't hide behind my boyfriend when things get tough. I couldn't come to you -- my new boyfriend -- and say that I was having an issue with my ex-boyfriend making things difficult for me!"
In retrospect, she probably could have responded to that question in a different way.
"You take too many risks. You don't think things through -- especially when it comes to your safety!"
"It's who I am!" She shot back. "I've always taken care of things myself!"
He grabbed her and dragged her to the large mirror over his dresser. "Look!" he snarled, pointing at her reflection. "Look what who you are has done to you! That's not even taking into account all of the bruises that you have that I can't see!"
She stared silently at her black eye and her split lip in the mirror's reflection -- testimony to anyone that saw her what had happened when she went back to her old neighborhood -- and then looked back at him. Her temper was getting close to rising, and she clenched her hands into fists, trying to keep herself in check.
"Are you saying that I brought this beating on myself by confronting him? That I deserved what Michael did?!" That wasn't how she meant to ask him what he was thinking, but the last few nights had not been easy ones and her grip on her control was starting to fray.
Reid stared at her in shock. "No... Jhaidan, that's not what ... I didn't mean that." He took a deep breath and then another. "It's just that you need to be more careful. You need to stop taking so many risks that can get you hurt because I can't go through that, my sanity can't handle wondering if you're somewhere hurt or unconscious. You need to think things through and their consequences. You need to not..." His voice trailed off.
"Not what?" The look in his eyes made everything tighten within her.
"Not come around for awhile."
She stared at him, not understanding what he was saying. When the words finally penetrated the fog around her mind she swallowed.
"I see," she said in a whisper. She let herself slide down the wall until she was sitting on the floor. She stared down at the floor, not able to look at him as she felt her heart breaking. "For how long?" She was surprised how steady her voice sounded. How could it sound calm when all she wanted to do was fall apart?
"I don't know, Jhaidan."
There was nothing but silence for a long time. She felt cold all over and she didn't look up at him. She was trying to keep pulled together when all she wanted to do was start crying and ask him to take those words back. She'd agree to anything if he would just take those painful words back. However, he didn't, and after a long time, she felt him take her hand and pull her gently to her feet. She felt him place his hand under her chin and he raised her face to meet his eyes.
"You're a cat, damn it," he said with a catch in his voice. "Land on your feet."
"Oh shit," she whispered with tears slipping down her cheeks slowly. "Teflon."
"Don't," he said softly, reaching to wipe a tear away. "Don't do this, don't cry. You're strong, Jhaidan, stronger than any girl I've ever met. You just... you need to learn when being the strongest isn't the best way to handle things. Sometimes, talking to others and getting help is the best thing to do."
She certainly didn't feel very strong right now, but she didn't think that she could tell him that.
"This is who I am," she whispered. "I've always been a fighter and I've always been the one that takes care of things by hitting them head-on."
"And that's why we're having this conversation," Reid said, looking down into her eyes. "When I heard that you had gone to see him and no one had heard from you in two days..."
"I didn't realize that it had been two days." Her protest was soft.
"That's supposed to make me feel better?" He shook his head. "I can't do this, Jhaidan. I can't wait here while you run into trouble and not know what's going on or if you're okay. I can't sit and wonder if I'm ever going to see you again or if someone is going to come to tell me that you're gone."
"So, what, we're breaking up because I scared you?" Her voice trembled slightly. "You want me to be someone I'm not."
"It's not that, I mean there's more to it than that." He looked away for a moment and then looked back at her. "Just give me some time, Jaguar. Just give me some time to figure out some things in my head."
"Don't call me that." She moved back, almost out of his reach.
"Why not? You're still my Jaguar," he said. "You're still in my heart. We're just taking some time apart."
"How much time?"
"I don't know."
"I see." She nodded.
There wasn't much more to say about that, was there? He had already decided what was going to happen and any discussion they had about it was just going to be formality.
"I better go," she finally whispered, pushing away from his wall and heading for the bedroom door.
"Let me get my keys and I'll take you home."
"You don't have to." She shook her head. "Don't worry about it. I can call a cab."
"No you most certainly cannot," Reid said firmly. "Just because I need time doesn't mean that I don't care what happens to you. I'll take you home and make sure you get there safely. There have been enough close calls for my lifetime in the last few days."
