Disclaimer: I can dream of owning this stuff one day, can't I? In the meantime, it belongs to others more talented than I; I merely take the characters and place them into a world of my own making.

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Chapter 16 – Heart to Heart

Two days had passed since the events in the park. In that time Jonny had discovered several things. One, that it was possible to gain an armed escort just to walk to his car after school; two, that he still had no idea how to talk to Jessie about them, thus going back to pretending as though nothing were wrong between them; and three, it was his fault his father was walking around the compound as though someone had died.

It was that last part that currently had Jonny sitting in his room watching Bandit breathe in and out from his favorite spot, atop Jonny's favorite shirt. Okay, maybe it was his second favorite shirt. The blonde teen was pretty sure his actual favorite shirt was hidden away in one of Jessie's dresser drawers from way back when. It would have been a better story had it gone to her after an incident or two between them, but that would only ever happen in Jonny's dreams. The truth behind his shirt was that about one year ago she had simply walked into his room and stolen the shirt from his dirty clothes pile. If one couldn't find that attractive unto itself then they didn't deserve Jessie.

Not that he himself deserved Jessie. Since getting stitches she and Jonny had returned to their old ways – the ways in which they bantered at every family meal and showed up to school together before separating for the day to do their separate classes which Jonny was of the opinion they needed more of seeing as how he had found himself staring at the back of her more than three times in a row, thus earning him detention when he couldn't answer a math equation on the board. It was rather nice to be back to normal, but there were still the many unsaid of things that they needed to discuss, and just as surely as that was a fact neither teen seemed particularly intent on discussing anything serious with the other.

Hadji had gone back to sitting at Anaya's side in the hospital, something to do with her doing better and the doctors believing she would be waking up soon. Without his best friend at his side to talk about things Jonny was left to his own devices, which he supposed might be a good thing as he was slowly coming to terms with various things in his life.

He loved one Jessica Bannon and it scared him to death.

He was afraid his father was prepared to put Rachel Quest's memory to rest forever.

He knew he would be seeing Jade again.

He wanted to kill Dr. Zin.

And the big one, the one that bothered him the most:

his father was in love with Grace.

"Boy Bandit, you don't know how easy you have it," sighed Jonny. "I'd rather be in your shoes right now, arthritis and all."

A knock came on his door, causing Jonny to glance up with mild apprehension. He had a feeling that whoever was on the other end of the door was going to be someone he would rather not talk with today. Before he could say a single word the door flew open and Jessie stepped inside, slamming the door shut behind her.

"Hey Jess, come right in, make yourself at home, I'm not busy or anything – what the hell? I could have been changing or something, you know that?"

"Oh please, like we didn't bathe together when we were kids anyway."

"It's called common courtesy."

"You're right, it is. So let's talk about that a little more, Jonathan Quest."

Jonny cringed at the usage of his full name. Jessie only ever did that when she was extremely irate about something, and this time he didn't even have the excuse of Samantha to argue about, which meant that whatever it was Jessie had come to talk about would likely not be something he wanted to talk about. "I'm thinking I don't want to talk to you about common courtesy, Ace."

"That's only because you know you've been an ass the last few days, Quest."

"This coming from the girl that put bubble gum in my ex-girlfriend's hair," replied Jonny, "makes my being an ass seems rather trivial right now."

"She had it coming, and this isn't about her, or anything remotely related to that. This is about you and the fact that you can't seem to grow up!"

"Excuse me?"

"You heard me! What the hell is your problem? You're eighteen years old, Jonny. You don't need your dad to hold your hand wherever you go – hell, you haven't been that way since we turned ten. You're always off on your own little adventure without permission anyway, so why the sudden mind reversal?"

"If this is about my dad and Grace, don't start."

"Oh, is that a touchy subject with you? Do you know you've ruined another man's life? I hate to break it to you, Jonny, but it's time for you to mature a little."

Jonny made a face. Somehow he had known this entire argument would be about Grace and his father. Knowing Jessie as well as he did Jonny knew the girl couldn't leave things well enough alone when it came to that absurd happily ever after. She had always been a sucker for those Disney flicks. "Grace broke things off with my dad, not the other way around, so don't you dare say I made him choose between her and me, because I sure as hell didn't."

