Your Sketchbook ✱ jack x katherine - jackrine

[fourteen]

a/n: code red. i'm running out of jack x katherine gifs

also this is the last chapter before the epilogue, so that's news

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Jack and Katherine pulled apart breathlessly, resting their foreheads together. The only sound in the room were their soft breaths as their lips left each other. Katherine closed her eyes, breathing in Jack's scent of ink and wet paint. Her hands lowered from the sides of Jack's jaw to the back of his neck, where her fingers played with the short strands of hair.

"Well..." Katherine began with a chuckle, unsure of what to say. After what they said moments before and the kiss they shared, what more could they say? Neither of them expected this moment, and she was pretty sure Darcy and Medda were waiting right outside to hear what had happened.

Jack, too, gave the softest of chuckles, his hands resting on the small of Katherine's back. "Glad ta see things have gotten better..."

"With us?" Katherine asked, finally opening her eyes and pulling her forehead away from his.

Jack nodded once, "Yeah."

There was a silence that followed these words, hanging thick in the air to the extent that Jack and Katherine couldn't tell if it was comfortable or uncomfortable. Nonetheless, Katherine pulled away from Jack's arms, pushing her body upwards so that she was sitting on top of the desk and resumed to gaze at Jack. "Then the first step to what we're creating is learning to truthfully trust each other. Tell me about your family, and by that I mean the whole story."

Jack looked uneasy, but when he saw the sympathetic look in Katherine's eyes, it simply guaranteed the thought in his mind that she was a person he could trust.

Heaving a sigh, Jack began his story. "Life was good up 'till I was four. We weren't poor, but we definitely weren't rich. One night, my mother went missing. We thought she was taken—me and my dad. No boy should ever think dat. But slowly, we begun ta realize dat she actu'ly left us 'cause she wasn't happy with her life. So I was left with my old man who blamed it on me. He'd beat me some nights, drunk out o' his trousers. By da time I was thirteen, I was gone; I ran away. I lived on da streets for a year before I fell into da system. Little ol' me was adopted by the Jacobs family, where I met my brother and best friend Davey. They helped me become somethin' more than I was and helped me create a future for myself."

Katherine's face fell, vanishing from all emotion except for the look of empathy. She reached forward, taking his hand and lacing their fingers together. "I'm sorry you had to go through all of that."

"You ain't gotta be sorry. I'm who I am 'cause o' what happened."

Katherine smiled sadly, looking down at their hands before inhaling deeply. "I'm the daughter of a multi-millionaire. With that came expectations of my life: not who I could be, but who I should be. My life was basically planned out for me by the time I was twelve. My parents were always arguing, whether it was behind closed doors or at the dinner table in front of my six siblings and me. Nothing ever happened to us children, but seeing how our parents never got along was scarred into our minds. None of us wanted that in our futures; we wanted someone that we could develop a healthy lifestyle with. So," Katherine exhaled, "when my oldest sibling, Ralph, married, we were nervous. He moved off to St. Louis four years ago and none of us have seen him since. Slowly, all my siblings either got married or got engaged, leaving me alone."

Katherine paused, thinking over her choice of words before launching into the second part of her story. "My father was never around. He was either working, arguing with my mother, or resting before his cycle started again. My mother wasn't exactly sure how to raise a family, so having seven children was a challenge for her. And two years ago, when I was the only child left in the house, it became different. She only became more distant." She looked up at Jack. "It proved an example to me. My parents aren't bad people, but they reminded me of who I didn't want to be."

Silence hung thick in the room. Neither of them knew what to say, for they had confessed things they never confessed to anyone else before, including themselves.

"Life isn't fun sometimes," Katherine eventually sighed, sliding off of the desk and unlacing her fingers from Jack's to pick up the sketchbook. "But at least now things are looking to be better."

Jack nodded in agreement, watching as Katherine flipped open the sketchbook to a page that was ripped out. Reaching into a pocket that was sewed onto her skirt, she removed a folded piece of paper. She unfolded it, straightening it to remove the creases before placing it in the notebook. It was the very first sketch she saw of Jack's; the one of herself.

Closing the sketchbook with a smile, she looked up at Jack and held the sketchbook out for him, "Because now we have something to believe in."