Jhaidan didn't argue with him. She was afraid that if she said anything further, she would break down completely and she couldn't do that. Keeping herself as pulled together as she could was helping her get through this and keeping her from promising anything he wanted if he would just not do this. Her heart was in pieces, but she was doing her best not to let Reid see how much she was dying inside. She had enough of her pride left that she wouldn't beg -- not for anything. When they pulled up in front of her apartment complex, Reid didn't turn off his car.
"Jaguar --" His voice was quiet.
"You don't need to say anything, Reid," she said softly. "I get it. I'm too messy and you need time to decide if all of this between us is worth that." She did her best to shrug off how she was feeling. "I'm not that dense."
"That's not what I said," there was a hint of anger in his voice. "Don't put words into my mouth, Jhaidan. You're better than that."
You didn't say it in so many words, she thought, but she didn't say it aloud. She looked down, shaking her head. "Yeah."
"Promise me that you won't go see him again," Reid said quietly. "I need to know that you're not planning to run off to do anything reckless and endanger yourself."
Opening the door, she shook her head. "Not a problem. I think Michael has ruined my life enough for one week." When he didn't respond, she dipped her head, and started to slide out of the car.
"Jhaidan..."
"Yeah?" She turned to him, hope in her eyes.
"I..." His voice trailed off and she swallowed painfully when he didn't continue whatever that thought was.
"No matter what you think of me right now, Reid," she said softly. "I do love you."
She slid out of the car and shut the door carefully behind her. As she walked up the stairs to her apartment, she kept waiting to hear him open his door and hear his footsteps following her. That never happened and she unlocked her apartment door and let herself in. There was nothing but silence around her for about five minutes before she heard him rev his engine in the parking lot downstairs and take off. Once she could no longer hear his car, she slid to the floor and let the sobs she had been holding back come free.
When he got back to his own apartment, Reid stopped in his kitchen to grab the first bottle of alcohol he could find and then headed to his room. He locked the bedroom door, telling his concerned roommate to go away that he was fine. Sitting down on the edge of his bed, he let out a harsh sigh, burying his face in his hands for several minutes and trying to get his breathing to regulate again.
He had hated seeing that look in Jhaidan's eyes, and he hated even more that he was the one who had put that look there in the first place. He didn't think that he could have made any other decision than he had. The fear he had felt when he heard that Jhaidan had gone alone to confront her ex had been something unlike he'd ever felt before. He'd heard enough stories from her friends about the kind of guy Michael was and hearing that she had willingly gone to meet him alone ...
Reid sighed and reached for the bottle he'd placed on the floor next to the bed. This was so not how he wanted to spend the night. Hell, he had barely spent a night alone since he and Jhaidan got together.
Maybe that was the problem. They had given into love at first sight -- and usually he was so much wiser than that. Everything had been so perfect and so intense between them that he hadn't stopped to think much about any kind of baggage either one of them might be carrying. He'd known that she was coming out of a bad relationship that had left scars, but he hadn't delved too deeply into the knowledge of that relationship.
It wasn't until she was missing for two days that his thoughts turned to her previous relationship and what kind of situation that had been.
The fear had been all-encompassing and he meant it when he told her that he didn’t know how to react when he had been told that none of her friends had heard from her in the two days since she was known to have gone to see Michael. Every time there was a knock on the door or his cell phone rang, he had expected there to be bad news. He’d expected that he was going to be told that something had happened to her and that she was in the hospital or worse.
That was no way to live, no matter how much he loved her.
That she was standing on her own two feet when he finally saw her was a relief. However, it was a relief that was drastically overshadowed by the bruises that she was sporting on her face. He reacted with emotion instead of logic when he saw her and that had led to their fight and his decision to take a break from their relationship for awhile.
He needed to find peace of mind and clarity, and she needed to think about the potential ramifications of her actions.
They would spend a few nights apart to let their tempers and their emotions cool, and then they would get together and talk things over. They would come together with clear heads and make some decisions about how to handle things in the future.
He'd give it a few days so she knew that he had really been serious about taking some time out from their relationship. Once she had calmed down and had some time to think, she'd realize that sometimes you had to think about other ways to handle a volatile situation that wasn't running head first into the oncoming disaster.
He took another drink from the bottle.
A few days apart wouldn't hurt them.
It was a little more difficult than she had expected it to be.
With everything that had happened she expected that making the decision to move and actually doing it would be an easy one. There was something about taking a stand that made her falter only slightly in her mind. This was no longer her place and she didn’t belong in this area any more.
