Imagines and One-Shots (Book Three)

This Town (Jack Barakat) - Part 4

the first three parts are somewhere in book 2 lmao

uh mention of death/car accidents i guess???

~

One month later

Jack's month-long mission to convince you to stay in the kingdom had finally arrived and, to be honest, the decision was a lot more difficult than you'd originally anticipated. You knew he was going to show you the best parts of where you lived – and Jack certainly had a way with giving you one look that made you give into whatever he'd asked of you – but...

Jack had done so much for you in such a short amount of time – he had the seamstresses in the castle make new clothes for you and your brothers, he stopped by every Sunday evening to make sure the three of you had enough food to eat for the entire week, and he even let you come sit in on the Parliament meeting where they passed a new law that required bakers to give leftovers to people who needed them for free – but even then...

You weren't so sure you still wanted to stay...

You and Jack were both sitting in the castle garden on the very night the deal ended, talking about the things that had happened in the last couple months as well as whatever else came to mind. The subject of the deal itself hadn't come up yet, but you knew it was going to – you knew you couldn't avoid it forever – and you weren't at all shocked that Jack was the first to mention it.

"You remember when this whole thing started?" Jack questioned after a moment of comfortable silence, looking at you intently, "Before you agreed to this and you said people hurt you in ways no one teaches you how to deal with?" You sighed with a small nod, knowing exactly where this was going. "Will I ever get to know why you said that?"

You were a bit surprised with the way he worded it. He didn't out-right ask you why you said it; He just asked if he'd ever get to know. And it wasn't until that moment that you finally faced the reason yourself.

"My parents," you mumbled, looking down at the hands in your lap.

"Your parents hurt you?" he furrowed his eyebrows, "What did they do?"

"They left." Your voice was so small that even you could barely hear yourself, but somehow, Jack managed to hear every word.

"I thought you said they died in a car accident," he shook his head. Although you never went into detail, you had mentioned to him that your parents got into an accident one night three years ago, passing away as a result.

"They didn't have to go!" you hiccupped out a sob, "Th-They said they were going out for dinner, but they w-were really going out to buy a dress I s-s-saw in a shop one day! We didn't ha-have enough to buy it the day I saw it and they went o-out to get it for my birthday! But they... They hit black ice a-and...ran into a tree on their way h-home... They didn't eve-even make it to the hos-pital!" Your words were a jumbled mess by the time you got everything out of your system and you were crying so hard, you were bound to make yourself sick if you kept it up.

So Jack did the only thing he could at that point – he grabbed you and pulled you onto his lap, holding you close to him as you cried. Your sobs became muffled by his shirt, your arms wrapping around his waist and holding him so tightly, he almost couldn't breathe. But he didn't care; He let you hold onto him as tightly as you needed to. His heart was aching at the sight of you still being so hurt by your parents' deaths, and it hurt even more knowing you blamed yourself for it.

"What happened wasn't your fault, Y/N," he mumbled into your hair when your sobs became quieter, "It was an accident."

"They wouldn't have gone out if I didn't want that stupid dress!" you whimpered, "They would have stayed home and they would have been okay and they would still be here!"