Chapter 4: The night of the proposal, Jack reminisces on the night he decided she was the one. But despite their happiness, Jack cannot get Hurley's words out of his head, and trust issues begin to emerge, leading to the beginning of his battle with paranoia.
"Come on, there's someplace I want to show you." Jack said, reaching across the restaurant table for Kate's hand. It was their first official date and they had just finished dinner. Kate was curious, but wanted it to be a surprise. He led her outside and they got into his beat up truck.
"Jack, why do you insist on driving this heap?"
He shrugged. "I guess it keeps me sane."
She smiled to herself. That was one thing she loved most about Jack, everything he did made sense to him, even if it didn't to everyone else. She had experienced both the good and bad effects of that trait many times over the course of their stay on the island. But the good far outweighed.
They drove almost a half hour into the night until Kate realized where they were going. The biggest hint was the airplane suddenly flying overhead that she thought was going to graze the top of their car. Jack pulled up into an abandoned parking lot at the end of a runway.
"Here we are." he said. Kate was intrigued. She stepped out of the car and looked down the seemingly endless stretch of narrow pavement in front of her. A plane was preparing for takeoff.
"Why did you bring me here, Jack?"
"I wanted you to see this place. This is where I come to think, clear my head. I don't know, there's something calming about it." She looked at him skeptically, "I know, it's kind of warped, but really, it helps me sleep."
She didn't respond, only smiled quietly to herself. Every day Jack was beginning to open up more and more to her, show her news sides of himself that only made her fall deeper in love with him.
Jack hoisted himself on to the hood of his truck. Kate soon followed. He held his hand out to help her, but she laughingly refused.
"I think I can handle myself, Jack."
He took this in stride, knowing it was just Kate's stubborn nature and not any uncommon prickliness. He never took help he didn't absolutely need either. It was one of the things that bonded them.
"Just trying to be a gentleman."
Kate stopped at this.
"You are." she said, more meaningfully than either expected. He turned to her. "Even with everything we've been through, you have always been a gentleman."
"Really? That's a new one. Let's see…I've gotten failure, liar, hero complex, unwilling to let go…never thought I'd see gentleman added to that list."
He looked at Kate and smiled at his own deprecation. She did not smile back. Instead she leaned over and kissed him sweetly on the lips. When she pulled back, she stared intently into his eyes.
"You are a good man, Jack. You are."
He felt tears swell up in his eyes. It was then that he realized just how much getting this right meant to him. No matter his feelings about destiny, fate, anything like that, he knew more than anything that he and Kate were meant to be together. It was what was supposed to happen.
But here he lay, jarring out of this pleasant memory with the blaring reality that according to Hurley and whatever fates he spoke for, he was in fact not meant to be with Kate. But he had refused to let his faith be rattled so quickly and had, about a half hour before this moment, proposed to Kate, to which she gave him a resounding and tearful yes.
He thought back to that night, their first time visiting that place together. That was a turning point for Jack, it was the only time he could remember where he had willingly decided to be vulnerable in front of someone. He had never felt he had a choice before, but Kate was different. She was patient with him, and understood him in a way no one else could. If that wasn't love, he had thought, what was?
"Kate, you still awake?"
She turned over and looked at him, still wide awake. She smiled excitedly.
"I'll be lucky if I can sleep for another week." They kissed sweetly.
"You remember that first time I took you to the hangar?"
She put her hand to his face, the unexpected memories coming back to her fondly. "Of course."
"Well uh…I have a confession to make." Kate looked at him expectantly, "I bought that ring the next day."
"You what?"
"It was because of what you said. Remember? You told me I was a good man. And I realized you saw something in me that I couldn't. And you actually made me want to believe it. So I went out the next day and I bought that ring…because I knew the minute you said that, that I wanted to spend the rest of my life making sure you always saw yourself the way I see you."
Kate leaned over and kissed him tenderly. "Where did you come from?" she purred. He laughed and wrapped her up in an embrace. They sat up in bed, her leaning against his chest, him with his arms cradled around her waist. He kissed the top of her head, taking in the sweet smell of her shampoo. Hurley's words continued to try and infiltrate the moment, but Jack was determined to shut them out and so far he was succeeding. Kate held her left hand up and they silently regarded the ring, admiring what they had accomplished this night.
Yet he soon discovered that bliss was only temporary. He had made it through the first night without obsessing over Hurley's warning, but he couldn't help but now think a second thought every time he heard Kate talking on the phone or going out for long stretches of time, sometimes well into the evenings. Was there someone else? They didn't have many friends, so if it was a neighborhood person it would have to be someone only she knew, and that seemed unlikely.
After a few days of paranoid speculation, a rogue idea came to him, and though he initially dismissed it, it soon began to consume him. What if it was him? The man she had left behind. The man whose name it frightened Jack to even think about. For all he knew, they could be in regular contact with one another somehow. He knew there were secrets of that island even he didn't know about, so he couldn't rule out the possibility.