She needed to go, to get away from everything that happened. She needed to find someplace that was completely new and where no one would expect her to go. She wouldn’t heal completely until she got away and she knew that.
Even as she made the plans and she started packing the things she would need, she couldn’t help but look at the door or at the phone.
The fact that they remained silent and had for days only strengthened her belief that she was doing the right thing.
As the last items went into a box, she stopped and lifted up one of her photo albums from the top of the stack. This one was full of the most recent photos from the past few months. She flipped to the back and stared for a moment at the photo there, before closing the album and putting it back into the box. She blinked back the tears that filled her eyes and then taped up the box with a sense of finality in her mind.
She watched the movers load the packed boxes into their truck and when the place was empty except for the items that would travel with her, she swallowed hard.
It was done. She really was leaving.
She didn’t sleep much that night. The apartment was too empty and it just reminded her of everything that had led up to this moment.
Long before the sun came up, she was already moving about the apartment, making sure the final items she would need went into her luggage. When she heard the cab drive up downstairs, she was already halfway out the door. She loaded her bags into the trunk and then got into the backseat. As the driver turned the cab onto the freeway towards the airport, she couldn’t help but look out the back window at everything that she was leaving behind.
It was kind of amazing how taking a stand felt a little like running away.
Or maybe not running so much as feeling that she had no choice but to leave and start over somewhere new. She closed her eyes and took several deep breaths to relax. They didn’t help, but it let her focus on something besides how hollowed out and empty she felt with all of this right now. No one knew what she was doing; she had made sure of that. She hadn’t wanted to deal with people trying to change her mind – or someone not caring that she was leaving.
So in her own mind, she was taking a stand. Other opinions might have varied, but this is what she believed she was doing. Leaving and starting over somewhere else was the best way she knew of to heal and to redirect her life onto a new path. It would be a new path that wouldn’t be led by her emotions or any of the pain that she was feeling right now.
Starting over in a new country with a new job and a new life was what she was doing. The job offer had just come through at the best possible time for her. Everything had been up in the air and in flux for her emotionally and the new job gave her some kind of stability.
It gave her the only sense of control she had felt in her life the past few weeks.
She checked in at the airline counter and then made her way through security. Once she was at her gate, she sat down in one of the chairs closest to the door and waited for her flight to be called. She didn’t bother to spend time looking around because there was no one to look for. Instead, she pulled out a notebook from her messenger bag and started writing.
She wasn’t sure what she was writing, only that she needed to get the words and feelings onto paper. She could go back and re-read it later and decide if it was something to save or something to discard. When she heard the attendant announce that her flight was arriving, she carefully closed the notebook and returned it to her bag. She gathered up the things that she was bringing onto the plane with her and walked down the tunnel into the plane without looking back.
It was only when the plane was in the air that she allowed herself the escape of tears.
TODAY
The small article on an inside page of the morning newspaper jumped out at him. His hands were shaking as he spread the paper on the table to read the article.
Bookstore to Host Author for Book Signing
He leaned back against his chair and closed his eyes, taking a deep breath.
She was coming back.
...It had been thirteen years since the last time he had last seen her. Jhaidan Matthews had been a free spirit, full of fire, and he had fallen in love with her from the moment he touched her hand and looked into her stormy blue-gray eyes. Unfortunately, the very traits that had made him fall in love with her had also managed to cause them some problems. Finally after one too many times of her fire getting her into trouble and her getting hurt, he had foolishly decided that he had had enough. He had stared into her bruised and battered face---a souvenir from the fight with her ex-boyfriend---and told her that it was over between them.
She hadn't broken down and cried, but now, he knew it would have been better if she had. He had watched those beautiful stormy eyes fill with despair. She had gone completely silent and stared at his floor. It had been at that moment that he realized that magic did indeed dance around this girl he had lost his heart to. It had gone completely silent around her. If he had known how much he had broken her spirit, he would have taken back those words. Instead, he had taken her hand and pulled her to her feet. He had placed his hand under her chin and raised her face to meet his eyes.
"You're a cat, damn it," he had said with a catch in his voice. "Land on your feet."
"Oh shit," she had whispered with tears slipping down her cheeks slowly. "Teflon."
He had held her for a long time and at the end of that long night, he had taken her home and then had come back and proceeded to drink himself into oblivion...
Now, he stood up from the breakfast table and walked into his library. For a long moment he stood in the doorway, before walking directly to the shelf that he always looked at when he was doing business at his desk.
