arbitrate (daynight) (38 page)

“Do I get any food?” I ask Jax. He bites his lip and looks away for a minute. Did I make him mad or something? He always makes me breakfast. I stick my lower lip out in a pout. Jax winks at me and pulls a plate out from behind his back. I kiss him on the cheek, take the plate, and shovel a bite into my mouth before I’m even sitting.

“I’ve got to run. Blake needs me.” When I tense up and frown, he adds, “He’s fine. You’ll be good here with B.”

Sure I will. As long as he doesn’t put me in an ice prison.
 

Both Jax and B laugh at me, which doesn’t exactly make
me
feel better.

Jax pulls me flush against him and presses his lips to my cheek, dangerously close to my mouth again. “I’ll see you soon, love.” Then he’s gone.

I watch B devour his pancakes, and I do likewise. “Do your parents mind you being here? Or geez…do you even have parents?”

He giggles uncontrollably for a minute, holding his stomach tight. “Of course I have parents.”
 

“How many of you…the Genitors…are there?”

 
B cocks his head to the side. “We are a small but growing number.”
 

Zander starts to fuss, which starts off a chain reaction. Without touching their seats, B lifts all three of their chairs into the air, and the chairs float over to the sink, rocking back and forth. The water from the sink turns on, and then the water jets upward, making shapes and dancing in the air. The babies are mesmerized by the show but quickly fall asleep by the rocking.

“How long have you known Jax?” I ask. They seem very comfortable together despite their age difference and their difference in “status.”

“We go way back.”

I roll my eyes. The kid isn’t old enough to have a “way back.”
 

B wipes his syrup-covered face on his shirt and then sits down Indian-style on the floor. He pulls two toy cars out of his pocket and starts racing them around the floor. “I’m mature for my age.”
 

You are a contradiction is what you are.
Out loud, I add. “You are awfully smart for a kid.”

“That’s because I know exactly who I am.”

I slump down next to him on the floor. “You are lucky. I have no idea who I am.”

“There’s no time like the present to seek yourself out.” I feel a prickling in my head, and it feels like the boy is rifling through my memories. “Start here. Consider it a gift.”

Twelve years prior: San Diego, California

I was at the
playground adjacent to my elementary school while my parents were inside talking to my teacher for a parent-teacher conference. I pumped my legs to get me higher on the swing set. My strawberry-blonde hair was flying madly behind me.
 

“I bet I can go higher.” A boy with messy blond hair settled into the seat next to me. He started to pump his legs hard and gradually approached my height. His legs were bigger and stronger than mine. Right before he was set to overtake me, he slowed and let himself drift back to the center, laughing the entire time.
 

“I win,” I bragged, but I stopped moving my legs and enjoyed the ride back down. I knew he let me win.

“Bet you can’t catch me.” He winked at me before running off. I jumped from my swing, landing on my feet and racing after him. He climbed to the top of the play set and slid down the slide. I followed. As he tried to run off, he tripped on a rock and went rolling into the grass.

I sat down next to him and touched his arm. “I caught you.”

“I wanted you to.”

He didn’t look directly at me. Instead, he looked over at some parents who were watching us. The woman had blonde hair, and the man had light brown hair. The sun shone behind them, washing out their features.

“Are those your parents?” I asked. There were lots of kids running around, so they could be anyone’s parents. But they were only watching us.

He closed his eyes and shook his head. “Nope. Not mine.”
 

I looked back at the couple, but they were gone. “They disappeared. They were there one second and gone the next.”

The boy didn’t respond to that. Instead he shrugged and said, “You should be mine…my friend.”

“Why would I want to be friends with a boy?” I didn’t like most of the boys in my class. They always pulled my ponytail and threw tiny balled up pieces of paper at me. And my little brother Jared drove me crazy. He was always stealing my stuff.

He laughed. “Because I’m a cool boy. I’ll keep the not-so-cool boys away from you. Everyone needs someone to watch over them.”

“Fine, I will be your friend. But only if you keep the other boys away.”

