I looked out at the family. Ember, Dawson, Maria. They all looked as surprised as I was, but who knew…
I looked at Mom and Dad. They looked unreadable as they stared at Grandpa Jim, switching their gaze from him to Seth. I didn’t know what to think. I felt the fingers of disappointment and betrayal flicking up my spine.
“Hey, you okay?” Seth whispered and rubbed my knuckled with his thumb. That thumb. I nodded, unable to speak, and tucked myself closer, pressing my face into his neck. He seemed happy with the move.
Grandpa went on as if nothing had happened. “And you haven’t lived with your family for some time, right?”
“No,” Seth answered slowly. “I live alone. I have an apartment near the fire station.”
“Where do you think you guys will live after you’re married?”
Seth chuckled uncomfortably. “Uh…”
“Grandpa,” I complained.
“Okay, okay. How do you feel about the family? So far?” he amended with a smile.
Seth chuckled a little more. “Everyone’s been great. I haven’t met a Jacobson I didn’t like.”
“How do you feel about Ava’s annoying habit of never wearing the right shoes for snow and ice?”
Seth laughed and looked down at me with a grin. “I’ve noticed. I’ll work on it.”
Grandpa thought, his finger to his lip. “Were the Watsons upset about our breaking traditions? Because Ava hasn’t gone to be included in your clan and won’t ever be doing so?”
Seth just stared, as stunned at the bluntness as I was. Tonight wasn’t supposed to be about this.
My eyes searched my family, looking for the ones who were on board with this. There. Uncle Kyle. His face was hard, but he did look sorry when he saw that I’d figured it out. And Uncle Bish, too. They both looked away from me. They were always the ones who felt like they had to do the hard jobs, be the bad guys.
I looked at my lap and tried not to cry as I heard my grandfather ask another question. I was sure there were others who were on board with this, but I just didn’t care. It was obvious that this party hadn’t just been to welcome my significant into the family; it was to see if he was even worthy of being here in the first place.
Seth was so focused on answering the questions right that he couldn’t hear what I thinking. And I was glad. I hoped he never knew what went on here. I hoped to spare him of how petty my family was being.
But that was a dream that couldn’t come true when the next question Grandpa asked was so brutal.
“I feel like I need to ask, at least once. We know that they attempted to take Ava,” I sat up straighter, but he held his hand up, “the first time you came to see her, and I know you say you didn’t have anything to do with it—”
“I didn’t,” Seth said, his voice hard, fighting to stay respectful to my grandfather.
Rodney, who had been quiet the whole night, stepped forward and said, “I already told you that he was the one who saved her that night. They would have taken her if not for him. He can’t help that they took him as a kid. But the fact the he is bonded to my sister changes everything. You guys should know that. I’m not even bonded yet and even I know that you can’t just throw that away for some revenge plot and pretend it didn’t happen. It’s stronger than that. Just like our vows say.” He looked at Grandpa Peter and he mouthed the words as Rodney said them. “It’s bigger than any ocean, deeper than any well, more powerful than any storm. Remember?”
He pushed through someone and went inside. I still sat up, surprised that my brother had defended Seth with so much gusto and more surprised that Seth hadn’t gotten up and left, never looking back at this point.
Grandpa Jim sighed and leaned on his elbows. “But we still have to protect Ava. And I think the Watsons might have asked you to do things. You can come in the Champion’s house.” I stood, unable to listen to another second of it, but he went on. “You can come in the Visionary’s house—the Visionary that took their powers away. And you’re telling me they never asked you to do them any favors? You’re eventually going to love Ava, I get it. But that doesn’t mean that you have to love her family. You could be with Ava and still carry out the acts that they want you to do to the rest of the family—”
“Grandpa, no,” I begged, letting my chin fall to my chest. I felt a little hysterical. I covered my eyes with my fingers. “You don’t know everything. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Then let me ask him, Ava.” I looked up and finally he was looking at me. “I just want him to answer me. And then I’ll know. We all can go back to being friends and we never have to think about this again.”