That night had been the last time he had seen her. When a week had gone by with no word from her, and then another, he had driven to her apartment. When he had arrived, her brother had been less than happy to see him. She was gone and no one had any idea of how to find her. Her friends and family blamed him for her disappearance, and truth be told, he blamed himself, as well. Months had passed with no word, and six months later he had been in the local mall when he had seen the book display.
The name on the book said Morghann Lesconflair, but the title of the book and the writing style were purely the form of his missing Jaguar. He'd read enough of her poetry and short stories when they had been dating that he would recognize it anywhere. Not to mention that he had been the one to help her come up with a pseudonym to use while she was trying to get something of hers published. He wondered if her using that name was meant to be a slap in the face or some kind of acknowledgement to him for his part in her new life – the one that he had been unceremoniously cut out of. Either way, it had served to anger him a little bit. He had immediately purchased the book. Somehow, a new book had come out every year and he had purchased all thirteen of them, always searching for a clue as to where she was or how she was doing. Each time a book was released, he renewed his search for her, only to come up empty handed.
It had served to frustrate him in more ways than one. It also made him angry that she was going through such great lengths to hide from him. He knew that she contacted her brother from time to time, so the fact that he couldn’t find her was like an open wound in his psyche. It had made him more determined than ever to find her – but thus far, his determination had yielded him nothing.
He took down her first book and flipped it open to the dedication page.
~~To My Lord of the Valley of the Black Orchids---This Lady of the Raging Fire still loves thee~~
Each of Jhaidan's books had some sort of dedication to him, but that was the only type of communication he had had from her in thirteen years. They were dedications that she knew wouldn't mean anything to anyone but the person they had been intended for; him. She knew him well enough to know that curiosity would drive him to at least pick up her books and glance through them. Each book had a dedication of some kind for him, but they hadn't spoken since that night. She hadn't called or even sent a letter to tell him where she was and that she was all right. She hadn't even had the decency to send him a damn postcard to let him know that she was safe and hadn't done something stupid.
Because, unfortunately, the thought that she had caused herself harm had crossed his mind. Jhaidan had always been of the opinion that a true writer had to try to experience everything in life and the world – the good and the bad. He didn’t know where she had come up with that idea, but it had been one of those things that he had often wanted to shake her over. (Truthfully, the first time he had caught her on the back of someone’s motorcycle had caused his heart to just about stop.)
Not once in all of those thirteen years had he been given any direct contact with her. He regretted that he hadn't spoken with her since that last night when he dropped her off at her apartment – regretted that he hadn’t checked up on her sooner. However, the blame wasn’t only his. She had to shoulder some of the blame since she hadn’t made any attempt to contact him after their last conversation. She had been hiding from him all of this time.
She had been the one to make the decision to hide from him this whole time. She had been the one to decide how things would be left between them.
That would all be changing tomorrow.
She’d had thirteen years to pretend to be someone else and keep herself at a distance from the issues that were between them. For thirteen years she had hidden and avoided him and the past, and now she was out of time.
The thing about unresolved issues and anger was that they tended to fester and then to get worse.
Jhaidan was going to find out firsthand tomorrow why it was a bad idea to leave him with unanswered questions. It was his turn to have the upper hand -- and she was the one who had given it to him.
Two
Author:
shadowcatRating: R.
Word Count: 33,279
Fandom: Original Work
Characters/Pairings: Jhaidan Matthews/Reid Jacobs
Challenge: Written for
angstbigbangSummary: Once upon a time, Romeo met Juliet and they thought they were soulmates that would be together forever. Then Juliet did something that Romeo disapproved of and Juliet disappeared. Thirteen years later, Romeo has turned into the Big Bad Wolf and he's going to make Juliet regret breaking his heart. Or something like that. Reality being that after a fight where her boyfriend told her she shouldn't come around for awhile, eightteen year old fantasy writer Jhaidan took him further than his word and left town without a word to anyone -- including him. Thirteen years later, Reid is the most powerful man in the state and when their paths cross once again, Reid is going to make Jhaidan regret ever running away like she did.
Disclaimer: The characters and world belong to me. Maggie Grace and Naveen Andrews belong to themselves.