He tried to make it seem like nothing was wrong. Kate seemed so happy. This only seemed to make him angry, though, as he was now convincing himself of the worst and that Kate's current contentedness was a front, and secretly she was waiting for the moment to finally leave him for another, just like Sarah had. But he couldn't figure it out. It had been different this time, he gave Kate as much of himself as he possibly could, how could that have not been enough? What more did she want? Jack's fear now was that he was beginning to resent Kate. So finally, one day, after she had come home after three hours of errands, he decided to ask and test the waters.
"Where were you?"
"Grocery store. The lines were insane. And then I forgot a bag there so I had to go back. Ugh, it was a mess. Could you give me a hand?"
He nodded, accepting this, and followed her out to the car. What she wasn't telling him was that after she had gone to the grocery store, at which there were hardly any lines, in fact it was abnormally quiet if anything, she had gone over to the bank. A check had finally come through that she had meant to send Clementine several months prior, but the circumstances of the trial had complicated the transaction into seeming termination. But she had been clear for quite some time, and could finally send the final installment of her contribution to Sawyer's wish. However, she had to go through other paperwork with the bank and was unable to finalize the transfer of money. She would have to take care of that in the coming weeks. And all needed to be done without Jack's knowledge.
Later that night, they were closing up the kitchen as they prepared to head up to bed. Aaron had been fast asleep for an hour already. Jack was still mulling over every possible scenario in his head. He couldn't let it go. Kate noticed.
"Are you okay, Jack? You've seemed a little…I don't know, absent, lately."
"I'm fine, really." He glanced over at her. "I just have a lot of surgeries lined up in the next few weeks."
Kate knew he was lying. He had done his trademark move, one that she had called him out on: looking at people when he lied.
"Come on, Jack. What's really bothering you?"
She walked over to him and wrapped her arms around his shoulders, barring him from escape.
"It's just…Lately I've been thinking about the island. And us."
She looked at him, confused but wanting him to go on.
"I know we've buried all of this, but I can't help but wonder…if it had been me who had jumped out of that plane, would he be where I'm standing right now? I guess what I'm asking is…are you with me because it's me, or because I'm here?"
Kate pulled away, obviously upset.
"How dare you ask me that." she said, low but livid.
Jack shrugged, waiting for an answer.
"Jack, why do you think I'm agreeing to marry you? As a consolation prize? Do you really think that's all this relationship means to me?" Her voice was raised. Jack was ready to fire back.
"I don't know, Kate, is it? I don't know what relationships mean to you, least of all whatever this endless thing has been between you me and him."
"I don't understand, Jack, where is this coming from? Why don't you trust me?"
Jack shrank back. They were approaching a territory of their past they had always feared to approach, but it was now or never and it needed to come out. Jack took a moment to get his words exactly right.
"How do you think it felt that day to see you again, Kate? To see that you were safe, to see you reach out to me as much as I reached out to you even though there was a wall of glass between us…and only to hear you say you needed me to save that…that bastard so that they wouldn't hurt Sawyer. And I did. I did it for you. And then I saw you two on that video monitor, in the cages."
Kate felt tears of crushing guilt searing the sides of her face. She suddenly remembered what Juliet had said to her, about how she had broken his heart. It was only now that she realized it had never fully healed. But she didn't speak as Jack continued on.
"Do you have any idea what you put me through? All I cared about was you and doing whatever I had to do to make you happy, even if it meant stepping aside and letting you be with him. So I just sat back and watched it, and it killed me every single time but I didn't say a word. Because I knew in the end it would be you and me. But every time I try to be happy about where we are now, I can't get that image out of my head: of you and him curled up in that cage. So you tell me, Kate. Should I trust you this time?"
Kate slowly walked up to him, tears still flowing. She placed her hands to his face as she had during their first kiss and gazed into his eyes, trying to contact something within him that words could not access.
"I am so sorry for what I did to you. But I promise you, I am with you now because I don't want to be anywhere else. I am ready to spend the rest of my life with you. That's what this ring means. If you had jumped out of that plane, I would have jumped right after you. You have to know that that's the truth."
Jack nodded solemnly. He knew it was the truth, he did, but it didn't stop whatever was growing inside him from betraying this knowledge, and as much as he tried to shut Hurley's voice out of his head, he couldn't. The seed of doubt had been planted and there was no going back.
A/N: Sorry to leave you on that note but I had to get here some time. I'll forewarn you now, the next chapter is not going to pleasant (at least plot-wise, I haven't written it yet so that factor is still up in the air haha). At any rate, thanks again so much to the encouraging reviews and feedback, I am definitely glad to hear anything you have to say!
PS. Sorry this update was sort of delayed - busy busy.
