“While you’re having your lesson,” he said, and then pointedly looked down at his plate, “Agent Reyes is coming in for a scheduled meeting. I get to go.” Jackson tried to mumble the words because he knew the mention of Reyes might set her temper off. If only he could keep the excitement from his voice.
This hero worship of Reyes served as proof of Jackson’s imperfection. She’d wondered if there might be more to it. Perhaps he was another beautiful, unattainable gay man like Ace, destined to be a wonderful, and very platonic, friend? But after several weeks of spending every waking moment together, that definitely wasn’t the case. They’d progressed beyond sidelong glances and zing-tinged chemistry, thanks to her shameless aggression, and were moving nicely toward…more.
Jackson wasn’t gay. He didn’t want Reyes. But that didn’t stop him from wanting to be Reyes. Her sigh fluttered the cloth crumpled beside her left hand.
He laughed to himself. His amused eyes, the corners turned up with dual laugh lines, met hers across the table again. “Why do you always do that?”
She arched a brow. “Because I don’t like him. Because he tricked me into coming here. Oh, how about because he’s evil?” None of that was true. He wasn’t evil. He hadn’t tricked her, not really. And as for not liking him….
It was one snotty hug, Lena. You’re acting like a child. Get over it already. He has.
She just couldn’t bring herself to let go of her indignation yet. He’d brought her here and dumped her without another thought. He’d been back. There had been meetings with Councilor Five, even check-ins with Jackson. Not one word to Lena, though. Not even to knock and barge in and say, “Hello, how are you coping?”
It had hurt, which was stupid because there had been nothing between them but a few days of intense drama and a bit of oversharing about mutual miserable childhoods. Then what she could only imagine was a deliberate slight had pissed her off. She decided to get over it as best she could—she’d enjoy the time she had here with the one person who did care whether or not she was coping. And she wouldn’t think about Reyes constantly. She sure as hell wouldn’t miss a man she barely knew.
So stop it already, little idiot.
Jackson shook his head, but his face stilled into seriousness. “Alejandro Reyes is a good man.”
She snorted. “I think you’re confusing being good at what he does with being good. And any man who does what he does, as well as he does, is by definition not a good man. Someday you’ll be old enough to know that.” That much was true. She hadn’t reconciled what she knew and the stories she’d heard about his exploits with the poetry-quoting man who’d stuck his neck out for her over and over, even if he had hauled her to the last place on earth she’d have chosen.
“I’m older than you are.”
“Chronologically, yes. Not in the ways of the world, Ward Lee.” She folded the last quarter of bread around the end of a smooth-skinned sausage and submerged them in the syrup before leaning across the table so she could stuff the dripping mass into her mouth. She gave him a closed-mouth grin of contentment and hummed.
Maple syrup was the true blue secret to happiness. She didn’t know why the Council of Nine didn’t ship it off to every Zone in big vats. If they did, all discontent and crime would disappear with the regular ingestion of the sticky perfection. Look at her: she was a happier girl already. As soon as she cleared her mouth, she told him so.
He shook his head as if he could read her thoughts. He glanced up at her. “You’re going to make yourself sick.”
She smiled serenely, swirled her fork in the syrup and licked it from the tines. He did a double-take before he returned to his eggs, a slight flush creeping across the golden brown skin of his face. Hmmm. Thoughts of Reyes fled.
That’s an interesting reaction, isn’t it?
Jackson finished his eggs and then cleared his throat. “We should go get started, yes?”
She dropped the fork onto her plate and helped him clean up the detritus of their meal. “Yes,” she laughed. “Absolutely.”
She followed him to the out-of-the-way classroom they’d had her working in. They had started with teaching her centering and focus techniques. Washington wanted her to teach others to do what she could do. They hoped better control of her Spark would translate to being able to train others. So far, the attempt had been a resounding failure.
No one had been able to duplicate any of her offensive skills. She’d heard that Reyes, in a single evening lesson, had taught a group of Senior Wards how to protect themselves from intrusions into their personal Dust. And Jackson had shown remarkable aptitude manipulating the Dust to heal. The men could learn new skills, they just couldn’t learn them from her. She suspected the failure had more to do with her lack of trust than with any lack of ability in herself or others.