Page 20 of Jake and Conner
Jake sucked his lower lip between his teeth, which was how I knew he was about to say or do something stupid. He approached me by the sink, and then he fell on one knee in front of me. He grabbed my hand while I stared at him.
Please don't,I pleaded with him inside of my head. He didn't hear that, though.
"Marry me," he said.
I looked him straight in the eyes. "What the hell do you think you're doing?" Who wanted to be proposed to like this?
"Fixing this," Jake said, simply. "You want to have options, don't you?"
I continued to stare at him. He really didn't get it. "Not like this," I said, pulling my hand out of his grasp. "Please get up."
Jake rose, but he didn't let the topic drop. "But I can marry you and then we can have a child and you can get this problem taken care of."
"Do you really think this is what I want?" I demanded.
"Isn't it?" Jake shot back.
"Even if I wanted to marry you, I don't have time to get pregnant and raise a child right now!" Why did I even have to explain that to him? He knew how busy I was. How much my job, my freedom meant to me. Heshouldknow, at least. "It's insane that they're trying to make me do this, but it's even more insane thatyouare! I thought you were different!"
Jake held his hands up. "I'm only trying to help," he claimed. "Besides, you can't blame me for wanting children."
"But does it have to be right now?"
"No," Jake said, and then he muttered something that sounded like, "But someday would be nice."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"Nothing," he backtracked. I wanted to pull his hair out. He was supposed to be on my side!
"Listen," I said. "Whether or not I'm going to have a baby is my decision, okay? It's not yours and it's not anyone else's."
"Don't you think that--"
"No," I cut him off. "I don't think that."
Jake's shoulders squared. "Fine, he huffed. "Be that way." And then he turned and left.
I kind of wanted to throw something after him.
~
Back in the present, Raphael pulled his chair up next to mine and laid an arm across my shoulders. "Have you looked into what it's like in other states?"
"Of course I have." I'd spent days trawling the internet, reading every article I could find. Jake hadn't been much help. He'd been sulking, and I hadn't felt like making amends, either. I'd known we'd make up eventually--or so I'd thought--but I'd wanted to work through my issues first. "I found a clinic across the border in Canada that would do it," I said to Raph, rubbing my face as if the motion could wipe the memory from my mind.
"Canada? Really?"
"Yeah. I made the arrangements and everything, and then I was on my way." I'd felt so triumphantly defiant, crossing the border to be my own omega and make my own decision. This high carried me all the way to the evening before the surgery, when suddenly, my brain started working again and I got cold feet. Was this really what I wanted? If I went ahead with this surgery, there was no going back, I knew that.
I called Jake. I told him where I was and why. I pretended that I'd already gone through with the surgery, just to see how he would react.
He grew very quiet. "You really don't care what I think at all, do you?" He sounded sowoundedas he said that. And then he hung up.
It was that moment I knew that we were done. I remember feeling strangely empty. Like there was nothing that truly mattered anymore. I was too numb to process what was happening.
"But you didn't go through with it," Raph's voice pulled me out of my thoughts.
"No, I didn't. I didn't really want the surgery. It was... the principle of the thing. It was stupid." At least I'd realizedthatbefore it was too late. I'd never told Jake that I'd chickened out, though. I was too proud for that.