“Always. I promise.” He looked right at me as he said it, and I saw his eyes for the first time. They took my breath away. I’d never seen anything like them. “Shake on it?”

We shook hands, sealing our deal. And then he ran off towards the sun. I watched until he seemed to get swallowed by the light, the brightness nearly blinding me.

I had forgotten about the boy.

I never saw him again. Or did I?
 

Present

The Genitor is gone.
I feel strongly that the couple watching me on the playground that day were my parents.
They disappeared.
What are they? Why would they give me up? Why have they never come to find me again?

I’m agitated and lost in thought when Jax returns. He’s not alone, which annoys me further. In fact, he has a petite, dark-haired beauty with him. My heart pounds in my chest, and I feel like I might have heartburn.

“Kira, I’d like you to meet Blake’s friend, Madison. He asked me to bring her back here with me. She wasn’t safe in Art City. He’d like her to stay here with us until he returns.”

Blake’s “friend?” Since it takes quite a bit for Blake to care about anyone’s safety but his own, I’d venture a guess that he likes her as more than a friend. She looks scared and intimidated—the polar opposite of Blake’s last fling, Bailey.

“Nice to meet you, Madison.” I hold out my hand to shake hers. She softly shakes it. I think she’s actually trembling. “Don’t worry. You’ll be safe here…well, as long as you don’t leave the apartment.”

“You…uh…too. Blake didn’t really explain to me who you are—other than a friend—or why I am here.”

Awkward moment incoming. Might as well get it out of the way. Jax moves in and puts a comforting arm around my shoulder. “Well, that’s really complicated. Blake and I were Recruit partners together. We were…involved…but it didn’t work out. The SCI though…they did some messed up things to us. One of those things was to implant me with embryos using eggs they stole from me and different fathers. Blake is…uh…one of those fathers. But I assure you, we are just friends now.”

Her eyes go really wide. “And I thought some crappy things happened to me. That’s really crazy. Blake’s a father? He never mentioned that. I have a hard time seeing him as one.”

Jax can’t hold back a laugh. “It’s not really his forte. I have a video of him changing a diaper. Want to see it?”

I’d already seen the evidence of Blake’s ineptitude at baby care, so I let Madison watch. By the end, she is laughing so hard that her face is wet with tears.

After Jax’s excellent icebreaker, I give her a tour, with the exception of the baby wing. I let her pick out a bedroom. She chooses one on the other side of the apartment. We agree to eat dinner together early in the morn and get to know each other better. Then I leave her to get situated.
 

I find Jax in the nursery checking on the babies. I collapse onto the couch. I say, “I’m confused. She’s a really nice girl. But why is she here?”

Jax sits down next to me. I snuggle up next to him and play with his hair, making it even messier than it usually is. Thankfully, he doesn’t care. He gives me the scoop on Madison’s background, and it brings me to tears. No wonder Blake wanted to get her out of Art City.

“You doing okay?” Jax asks me. “These last few days have been…intense.”

“No, but I will be. I need a favor, and I’m nervous about how you will take it. I don’t mean it in a bad way—I really don’t. But I need some time and space to get control of my life back. I can’t depend on you to take care of every day terror and solve every problem. I need to learn how to do it on my own…to face my problems, not just hide them. I need to figure out who I am and what I want in life. Does that make any sense?”

He wraps his arms around me and kisses me on the top of the head. “Yes, love. It makes perfect sense. I’m proud of you, you know?”

I stay enfolded in his embrace breathing in his vanilla scent, committing it to memory.

Two months later

I feel like a
different person. I
am
a different person. It has been a hard road but completely worth it. I worked with my therapist six nights a week and shed more tears than I thought were possible. I exercised daily and journaled about my feelings.
 

My therapist encouraged me to strip my life “down to the basics.” “Once you are down to the basics, you will understand what things are essential and what aren’t. It will help you get rid of the ‘dead wood’ in your life and keep the ‘diamonds’ even if they are diamonds in the rough.” It seemed like a great way to figure out what and who I needed as much as food and water and what and who I didn’t.