“But don’t you see,” I said, my voice cracking, my heart breaking a little. “The damage is done.” I hadn’t looked at Seth since the questioning began, too afraid of what I’d see there on his face. I knew he was confused. I knew he was angry. “His first memory of this family will be that you thought he was a traitor, a spy,” I hissed the word I was so mad. “How could you do that? How could you do that to him and how could you do that to me?” I felt the first tear come and hated that tear with everything in me.
I felt Seth’s fingers wrap around my wrist. I was too scared to look at him.
His ability is that he can feel and read your intent. It’s lessened over the years and you have to say the answer out loud for him to get a read on it.
He scoffed in my mind. That’s a neat trick.
I’m so s—
He didn’t let me finish my apology in my mind. He leaned forward with his elbows on his knees and began to tell them whatever they wanted to hear. “Yes, the first few days my family spent a great deal of time trying to get me to participate in all sorts of plots and plans. But as Rodney so eloquently put, Ava is my significant and I’m not going to hurt her. Hurting her family would hurt her and I’m not going to do that. They said they could break our imprint.” I whimpered and wrapped my arms around myself. Seth stopped for a few seconds before going on. “That they could force an imprint with me and someone else and I would never know the difference. I don’t remember much about my childhood, from when I was young, but I do remember growing up after they adopted me. I grew up with them and the others with a certain mindset. Honestly, I never paid much mind to it. I just wanted to get out, go to college, and get a job, be a fireman just like any other teenager does. All that revenge-Jacobson business didn’t interest me, it was just something I was fed all the time. And then a few years after I moved…I bonded with one.”
Grandpa Jim thought on that and I tried not to glare at him. “What kinds of revenge plans?”
Then I did glare. “Grandpa.”
“Sir, I understand that you’re worried about me being a spy or something. Did I pass your test, by the way?” It was obvious that Seth was also losing his cool a bit.
Grandpa leaned back a little as everyone looked at him to confirm.
“Yes. I don’t feel any ill will at all towards us or Ava from him.” There were actually a couple sighs. I glared at the lot of them. “But we need to know what their plans are for the Visionary and the Champion, and he has all but said that they have them.”
“Of course they have them, Grandpa. They’re the Watsons. We’ve been fighting since before every single one of us was born,” I yelled.
“But if he knows what they’re planning—”
Seth sighed and chuckled sadly. “So it’s not okay for the Watsons to use me as a spy, but it’s okay for the Jacobsons to?”
Everyone stopped.
And that was the kicker. Everyone finally got it. Seth was smack dab in the middle of a war with no side and it sucked. He loved a family that didn’t love him back and was now in a family that apparently didn’t trust him.
Mom stood and I didn’t know what she was going to do. She looked like she wanted to do something, but didn’t know what, and at this point, I was unaware of what side she was on.
I threw caution to the wind and hoped he would accept
me, hoped he would still want me, even if my family didn’t seem to.
I turned, putting my back to the fire and a lot of my family, and faced him. I held my hand out to him and waited. I finally saw his face. He didn’t look angry, per se, just…numb. Disappointed, maybe. He took a few seconds to look up at me and when he did he blinked like he wasn’t sure what he was seeing.
Ava, you don’t have to.
Yes, I do.
You don’t have to choose. I’ll sit here and take it. It’s worth it if makes them—
Come with me, Seth. Please.
He realized that he’d been staring for a while at my hand and didn’t want to embarrass me or make it seem like he wasn’t choosing me, so he moved and took my fingers in his, towering over me, his normally tan, firm face now lit with fire and a scowl as he thought about everything my grandfather had said. And the implications.
I tugged him to follow me as I moved around Grandpa Jim, not looking him in the eye. No one said a word to us. No one. I looked over at Maria and Dawson on their lounger and saw her shake her head and mouth a ‘No’.