Author's Notes: I've wanted to write this story for awhile and am relieved that I fnally did so. Thanks to everyone who kept pushing me to finish it and special thanks to
enochiansigils for refusing to let me drop out no matter how worried I got about writing original fiction for the first time in years.YESTERDAY
Jhaidan Matthews stared at Reid Jacobs, trying to gather her thoughts and deal with the anger that she was facing. It hadn't been until Reid had yanked her into his apartment that she realized how much time had passed since she walked thoughtlessly into a bad situation.
Well, no, that wasn't exactly true. She had thought about what she was doing. She had known very clearly what she was doing and didn't let the dangers of the situation deter her from making the decision she made.
She wasn't sure what she had been expecting to happen in the aftermath of her fight with her ex, but this certainly hadn't been it. She wasn't prepared for another fight -- and especially not one with that she was so in love with. She stared at her boyfriend, her emotions waging a battle within her.
"Why, damn it?" He demanded for the second time since pulling her into his bedroom and shutting the door. "Why couldn't you have let someone else handle it? Why couldn't you have waited for one of us? You know that any one of the guys would have gone with you if you couldn't wait for me."
"Because he wasn't your problem, Reid! He was mine and I don't expect anyone else to handle my problems. That's not who I am!" She struggled to keep her temper reined in. The last thing that either of them needed was for tempers to make the situation even worse. "I don't hide behind my friends and I definitely don't hide behind my boyfriend when things get tough. I couldn't come to you -- my new boyfriend -- and say that I was having an issue with my ex-boyfriend making things difficult for me!"
In retrospect, she probably could have responded to that question in a different way.
"You take too many risks. You don't think things through -- especially when it comes to your safety!"
"It's who I am!" She shot back. "I've always taken care of things myself!"
He grabbed her and dragged her to the large mirror over his dresser. "Look!" he snarled, pointing at her reflection. "Look what who you are has done to you! That's not even taking into account all of the bruises that you have that I can't see!"
She stared silently at her black eye and her split lip in the mirror's reflection -- testimony to anyone that saw her what had happened when she went back to her old neighborhood -- and then looked back at him. Her temper was getting close to rising, and she clenched her hands into fists, trying to keep herself in check.
"Are you saying that I brought this beating on myself by confronting him? That I deserved what Michael did?!" That wasn't how she meant to ask him what he was thinking, but the last few nights had not been easy ones and her grip on her control was starting to fray.
Reid stared at her in shock. "No... Jhaidan, that's not what ... I didn't mean that." He took a deep breath and then another. "It's just that you need to be more careful. You need to stop taking so many risks that can get you hurt because I can't go through that, my sanity can't handle wondering if you're somewhere hurt or unconscious. You need to think things through and their consequences. You need to not..." His voice trailed off.
"Not what?" The look in his eyes made everything tighten within her.
"Not come around for awhile."
She stared at him, not understanding what he was saying. When the words finally penetrated the fog around her mind she swallowed.
"I see," she said in a whisper. She let herself slide down the wall until she was sitting on the floor. She stared down at the floor, not able to look at him as she felt her heart breaking. "For how long?" She was surprised how steady her voice sounded. How could it sound calm when all she wanted to do was fall apart?
"I don't know, Jhaidan."
There was nothing but silence for a long time. She felt cold all over and she didn't look up at him. She was trying to keep pulled together when all she wanted to do was start crying and ask him to take those words back. She'd agree to anything if he would just take those painful words back. However, he didn't, and after a long time, she felt him take her hand and pull her gently to her feet. She felt him place his hand under her chin and he raised her face to meet his eyes.
"You're a cat, damn it," he said with a catch in his voice. "Land on your feet."
"Oh shit," she whispered with tears slipping down her cheeks slowly. "Teflon."
"Don't," he said softly, reaching to wipe a tear away. "Don't do this, don't cry. You're strong, Jhaidan, stronger than any girl I've ever met. You just... you need to learn when being the strongest isn't the best way to handle things. Sometimes, talking to others and getting help is the best thing to do."
She certainly didn't feel very strong right now, but she didn't think that she could tell him that.
"This is who I am," she whispered. "I've always been a fighter and I've always been the one that takes care of things by hitting them head-on."
"And that's why we're having this conversation," Reid said, looking down into her eyes. "When I heard that you had gone to see him and no one had heard from you in two days..."
"I didn't realize that it had been two days." Her protest was soft.
"That's supposed to make me feel better?" He shook his head. "I can't do this, Jhaidan. I can't wait here while you run into trouble and not know what's going on or if you're okay. I can't sit and wonder if I'm ever going to see you again or if someone is going to come to tell me that you're gone."
