“Oh, I’m not saying I’d change things.” He grinned. “Trust me, five years of absolute bliss is about all I could handle. I’ve never been so bored in my entire life.”
I punched his arm. “You weren’t bored. You were happy. We were both happy.”
“It wasn’t us,” he said. “It was our whitewashed minds. And to think, if we hadn’t spent so much time fighting against our destinies, that would have been us controlling the world that way.”
I wrinkled up my nose. “That would have been boring.”
He chuckled. “So, where you been all afternoon?”
“Oh, you know, I was watching our grandchildren, considering that Kenya and Chance are still having trouble adjusting to everything.”
Jason waved a hand, brushing that aside. “They’re going to be fine.”
“I know that, and you know that. But they’ve basically only really been in a relationship with each other for about a month now. So, they’re not used to arguing with each other, and they’re not used to demanding children. It’s a little overwhelming, but they’ll figure it out.”
Jason ran a hand through his hair. “I should talk to Chance. I should explain to him that arguing isn’t bad, and that it’s all normal. You think?”
“Couldn’t hurt.” I cocked my head to one side. “Their arguments are really kind of cute, actually. They think they have problems, but they don’t even know what problems are. Now, you and me? We had problems.”
He smirked. “What? We had problems?”
“You know we did.”
“Nothing that big, though,” he said. “Just trying to kill each other.”
I laughed. “I tried to tell him that love becomes stronger when you conquer things together. That having those arguments and coming out on the other side ultimately adds another layer to the whole thing. I told him that anything worth having is something you have to fight for. No one values the things that come easily.”
“And he said?”
“He said her voice gets really shrill, and it gives him a headache.”
Jason laughed.
I did too. “Anyway, Marlena’s going over tomorrow, so I’ll be off duty and here all day.”
“Did you talk to her?”
I nodded. “Yup. On the phone. And… it didn’t go badly. I think she’s coming around. She said she missed us.”
“That’s good,” said Jason.
“But she also misses Hallam, and she says it still hurts, and she still gets angry. But she said she’s glad to be feeling anger again. She told me she only needs time.”
Jason looked down at the carpet. “She still won’t talk to me, though.”
“She will,” I said.
“She said that?”
“She said she missed both of us and she said she needed time,” I said.
“How much time does she need? It’s been over twenty years.”
“Jason.” I fixed him with a glare. “If someone took you from me, I don’t know if I’d ever get over it.”
He sighed. “I know. It’s only that I miss Hallam too. I wish that there was some way…”
I hugged him.
He wrapped his arms around me.
I closed my eyes, enjoying his warmth and closeness. “What about you? I thought you were going to help Hunter and Paige with that alarm system?” The general populace was still a little bit angry with Hunter and Paige. They didn’t understand why they didn’t feel perfect happiness anymore, and they blamed Hunter and Paige for giving it to them and then taking it away.
“Oh, I did,” said Jason.
“And…?”
“And we put in the system,” he said.
I leaned my head back, my arms still wrapped around him. “I want more details.”
“About the alarm system?”
“No, about our son, you idiot. How is he? How’s he holding up?”
“Oh, he’s happier than I’ve ever seen him. They both are. Interacting with people is a revelation to them. They asked for my opinion on everything, and they were really excited that I had opinions.”
I chuckled.
He kissed me on the forehead. And then he turned back to the television.
I nudged him. “Hey.”
“Hey what?”
“More details, please.”
“About what?”
“Well, what about the baby, for instance?”
“She’s known she was pregnant for five days, Azazel. There’s nothing to know about the baby.’
I rolled my eyes. “I’m going to have to call her myself.”
“That would probably be better.” He didn’t look away from the TV.
“Why are you staring at the carnage? There’s nothing we can do about that.”
“You sure there isn’t?”
I drew back. “Jason, you don’t mean that we should…?”
He turned back to me. “Think about it, Azazel. We’re going to need something to occupy ourselves. You know we’re never happy sitting still.”
Well, he did have a point.
“You just want an excuse to shoot things,” I said.
He grinned. “Don’t you?”
I bit my lip. Maybe I had wondered if being a grandmother was going to sit well with me. “So, you just want to go in there with guns and start blowing people—”
“No,” he said. “I want us to do some good. We’ve done enough crap in our lives. We’ve hurt too many innocent people. And watching this, well, I see a lot of innocent people with nobody to protect them. We don’t have to help all of them, but if we helped some of them, I think it would be better than sitting around and doing nothing.”
I looked at the television. I thought about the idea of a gun in my hand again. I thought about doing something useful, something good. Hadn’t I told Jason that our skills weren’t necessarily evil, that it was all in how we used them? I looked back at Jason. “Okay, I’m in.”
He laughed. “Good.”
And then he was kissing me. Within our kiss, I felt every kiss we’d had before. The first one, in the hallway beside the gym at the Homecoming Dance. The one on the streets of New York City, people streaming by us on the sidewalk. The one when he’d been dead in my arms after Jude had shot him, and he’d come back to life. The one after he’d made me come the first time, in Italy. The one that had let me know just how powerful we were in Columbus, Kentucky, when we felt like gods. The one when I didn’t even know who he was in Jasontown, when I was Joan and not even myself. The one on The Exorcist steps in D.C., both of us hiding from Kieran and Eve. The one after I nearly died when we killed the vampires. The one after we saw Hunter the first time, when I was still reeling from the shock of childbirth. I felt all of that. And I also felt the heartache. The times he’d hurt me. The times I’d seen his darkness. The times my darkness had threatened to consume us as well. The times we’d raged at each other, yelled at each other, cursed at each other. All the ugliness we’d thrown back and forth in all our time together. It was the mix of those two things—the darkness and the light, the order and the chaos—that made us what we were. Made us strong. Made us alive.
And I knew Jason and I belonged together. Always.
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