"Oh please, you didn't even have to do that – you made her choose between pursuing a relationship with the man she obviously loves and the relationship he had with you. Grace didn't want to come between you and your dad, Jonny. She made the choice for him, and for some stupid reason she figured you were more important than her," replied Jessie bluntly, her arms crossing in front of her chest.

"Whatever went down with my dad and Grace isn't any of my business, nor is it any of yours. What the hell is it to you anyway, Jess?"

"I'm sorry for having a heart and wanting people other than myself to have a nice life with the one they love."

Scowling, Jonny lapsed into silence, his eyes studying Jessie's, both refusing to back down on their stance on the situation. Jonny was already aware of the fact that he was just being stubborn, something only ever born out of speaking with the teenage girl standing in front of him. He wasn't sure why they couldn't work things out for themselves, though the arguing might be a large part of it. Then again he wasn't even sure what Jessie felt about him anymore. If she had ever felt something for him it was likely long gone given all that they had gone through the past few months.

"You need to fix this, Quest," stated Jessie with a small sigh.

"Maybe there's nothing to fix."

Jessie centered her gaze on him, her eyes flickering with something that Jonny couldn't quite register. "Do you really believe that?"

"It's not my problem, Jessie. It's between them, and it's not up to you or me to go about fixing their lives without permission." He couldn't fix it, he didn't want to. If he did what would come next? It wasn't that he was afraid of his father forgetting him or any such nonsense like that, it was nothing like that. It was simply a change that Jonny wasn't ready for, one that went along with the change in his own relationship with Jessie.

When had they all grown up and put their childhoods aside?

All those years of simplicity were gone now. It was that breach between childhood and adulthood, and Jonny wasn't ready to cross it. He wasn't ready for the responsibilities of the new world that awaited him. He was ill-equipped for such a thing.

Jonny wasn't ready to love someone with all his heart and take all the causes and effects that came along with it. He had seen what his father had gone through after the death of his mother, and Jonny never wanted to go through it again. Love was a dangerous thing. If one loved too much it was all too possible to lose that love in a brief moment, just as Rachel Quest had been taken from him and his father.

And while that may be the reason for his refusal to take the next step with Jessie, it was more the reason for his stubbornness on the matter of Grace.

Jonny couldn't bear to see his father with a broken heart ever again, and that would be possible for as long as there were people like Surd, Rage, and Zin out there.

"Jonny –"

"No."

Sensing that there was very little she could do or say, Jessie allowed her gaze to fall to the ground. She had hoped she would be able to get through to him, but she had been wrong. She was always wrong. Just when she had thought they were back on the mend something like this came up, placing another divide between them. In the past the pair had been able to finish the other's sentences, even in arguments. But now things were different. Jessie didn't know the boy in front of her. He was different; he was distant. And it wasn't just this matter he was being distant on.

They weren't giving the other the cold shoulder, but they certainly weren't reaching out to one another as they used to do.

They had changed.

Their relationship had changed.

It was as though the path they now walked had turned itself around and suddenly they were walking into a dark unknown, and Jessie knew without a doubt they would never go back to the way things had been before.

And if that was the case then she didn't want to pursue it.

Taking a small breath the red head made herself glance upwards at Jonny, his eyes clearly avoiding hers. "Maybe you're right, Hotshot. I mean, it's easy to let our eyes fool us into seeing things that aren't really there. Sometimes we take things out of context and let our imaginations run away with it, imagining things that could never be. I know I've done that more than once of late, and I shouldn't have."

Jonny glanced up in alarm, his eyes furrowing as he tried to pick out the true meaning behind Jessie's words. She wasn't saying what he thought she was saying was she?

Jessie continued. "If you think standing to the side and letting this thing pass you by is the way to go, then I'm going to believe you. Maybe there wasn't anything there at all in the first place. Maybe it was all a trick of my mind and this is probably for the best. We wouldn't want everything to change at once, right? I mean, what would be the point of that? Things are fine just the way they are now – kind of like us."

From down the stairwell a voice called up, "Ponchita! You have ten seconds to get your ass down here so I can give you a ride to the lab – you promised Grace you'd help with that bloody stone! Don't make me come up there and drag you down!"

"I have to go."

"Jessie … everything's complicated right now." It was all Jonny could say. He wasn't sure how to explain to her what he felt, why he had his doubts.