The thing is—I can get by on my own. I can survive. I have proven it to myself. I’m not the weak, worthless person I feared I was. I am a survivor.

When Briella and Tristan and my friends were killed in that explosion back on Earth—I kept going.

When Blake left me in the middle of a flash flood to go after his father and I thought he had died—I kept going.

When my adoptive parents were killed right in front of me—I kept going.

When Ethan and I were forcefully separated after our Cleaving—I kept going.

When attempt after attempt was made on my life—I kept going.

When I found out I was adopted—I kept going.

When my son was stolen and I had two other children who needed me—I kept going.

When I asked Jax to stop being my crutch—I kept going.

I can do it.
I can do it.
I can live. I
can,
and I will. I won’t always do it well—which I have proven this past year—but I’ll keep going. I’ll keep going and learning and growing.
There is purpose to my life, after all
. I can be a better version of myself than I ever thought possible if I choose to learn from every experience.

It didn’t work to bottle my problems or avoid them. I had become an expert on avoidance, on pretending like the bad things didn’t happen or trying to put them in a lockbox and throw away the key. That strategy ended in a complete emotional breakdown. It also didn’t work to put a Band-Aid on my problems—by having Jax reduce the sharp stabbing to a dull, aching pain. I had to face my issues and conquer them. And what did I learn? The more I conquered, the stronger I felt, the healthier I became.

I feel as light as air, like the weight of Thera has been lifted off my back.
 

Eating, drinking, and sleeping needed to be tackled first. If those were a mess, everything else would get screwed up too. I could eat and drink, but my sleep had been a disaster for more than a year. So I knew it was critical I tackle the day terrors. And they are gone!

I had to ask Jax to refrain from helping no matter how bad my terrors got. And they got so bad I had to move my nightstands away from my bed and line the floor with pillows, so I wouldn’t kill myself in my sleep. I spent weeks bruised and occasionally bloodied.

But with the nightly help of my therapist, the day terrors started to subside. And I know it is because I came to accept and embrace my past—both the good things and the bad. I wouldn’t be who I am, or where I am, if I hadn’t had my experiences and trials. By letting go of the fear, I got my sleep back.
 

The hardest thing for me to face was my fear of death. I’d been witness to so much death, and my life was on the line so many times. And now that I was a mother, death terrified me that much more. The thought of my children growing up without me was too much to contemplate.

What I realize now is that my children will have their own demons to face, own burdens to release, and own mistakes to make. No matter how much any of us would like to, we can’t go through someone’s trials for them. We can provide relief and support and comfort, as Jax has done for me, but, ultimately, we can’t remove the source of the pain.
 

I’ve learned a lot about myself and my capabilities during these last two months.

I know that I love being a mom. I cried when the babies learned to crawl. I cried when Evvie’s first word was “mama.” I would do anything for my children. They bring me more joy than I ever thought was possible.

I also know with every fiber of my being that being a mom is not the only thing I’m meant to accomplish in my life. There are some days where I feel like I’m on the verge of something—something big. I can’t quite grasp what it is, but I’ll know it when it comes.

I recognize the importance of friends—those who can lift you up and lighten your load. Since I pushed Jax away, Madison and I have become great friends. I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed having a girl friend who I could talk to and confide in. She has a fantastic self-deprecating sense of humor, and she’s great with the babies. I tell the babies she is “Aunt Maddy.” Even though she can’t remember what happened to her back on Earth, she knows that the SCI messed with her memories, and she’s grateful to not know. She has been meeting with my therapist as well.

I’ve accepted that the babies’ fathers might not be involved in their night-to-night lives. Ethan has been absent, chasing the trail of people who don’t want to be found. He’s obsessed with finding and exonerating Alexa.

Blake has come by to see Madison a couple times, but he pays no attention to Aiden. He pays a
lot
of attention to Madison. But neither of them have acted on their feelings, and I am not sure they ever will while Madison is living here with me. Perhaps I just need to come right out and give them my blessing. They both deserve to be happy.