"So, what, we're breaking up because I scared you?" Her voice trembled slightly. "You want me to be someone I'm not."
"It's not that, I mean there's more to it than that." He looked away for a moment and then looked back at her. "Just give me some time, Jaguar. Just give me some time to figure out some things in my head."
"Don't call me that." She moved back, almost out of his reach.
"Why not? You're still my Jaguar," he said. "You're still in my heart. We're just taking some time apart."
"How much time?"
"I don't know."
"I see." She nodded.
There wasn't much more to say about that, was there? He had already decided what was going to happen and any discussion they had about it was just going to be formality.
"I better go," she finally whispered, pushing away from his wall and heading for the bedroom door.
"Let me get my keys and I'll take you home."
"You don't have to." She shook her head. "Don't worry about it. I can call a cab."
"No you most certainly cannot," Reid said firmly. "Just because I need time doesn't mean that I don't care what happens to you. I'll take you home and make sure you get there safely. There have been enough close calls for my lifetime in the last few days."
Jhaidan didn't argue with him. She was afraid that if she said anything further, she would break down completely and she couldn't do that. Keeping herself as pulled together as she could was helping her get through this and keeping her from promising anything he wanted if he would just not do this. Her heart was in pieces, but she was doing her best not to let Reid see how much she was dying inside. She had enough of her pride left that she wouldn't beg -- not for anything. When they pulled up in front of her apartment complex, Reid didn't turn off his car.
"Jaguar --" His voice was quiet.
"You don't need to say anything, Reid," she said softly. "I get it. I'm too messy and you need time to decide if all of this between us is worth that." She did her best to shrug off how she was feeling. "I'm not that dense."
"That's not what I said," there was a hint of anger in his voice. "Don't put words into my mouth, Jhaidan. You're better than that."
You didn't say it in so many words, she thought, but she didn't say it aloud. She looked down, shaking her head. "Yeah."
"Promise me that you won't go see him again," Reid said quietly. "I need to know that you're not planning to run off to do anything reckless and endanger yourself."
Opening the door, she shook her head. "Not a problem. I think Michael has ruined my life enough for one week." When he didn't respond, she dipped her head, and started to slide out of the car.
"Jhaidan..."
"Yeah?" She turned to him, hope in her eyes.
"I..." His voice trailed off and she swallowed painfully when he didn't continue whatever that thought was.
"No matter what you think of me right now, Reid," she said softly. "I do love you."
She slid out of the car and shut the door carefully behind her. As she walked up the stairs to her apartment, she kept waiting to hear him open his door and hear his footsteps following her. That never happened and she unlocked her apartment door and let herself in. There was nothing but silence around her for about five minutes before she heard him rev his engine in the parking lot downstairs and take off. Once she could no longer hear his car, she slid to the floor and let the sobs she had been holding back come free.
When he got back to his own apartment, Reid stopped in his kitchen to grab the first bottle of alcohol he could find and then headed to his room. He locked the bedroom door, telling his concerned roommate to go away that he was fine. Sitting down on the edge of his bed, he let out a harsh sigh, burying his face in his hands for several minutes and trying to get his breathing to regulate again.
He had hated seeing that look in Jhaidan's eyes, and he hated even more that he was the one who had put that look there in the first place. He didn't think that he could have made any other decision than he had. The fear he had felt when he heard that Jhaidan had gone alone to confront her ex had been something unlike he'd ever felt before. He'd heard enough stories from her friends about the kind of guy Michael was and hearing that she had willingly gone to meet him alone ...
Reid sighed and reached for the bottle he'd placed on the floor next to the bed. This was so not how he wanted to spend the night. Hell, he had barely spent a night alone since he and Jhaidan got together.
Maybe that was the problem. They had given into love at first sight -- and usually he was so much wiser than that. Everything had been so perfect and so intense between them that he hadn't stopped to think much about any kind of baggage either one of them might be carrying. He'd known that she was coming out of a bad relationship that had left scars, but he hadn't delved too deeply into the knowledge of that relationship.
It wasn't until she was missing for two days that his thoughts turned to her previous relationship and what kind of situation that had been.
The fear had been all-encompassing and he meant it when he told her that he didn’t know how to react when he had been told that none of her friends had heard from her in the two days since she was known to have gone to see Michael. Every time there was a knock on the door or his cell phone rang, he had expected there to be bad news. He’d expected that he was going to be told that something had happened to her and that she was in the hospital or worse.