No, they hadn’t known about the ambush. I tried my best smile and went inside to get my phone.
“Do you have everything?” I asked him.
“Everything for what?”
I was so angry I was shaking. I couldn’t even think. “We’re going to your place.”
He put his hands on my arms. “I know you’re mad—”
“I want to leave before someone comes in and—”
The kitchen side door swung open and I groaned.
“It’s just me,” Mom said. She came to us slowly. “I threatened bodily harm to anyone else that comes inside.” She sighed harshly. “Daddy’s going to get his. Don’t worry.”
I was still shaking. I leaned against the counter and as soon as I did I watched my mother take my significant and hug him so hard. My mouth fell open, but not in the surprised way or the shocked way. It was in the way that you do hoping it will help stop the tears, the pain in your chest, when it’s too much and you need to release something and don’t know how.
I watched Seth over my mother’s shoulder and he looked so wracked as she whispered to him.
Then she said out loud so I could hear, “We had no part in that, Ava.”
I saw then that he was fighting his emotion. I opened my mind a little, wanting to help him if I could, feeling so guilty for what my family did to him. But it was my mom that was making him feel this way. His mother was never this way with him. He never knew it could be this way and it was so good to feel loved, even with what had just happened out there just now, he could still find so much joy in this moment?
God, I loved this man.
She pulled back and cupped his face hard so he’d listen. “You are my daughter’s significant and that’s it. You’re not a spy. We don’t want to use you. We don’t want to take advantage of you.” I felt my chest get tight and gripped my hands together at my chin. “We don’t want to see if there’s some ploy where we can get information from you because you’re an inside man. No, Seth. We love you because our daughter loves you and because we see how much you love her.” A sob slipped through. “Everyone in this family does not believe the same. It may not have seemed like it out there, but more people than not agree with me. And lucky for you, I’m the boss.” She smiled and let her hands fall away.
“It’s okay, Mrs. J. They had to at least ask, right? I expected it. I’m the enemy’s son.” He looked at me. “Romeo and Juliet. In fact, I expected it from you, but it never came. It stung,” he admitted, looking at the floor, “but I knew at some point it was coming.”
“There were better ways—”
“It’s okay,” he soothed. “It’s done.”
Then she turned to me and we both walked to each other. “Your father didn’t do it either,” she promised.
I sighed in relief. “Thank you.”
“I don’t know what Daddy was thinking, but I’m sure he knew that we’d be against it, or maybe he thought we’d be too attached.” She leaned back and we both looked at Seth, leaned on the breakfast nook. “He’s right.” She grinned. “Come here.”
He smiled and came to her other arm. We made an awkward hug, but Mom didn’t care. Seth wound his arm around my waist and took advantage of it. “We’re going to get through this. And it’s going be hard, but someone told me once that the things that come hard are things that are worth it. I have faith in you two. I know that you’re going to be more than just a great couple, but you’re....destined to do things.” Her eyes lit up. “Actually, let me show you something.”
She went into the desk in the den and pulled out a small lockbox from underneath. In it were signed papers and documents. The deed to the house, titles, all sorts of things, and then she pulled out a stack of papers with a drawing on top.
“When we…” She looked up and locked eyes with Seth. “With everything that’s happened tonight, I don’t know if you want to hear anything else about your family right n—”
“Tell me. I trust you.”
“Well, when we raided the Watson compound that day, we found some drawings.” She pointed to it on the stack of papers and Seth picked it up in wonder. He chuckled.
Even back then you were good.
He shook his head. You don’t have to lie to me, sweetheart. I just can’t believe she has this. I don’t have anything from when I was a kid.
She shrugged. “There’s only two, but they’re yours. You drew them. You should have them.” Mom seemed sad to let them go.
“Thank you,” Seth said, his voice cracking with emotion as he looked at the little boy on a hill holding hands with the woman. “I wonder who the woman is.”