"Hey, when has anything not been complicated? Jonny, our entire lives have been spent running from one crazy adventure to another. We've never been normal, we've never done things the right way before, and we sure as hell haven't stood by and watched life pass us by. Sure some things were riskier than others, but that doesn't mean it wasn't worth it. What you have to think about, and I mean really think about, is whether or not one thing or another is worth the risk, or worth letting go?"

"Ponchita!"

"Oh, hold your horses!" Jessie fumed at the interruption. She had thought she had seen something moving in Jonny's eyes, a type of recognition. It had made her breath catch in the hope that he would breach the wall he had built, but her next glance at him told her that he was back to where they had started.

With a shake of his head Jonny said, "Some choices are harder to make than others, Jess. You don't know how hard this choice is for me." He didn't have to say what it was they were talking about – they both knew this had nothing to do with Grace and his father. It was about them.

In her words Jonny had seen a spot of the future. He had seen them happy and together. It was possible, anything was possible. Yet at the same time he saw the face of Zin, replaced with Surd, then replaced with Rage, and to the side he could see Jade, standing and waiting for her chance to strike. He could see danger on the horizon, more so if he made a mistake by letting his feelings outweigh common sense. There could be another funeral. There could be more heartache. There could be another child orphaned without a mother or father to care for them.

There would be heartache.

Part of his mind was screaming at him that even if he didn't come out and pursue his love for Jessie there would be heartache in the future. That all could come to pass with more regret for never saying what he really felt, but Jonny forcefully shoved that thought aside. He wanted to protect Jessie anyway possible, and in this one moment he was positive the best way to do that was to stay friends. She would move on with her life, go off and be whatever she wanted to be, so long as she was happy Jonny was certain he could keep her alive. Without her at his side their enemies would forget she ever existed. They wouldn't be the dynamic duo as in the past – they wouldn't always be getting one another out of one scrape after another. That part would be gone, leaving only Jonny to end the vendetta between him and Zin.

It was for the best.

"Why won't you let me in, Jonny? You've been closed to me for weeks now. I don't know what you're thinking anymore. I don't know who you are." Jessie's words softened, her fear shining through as she directed them at Jonny.

"It's one of the hardest decisions I'll ever make, but you have to trust me, Jessie. It's better this way."

"I don't understand you anymore, Jonny."

"You don't have to."

"But I want to." The teen looked as though she were going to say more, but the door to the room flung open and Race stood in it, his face masked with anger. Almost instantly Jessie changed her own face to mask that of her father, her next set of words directed at him. "How are those horses holding up?"

"They'd be doing a hell of a lot better if you would get yourself downstairs and into that damn car right now."

"You're just pissed because mom's making you go to an anger management meeting."

"I don't have anger problems."

Jonny snorted. The moment between him and Jessie was gone, now replaced by the ever familiar family banter of the Quest clan. "Oh please, Race, you have almost as many anger issues as Jessie."

Jessie shot her friend a glare. "I do not have anger issues!"

"Really? Why don't you tell that to the doctor at the hospital who was shaking by the time we left? All that talk about ripping a certain woman's heart out and squishing it with your bare hands had him asking another doctor if he had a fever."

"Some men are just born babies."

"And some people are just born to attend anger management classes."

"Don't make me throw you out the window, Quest."

"See what I mean?"

Race frowned as he studied his daughter. "You have been a little more … colorful of late."

"Traitor."

"Keep talking like that and I might suggest to your mother we take family counseling just to make the two of you suffer like me."

"And then she might make you guys do parenting courses just so you can learn that letting your only child parachute out of a flying plane at the age of eight is a bad thing."

"It was one time!"

"But times three kids," pointed out Jonny.

"Whose side are you on?" demanded Race with a dark look directed at the blonde teen.

"Does it really matter?"

Muttering under his breath Race motioned for Jessie to make a move out the doorway so they could get going. The teen girl sighed and did so without arguing, her brief bout with anger losing its steam. She needed to get a hold of herself or else her mother would know something had happened and not even a good something. Race followed behind her, leaving Jonny alone to lean against the doorframe.

Bandit barked, causing Jonny to glance his way. "Yeah, I know what you're thinking. You're thinking I'm a complete idiot, and you know what, you're right. I am a complete idiot … but I can't back down. I can't. I can't … I can't lose her."

"While this may be your choice for you and Jessie, it should not also be your choice for your father." Hadji's voice startled Jonny. A glance into the hallway showed that his foster brother had appeared at his shoulder in that ever mysterious way he had always possessed.