That was no way to live, no matter how much he loved her.
That she was standing on her own two feet when he finally saw her was a relief. However, it was a relief that was drastically overshadowed by the bruises that she was sporting on her face. He reacted with emotion instead of logic when he saw her and that had led to their fight and his decision to take a break from their relationship for awhile.
He needed to find peace of mind and clarity, and she needed to think about the potential ramifications of her actions.
They would spend a few nights apart to let their tempers and their emotions cool, and then they would get together and talk things over. They would come together with clear heads and make some decisions about how to handle things in the future.
He'd give it a few days so she knew that he had really been serious about taking some time out from their relationship. Once she had calmed down and had some time to think, she'd realize that sometimes you had to think about other ways to handle a volatile situation that wasn't running head first into the oncoming disaster.
He took another drink from the bottle.
A few days apart wouldn't hurt them.
It was a little more difficult than she had expected it to be.
With everything that had happened she expected that making the decision to move and actually doing it would be an easy one. There was something about taking a stand that made her falter only slightly in her mind. This was no longer her place and she didn’t belong in this area any more.
She needed to go, to get away from everything that happened. She needed to find someplace that was completely new and where no one would expect her to go. She wouldn’t heal completely until she got away and she knew that.
Even as she made the plans and she started packing the things she would need, she couldn’t help but look at the door or at the phone.
The fact that they remained silent and had for days only strengthened her belief that she was doing the right thing.
As the last items went into a box, she stopped and lifted up one of her photo albums from the top of the stack. This one was full of the most recent photos from the past few months. She flipped to the back and stared for a moment at the photo there, before closing the album and putting it back into the box. She blinked back the tears that filled her eyes and then taped up the box with a sense of finality in her mind.
She watched the movers load the packed boxes into their truck and when the place was empty except for the items that would travel with her, she swallowed hard.
It was done. She really was leaving.
She didn’t sleep much that night. The apartment was too empty and it just reminded her of everything that had led up to this moment.
Long before the sun came up, she was already moving about the apartment, making sure the final items she would need went into her luggage. When she heard the cab drive up downstairs, she was already halfway out the door. She loaded her bags into the trunk and then got into the backseat. As the driver turned the cab onto the freeway towards the airport, she couldn’t help but look out the back window at everything that she was leaving behind.
It was kind of amazing how taking a stand felt a little like running away.
Or maybe not running so much as feeling that she had no choice but to leave and start over somewhere new. She closed her eyes and took several deep breaths to relax. They didn’t help, but it let her focus on something besides how hollowed out and empty she felt with all of this right now. No one knew what she was doing; she had made sure of that. She hadn’t wanted to deal with people trying to change her mind – or someone not caring that she was leaving.
So in her own mind, she was taking a stand. Other opinions might have varied, but this is what she believed she was doing. Leaving and starting over somewhere else was the best way she knew of to heal and to redirect her life onto a new path. It would be a new path that wouldn’t be led by her emotions or any of the pain that she was feeling right now.
Starting over in a new country with a new job and a new life was what she was doing. The job offer had just come through at the best possible time for her. Everything had been up in the air and in flux for her emotionally and the new job gave her some kind of stability.
It gave her the only sense of control she had felt in her life the past few weeks.
She checked in at the airline counter and then made her way through security. Once she was at her gate, she sat down in one of the chairs closest to the door and waited for her flight to be called. She didn’t bother to spend time looking around because there was no one to look for. Instead, she pulled out a notebook from her messenger bag and started writing.
She wasn’t sure what she was writing, only that she needed to get the words and feelings onto paper. She could go back and re-read it later and decide if it was something to save or something to discard. When she heard the attendant announce that her flight was arriving, she carefully closed the notebook and returned it to her bag. She gathered up the things that she was bringing onto the plane with her and walked down the tunnel into the plane without looking back.
It was only when the plane was in the air that she allowed herself the escape of tears.
TODAY
The small article on an inside page of the morning newspaper jumped out at him. His hands were shaking as he spread the paper on the table to read the article.
Bookstore to Host Author for Book Signing
He leaned back against his chair and closed his eyes, taking a deep breath.
She was coming back.
