Belinda's POV
His arms were the only thing holding me together. I clung to him, the cold tile beneath my knees and the brutal spray of the shower a fitting backdrop for the utter devastation I felt. I had cracked. The carefully constructed wall of my secret had just shattered into a thousand wet, pathetic pieces.
"Talk to me, Love," he repeated, his voice vibrating deep in his chest. It wasn't the voice of the commander… it was the raw, frantic sound of a man watching his foundation crumble.
I couldn't form words. The sheer terror of his "never" from a week ago, coupled with the guilt of the deception, had hollowed me out. I just shook my head, pressing my face harder against his collarbone.
He didn't push. He simply held me, his strength a steady anchor against the internal storm. He slowly maneuvered us both, helping me stand, turning off the relentless spray of the shower. The sudden silence was deafening.
He helped me strip off my soaked clothes, not meeting my eyes, moving with a gentle, professional efficiency that felt both devastatingly intimate and miles away. He wrapped me in the thickest towel and carried me out into the warm, dry air of the suite, placing me on the edge of the bed.
He left the room for a moment. I watched him go, expecting him to return with comms, demanding a full debrief, calling Rosline and Ronda for tactical security against this unseen, emotional threat. I braced myself for the interrogation.
He returned not with a rifle or a file, but with a vase.
It was a striking, beautiful arrangement: a cluster of elegant, fragrant pink lilies mixed with soft, pale greenery.
I stared at the flowers, the shock quieting the sobs still catching in my chest. Pink lilies. He knew. Ever since I was a little girl, I've been obsessed with the movie Tangled. Pink lilies remind me of that movie, the simple, quiet elegance of a pink lily had always been my secret second favorite after the sunflower. No one else knew that. How did he…?
He set the vase on the nightstand and sat beside me. He didn't touch me, but his gaze was steady, relentless.
"I need you to look at those, Love," he said, his voice quiet now, but laced with a frightening edge of control. "Sunflowers represent the promise you want. These represent the one I'm willing to give you right now: Safety. And Truth. I can't fight shadows. I can only protect what I can see my love. How do I help you if you still don't feel comfortable opening up to me?"
He reached out and gently lifted my chin, forcing my gaze to meet his. His eyes were dark pools of anger and pain, but beneath it, the protective love was still a fierce, living thing.
"You have been hiding something from me since we arrived. Something that is breaking you, that is making you cry alone on the floor of a soundproof room. I thought we were done with lies after I confessed everything to you. I thought the sanctuary was built on honesty."
He paused, letting the silence drive the point home. "I checked your things while you were in the gym. I found nothing. That only tells me the secret is internal. Is it my father? A memory? Are you planning to leave me?"
I looked at the pink lilies, then back at his face. I had to give him something. Something true enough to explain the intensity of my grief, but that still protected the life I carried. I couldn't risk the anger of his "never" again.
"No, Nunus. I'm not leaving you," I whispered, finding the smallest, strongest part of my voice. "It's not your father. It's... it's about what you said on the other day."
I took a shaky breath, letting the tears slide down my face. "When you said 'never' to having children, with that absolute finality... it broke me. You were so angry. I can't explain it, but that fear…that you would never want that future, that you would hate the idea of it…it just crushed the hope I didn't even realise I had. It made me realise how alone I was in wanting that hypothetical family."
I swallowed, forcing myself to hold his gaze. "The stress of the war is nothing compared to the thought of losing us over a future we can't even have yet. I'm sorry. I lost control. The fatigue, the stress... it just compounded the grief."
Jackson stared at me, his rage slowly softening into a painful understanding. I had given him a source of pain that was real, emotional, and completely unrelated to the security of the compound. The anger in his eyes was replaced by self-recrimination. He had hurt me, not his enemies.
He finally reached out, his hand trembling as he traced the tears on my cheek. "Bel. Love. I didn't know... I didn't mean to hurt you like that. I..."
He pulled me into his arms, holding me tightly, his focus shifting completely from threat assessment to emotional repair. The secret was safe. The beautiful, terrible lie had just been wrapped in a blanket of truth, and he had believed it.
Jackson's POV
I held her tightly, inhaling the steam and the scent of the pink lilies I'd brought into this moment of chaos. Her body finally quieted against mine, the tension easing as the sobs subsided. She was right. I had been so focused on the external threat…the General, the walls…that I hadn't registered the collateral damage I was inflicting internally. My "never" had been a reckless, absolute weapon.
I pulled back just enough to look at her, my hand sweeping the damp hair from her forehead.
"I am so sorry, Love," I said, the words heavy with genuine remorse. "I didn't mean it to be a decree. I meant it as a shield. I didn't tell you the real reason I said that."
I stood, pulling the towel tighter around her before grabbing a shirt from my closet. I needed to move, to put my own body into the story to give it weight. I walked over to the window, staring out at the dark, silent world.
"It's not just about the war, or the crosshairs, or my father being a surprise piece of garbage right now," I began, my voice rough, the memory a dull ache in my chest. "That's the tactical explanation. The truth is deeper than that."
I turned back to her. "My mother. She was... fragile. Not in spirit, but physically. When she had me, she almost died. A massive complication. My father was terrified. But he wanted another son, a spare."
I ran a hand over my face, the cheap filter of the cigarette I'd smoked earlier still a ghost on my fingers.
"Two years later, when she had Lyle, it was worse. The hemorrhaging was catastrophic. Lyle lived. She almost didn't. She was never the same. She was physically broken by the process of bringing us into the world. It was a choice she made…a selfless, painful one…and the price was almost her life."
I met her eyes, the raw vulnerability of the moment cutting through the armored plating I usually wore.
"I love you, Bel. More than the sanctuary, more than my own life, certainly more than the war. And when I picture a hypothetical future…that 'one day' you asked about…all I see is you, on a sterile table, in agony, bleeding out. I see myself being the cause of that pain, selfishly demanding a child and putting the one thing I can't live without into critical danger."
My voice dropped to a fierce whisper. "I could deal with my father killing me. I could never deal with me being the reason you were hurt. I don't trust the world, I don't trust my bloodline, and I certainly don't trust the simple biology of it all. I don't want to be the cause of that kind of pain, Love. The absolute 'never' was a protective boundary, not a rejection of our future. It was the only way I knew to keep you perfectly safe."
I walked back to the bed and sat down, pulling her into my lap, careful of the towel.
"I didn't want to hurt you, Love. I just don't want to lose you, ever. That's my truth."