After my eventful morning and afternoon, Jackson puts me on the couch and forbids me from moving off it.
No amount of arguing or threats convinces him otherwise, not even when I tell him an hour later that I'm more than likely completely healed. He refuses to let me get up even once.
When I need to use the bathroom, he picks me up and carries me there which is so unnecessary that at first, I can't believe how serious he's taking my being hurt until he sits me on the toilet, and refuses to leave in case I need him.
Obviously, I'm not about to use the toilet with him standing over me, which leads to an argument and my refusal to do anything but sit there until he leaves.
In the end, he only goes when I tell him I have an iron bladder and I once held my pee in for two days without needing to go once, so I know I can outlast him.
He walks out laughing, but I get what I want, which is the important thing.
Later, sometime between lunch and dinner, I pass out in the middle of a movie I put on, and when I wake, it's to the movie muted-by Jackson, no doubt-and the low hum of conversation.
No, I correct myself, not conversation. It's just Jackson talking, at first I think to himself, then later to someone on the phone. But I'm wrong.
As he's outside on the back porch, I can hear him just fine from where I am on the couch in the lounge.
"She's clumsy. By now, she's probably walked into more trees than she hasn't," I hear him say.
I glare at the door.
No way is that true.
"But you can trust her," Jackson adds seconds later.
I stop glaring.
"So, there won't be anything fancy in the bag tonight. She decided to dive off a hill and hurt her ankle so you'll have to settle for cheesecake and whatever else I can scrounge up for you."
He's talking to the boy and who, I'm guessing, came for food but found Jackson waiting for him on the porch.
I shift a little on my side and continue listening to Jackson.
"You're lucky," he says, after a long pause. "To have someone who cares whether you have something to eat, to care that you have a vegetable with your meal, to care that you have clothes that fit."
I'm sure at this point I stop breathing so I don't miss a single word that comes out of Jackson's mouth because what he's revealing is so unexpected that I doubt I'll ever get an opportunity like this again.
"But best of all," he continues, "is that she wants nothing in return. No, I lie, she does. For you to have a full belly and someplace you can feel safe. I'm sure I don't have to tell you how rare that is when you don't know where your next meal is coming from or have any place to call home."
He's talking about himself. He's telling the boy that he knows what it's like.
I know Jackson and Jeremy didn't have a pack in Chicago since Savannah eventually came clean about her and Jeremy's one-night stand. But this? Hearing that he might never have had one is beyond anything I could've imagined.
It's hard enough for adult lone wolves to survive without a pack. But children? It's almost impossible for them to make it into adulthood with all the dangers they face from other shifters, humans, hunters, and wild animals.
I guess with Jackson and Jeremy both alphas, it made it even harder for them to find a place to call home. Few packs will admit an alpha because of the high possibility that they will challenge for the position of alpha of the pack. Let alone two.
I shift a little more and the remote which must've been buried beneath me thuds to the floor, making me flinch because now Jackson is going to know that I'm awake. A point that's proven when seconds later, I hear the porch creaking and the door opening.
I try to look like I've just woken up, stretching and fake yawning.
Jackson appears in the doorway. "Hey, you're awake."
I sit up. "Yeah, what time is it?"
He approaches and crouches beside me, peering into my face. "Nearly dinner, you hungry? I can throw something together."
"No need, I can do it." I move to get up, but he grips my arms and firmly presses me back into the couch.
"No, you can't, because I'm doing it." He kisses me lightly on the lips before rising from his crouch.
Before I know it, he's back in the doorway and ready to walk out of it when I find my words again after his soft kiss.
"Was there someone here? I thought I heard voices," I ask because I'm interested in seeing his reaction.
He turns with an unreadable expression on his face. "No one," he says, "just talking to myself."
As he walks out, I sink back on the couch and think about Jackson's response.
He didn't want me to know he was talking with the boy, but why? Because he doesn't trust me, or because he doesn't want me to know about his life as a packless wolf?
I know I'm not intending on staying, and even if I was, I have no right to his past, especially if it's as painful as I suspect, but that isn't enough to silence the pang of disappointed hurt that he doesn't want to talk to me about it. So, I lay there, ignoring my muted movie, thinking about why that is.