I feel like there's something else for me, I just have to find it.
Everything I do is to prove myself to someone else. My father, my brothers, my boyfriends, and you.
I need to figure out what I want.
Can't do that here, I don't think so, not yet.
Jo took a deep breath. The road in front of her was clear. Nothing stood between her and her destination, except that – for the first time in her life – she had no idea what that destination was.
Was she making a mistake?
The undercurrent of joy underneath her mixed emotions reassured her. Yes, there was regret, sadness, uncertainty, doubt, but she was also excited. And grateful, she realized unexpectedly.
Grateful? As she drove down the winding road, the tall trees shading her sporty blue car, she wondered at her own feelings. The timeline change had felt so devastating. Maybe her relationship with Zane hadn't been perfect, but she'd loved him and he'd loved her. Losing him had hurt her deeply.
But getting to know the new Zane had shown her so much. He was so different from his old self. He'd taken different paths, and while at first she'd thought the change was all bad, she'd come to see that maybe it wasn't. Yes, this Zane was more of a jerk on the surface, tougher, harder, more cynical, more serious. But if he was so different, maybe she could be different, too.
She'd been in a box: the perfect daughter, the perfect sister, the perfect soldier, the perfect deputy. But Zane had shown her that there was a way out. With hard work, determination, ingenuity, he'd broken out of his own box – the one labeled criminal – and made it onto the team headed to Titan.
Now it was time for her to break out of her box and find out what she could be.
A/N: Super-short! Wrote this a long time ago and just found it on my hard drive and thought, hmm, maybe this might inspire someone. What is Jo going to do on her walkabout?