“Ashlyn,” Mom said softly. “Ava told us when she saw it, after we brought it back with us.”
He looked at me. He looked so…awe-filled. “It’s so strange to me that we were connected back then in ways and wound up finding each other again all these years later.” He looked at the drawing. “Do you remember us and Ashlyn together?” he whispered. He looked at me like this answer was particularly important.
“Yeah, some. I didn’t know it was you, until Mom told me it was you. I didn’t remember his name, I just remembered that Ashlyn would take me to see a boy and he…was always so happy to see us.”
Mom looked at the picture. “We were so upset about not finding you at the compound.” She pressed her lips together to stop her tears. To this day she felt guilty. “Ashlyn visited Ava for the last time that night. She said you were supposed to grow up with the Watsons, that by going and saving those people, I had already altered your course and saved you. She told Ava that you would be her friend one day and that when you were ready, you would find us.”
Seth’s free hand wrapped around my wrist. “I guess I did.”
“Take them. They’re yours. This one, too.” She reached for the one of a boy on a horse and I was pulled into a vision. It yanked me so hard, I could barely breathe.
It was a woman. She was running through the woods. She was captured. She was pregnant. We couldn’t see her face as she laid on a cot in a dingy room, but you could tell she’d been mistreated, but she wasn’t pregnant anymore. Her arms were bruised at the crook of her elbows from needles. She was only wearing a t-shirt that was too big for her. She was dirty. She was thin. Her hair was matted. And I didn’t think any of those things were up to her. She was chained to the bed by her ankle and the way she was rolling and looking around the room made me think she was drugged. Then they came in and I saw the whole situation for what it was. This woman was part of the Watson experiments. I gasped just as she did as they turned her over, but her face was still covered by the person who had come into the room.
“Now, little one, let’s see if we can get some use out of you yet.” And then he moved to stick something in her arm again. Even in her weak state, she fought him, shouting and trying to scratch at him.
Good for her.
Eve
n though he held her down easily.
I felt myself being pulled out and grabbed the corner of the table to keep myself upright. I felt Seth’s hands on my face, pulling me up, asking if I was okay.
“I’m okay,” I muttered.
“Answer me, Ava, where I can hear you.”
Boy, the fireman in him was coming out. And it was so dang hot. He tried to hide his smirk, but failed. “Ave,” he sighed.
“I’m, okay. Sir.”
He rolled his eyes.
“You called her ‘Ave’,” Mom said.
His hands fell away and he looked at her. “Will that come true? What you saw?”
“Oh, Seth,” she sighed and I heard the tone. “You don’t understand. That wasn’t the future, it was the past.”
“What do you mean?” When she didn’t answer him right away, he leaned back some. “You know who that was, don’t you?”
“Seth,” she began.
“Don’t bullcrap me,” he whispered. “Not about this.”
He knew. In his gut, he knew. Mom sighed. “I’m sorry, Seth.”
He shook his head. “They told me they found me in the woods. That she hadn’t wanted me, that I was abandoned, but I always wondered if that was the way it actually happened. I can’t believe…” He shook his head. He never knew his mother, but it still sucked that they had taken her from him before he had the chance. And that she was tortured and the proof of that was now right there in front of our eyes.
I took Seth’s hand in both of mine and looked at my mother, the Visionary. “We’re staying at Seth’s tonight, okay?”
I saw Seth look at my profile, but I didn’t look at him. I stared at my mother who wanted to tell me ‘No’, but knew she couldn’t. I wasn’t a teenager. I was a woman who had just fought her family for her significant.
“Just leave your phone on, okay?” she finally said.
“I will.” I went and hugged her and whispered. “Thanks for believing in him.”
She nodded. “Scarf,” she insisted.
I quickly grabbed one that was hanging on the hall tree and wrapped it over my coat collar.
“Bye, Mrs. J,” Seth said with a two-finger wave in the air.