"Where did you come from?"

"I am always here, Jonny, whether you know it or not. You should not be so oblivious to all that surrounds you; it is like walking into a cave without a light and expecting to see."

"Huh?"

"You do not really expect me to make this easier for you, do you?"

"A guy can hope, can't he?"

"Do you really believe you have made the correct decision?"

"For the first time in my life, Hadji, I'm using my head."

"Then you have changed, for the Jonny I know always ever used his heart." Hadji gave his friend a small smile tinged with sadness, his eyes glancing down at Bandit. "We live in an ever-changing world. Nothing will stay the same forever."

"I know that."

"Then why continue to deny others the same happiness you would deny yourself?"

Jonny pressed his lips together, the words he was thinking not leaving his mouth. Hadji nodded at him as though in understanding before turning and disappearing in the direction of the stairs. "Why does he always have to be right?" muttered Jonny, his words earning a small bark of agreement from Bandit. With a sigh he closed the door to his bedroom before plopping down onto his bed. He could feel the start of a headache and wanted nothing more than to shut his eyes and make the entire world go away.

He hated himself for turning away from Jessie – it was ever harder to bear given how he now knew there was something between them, something they both felt but would now never act on.

And he had already hated himself for forcing Grace to break things off with his dad because he couldn't get with the program. They had history together, he knew that much. He wasn't sure what type of history it was, but whatever it was it had flared up again upon their first meeting in Bangalore. Since that moment Jonny had witnessed a change in his father. He smiled more, laughed more, and he certainly didn't spend as much time staring at the computer working. He hadn't wanted to see these changes, afraid that if his father became too happy it would be all swept out from under him, and in a way it had. Just when Benton Quest had seemed to find an equal balance in his life Grace had cut their relationship short, all because of Jonny.

A sigh escaped his lips and Jonny turned his head towards the clock on his nightstand, but it wasn't the digits that caught his eye. Sitting right beside his clock was a bracelet with several trinkets on it. It was the bracelet Jonny had bought for Jessie back in Mexico before Jade had screwed their entire relationship up.

Pushing himself onto his elbows Jonny reached over with a single arm to tug the bracelet in his direction, holding it up over his head to study the trinkets dangling on it. Looking at it now he knew he could never give it to Jessie; it would never say all that he wanted it to say to her. It wouldn't make up for what would never be.

And oddly enough, it didn't belong to her. Jonny wasn't sure it ever had. The trinkets on it were pretty enough, sure, but there was something about it that said there was someone else out there more deserving and appreciative of this tiny gift than a certain red headed girl. She deserved more than a step in the right direction, but Jonny knew he would be unable to give her what she deserved.

But he could do what he should have done a long time ago.

Keeping the bracelet in his fist Jonny got up from his bed and made his way out into the hallway. He took the stairs two at a time, crossing the way to another small hallway before coming to a stop outside a single door. Jonny took a deep breath he pushed it open, his eyes resting on the figure of his father. Benton was hunched over the keyboard of his computer, his eyes staring blankly at the screen with what looked to be a rather unfinished piece of a lecture. That made the teen grimace. His father only ever concocted lectures when he was feeling down, it was his way to take his mind off whatever it was bothering him.

Clearing his throat Jonny gained the attention of his father in time for the teen to reach out his arm and unclench his fist, letting the bracelet fall onto the keyboard. Benton glanced between the two quizzically.

"I'm thinking you need to call Grace. Rumor has it she's missed you. And uh, women like gifts when you apologize, or at least normal women do." Jonny shrugged helplessly, not sure what more to say, or whether his father understood at all what he was doing. This was just as difficult, but deep down he knew it too was for the best. Jonny would suffer enough for the two of them in the matter of love from this day forward, and he didn't want his father to share in that suffering. He didn't deserve it after all that he had gone through in the past. Losing love twice didn't seem possible, and Jonny would make sure it never came to pass.

Benton eyed his son without speaking, a small smile finally making its way onto his face. "Thank-you."

Jonny nodded and turned away as his father reached across for the phone. As he walked away he could hear his father speaking uncertainly, and a small cloud of guilt eased itself from his conscience. This was how it was supposed to be.

This was how it was meant to be.

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A/N- this is way overdue. I ended up sick for Christmas, and then the remainder of my break was spent preparing for my semester abroad, and now it's simply a matter of remembering how to write in English and not Spanish.