...It had been thirteen years since the last time he had last seen her. Jhaidan Matthews had been a free spirit, full of fire, and he had fallen in love with her from the moment he touched her hand and looked into her stormy blue-gray eyes. Unfortunately, the very traits that had made him fall in love with her had also managed to cause them some problems. Finally after one too many times of her fire getting her into trouble and her getting hurt, he had foolishly decided that he had had enough. He had stared into her bruised and battered face---a souvenir from the fight with her ex-boyfriend---and told her that it was over between them.
She hadn't broken down and cried, but now, he knew it would have been better if she had. He had watched those beautiful stormy eyes fill with despair. She had gone completely silent and stared at his floor. It had been at that moment that he realized that magic did indeed dance around this girl he had lost his heart to. It had gone completely silent around her. If he had known how much he had broken her spirit, he would have taken back those words. Instead, he had taken her hand and pulled her to her feet. He had placed his hand under her chin and raised her face to meet his eyes.
"You're a cat, damn it," he had said with a catch in his voice. "Land on your feet."
"Oh shit," she had whispered with tears slipping down her cheeks slowly. "Teflon."
He had held her for a long time and at the end of that long night, he had taken her home and then had come back and proceeded to drink himself into oblivion...
Now, he stood up from the breakfast table and walked into his library. For a long moment he stood in the doorway, before walking directly to the shelf that he always looked at when he was doing business at his desk.
That night had been the last time he had seen her. When a week had gone by with no word from her, and then another, he had driven to her apartment. When he had arrived, her brother had been less than happy to see him. She was gone and no one had any idea of how to find her. Her friends and family blamed him for her disappearance, and truth be told, he blamed himself, as well. Months had passed with no word, and six months later he had been in the local mall when he had seen the book display.
The name on the book said Morghann Lesconflair, but the title of the book and the writing style were purely the form of his missing Jaguar. He'd read enough of her poetry and short stories when they had been dating that he would recognize it anywhere. Not to mention that he had been the one to help her come up with a pseudonym to use while she was trying to get something of hers published. He wondered if her using that name was meant to be a slap in the face or some kind of acknowledgement to him for his part in her new life – the one that he had been unceremoniously cut out of. Either way, it had served to anger him a little bit. He had immediately purchased the book. Somehow, a new book had come out every year and he had purchased all thirteen of them, always searching for a clue as to where she was or how she was doing. Each time a book was released, he renewed his search for her, only to come up empty handed.
It had served to frustrate him in more ways than one. It also made him angry that she was going through such great lengths to hide from him. He knew that she contacted her brother from time to time, so the fact that he couldn’t find her was like an open wound in his psyche. It had made him more determined than ever to find her – but thus far, his determination had yielded him nothing.
He took down her first book and flipped it open to the dedication page.
~~To My Lord of the Valley of the Black Orchids---This Lady of the Raging Fire still loves thee~~
Each of Jhaidan's books had some sort of dedication to him, but that was the only type of communication he had had from her in thirteen years. They were dedications that she knew wouldn't mean anything to anyone but the person they had been intended for; him. She knew him well enough to know that curiosity would drive him to at least pick up her books and glance through them. Each book had a dedication of some kind for him, but they hadn't spoken since that night. She hadn't called or even sent a letter to tell him where she was and that she was all right. She hadn't even had the decency to send him a damn postcard to let him know that she was safe and hadn't done something stupid.
Because, unfortunately, the thought that she had caused herself harm had crossed his mind. Jhaidan had always been of the opinion that a true writer had to try to experience everything in life and the world – the good and the bad. He didn’t know where she had come up with that idea, but it had been one of those things that he had often wanted to shake her over. (Truthfully, the first time he had caught her on the back of someone’s motorcycle had caused his heart to just about stop.)
Not once in all of those thirteen years had he been given any direct contact with her. He regretted that he hadn't spoken with her since that last night when he dropped her off at her apartment – regretted that he hadn’t checked up on her sooner. However, the blame wasn’t only his. She had to shoulder some of the blame since she hadn’t made any attempt to contact him after their last conversation. She had been hiding from him all of this time.
She had been the one to make the decision to hide from him this whole time. She had been the one to decide how things would be left between them.
That would all be changing tomorrow.
She’d had thirteen years to pretend to be someone else and keep herself at a distance from the issues that were between them. For thirteen years she had hidden and avoided him and the past, and now she was out of time.
The thing about unresolved issues and anger was that they tended to fester and then to get worse.
Jhaidan was going to find out firsthand tomorrow why it was a bad idea to leave him with unanswered questions. It was his turn to have the upper hand -- and she was the one who had given it to him.
Two
