“Goodbyes seem to be your forte these days--shouldn’t be too hard.”
“Don’t be cruel.” Her heart pounded at the quick turn this conversation was taking.
“I think I’ve waited long enough for an explanation, Lila. Or don’t I deserve one?”
Lila opened her mouth to speak, but couldn’t.
“I just need to know when the hell you and Jack…” He couldn’t even find the right words, and found himself looking up into the sky as if it held all the answers. When his head came back down his eyes were ripe with mystification. “When the hell did that happen, Lila?”
“I don’t know. It just… happened.”
“But you hated him.”
“Yeah,” she agreed, with a small laugh, nodding. “I did. I made a lot of unfair assumptions about Jack, but when I actually sat down and took the time to get to know him I realized he’s just…” Her eyes met his and she forced herself to stop talking, “He’s just a man in pain.”
“And I’m just a man in pain,” Chase shrugged. “You’re just a woman in pain. Aren’t we all doomed to be in pain in some way or another? What’s so special about Jack’s pain? Huh? Does he have a more convincing sad puppy face than the rest of us, or does he honestly have you so brainwashed that you’re actually taking his bullshit at face value?”
“Jack and I weren’t even really dating and why am I justifying myself to an eighteen year old?” She looked up into the sky, begging for patience.
Chase held her tighter, closing her in. “Have you always wanted him? Is that why you kept me around for as long as you did?”
Lila threw her head back. “Of course not. Now let me go. You don’t know anything about it.” When she tried to move his arm from around her waist she was surprised at his strength. The hardness of his heaving stomach, his core, against hers should have been indication enough that hers was a losing battle. For the first time that night she could feel his arousal against her thigh, shaking her to her core. “I should have never come out here. I could lose my job. I find myself saying that sentence more and more with each passing day and its high time I started to recognize the truth behind it.”
“None of that matters,” Chase whispered passionately. “You won’t need Dalton, Lila, I’ll take care of you. I get my parent’s inheritance once I graduate. You can take that club at school and turn it into a god damn global charity foundation if you wanted to.”
“Chase, you don’t know what you’re saying.”
“I know exactly what I’m saying. I know exactly what I’m feeling, Lila.”
“No, you don’t,” she said, with a shake of her head, “You don’t.”
“You think I don’t know what I feel?” he whispered, pulling her to him tighter as the bulge in his slacks grew hard and strong against her thigh. His breath had grown ragged as he took in Lila’s wide orbs. “I know what I feel.”
“Chase—“
Feeling the curve of her waist beneath his hands was almost too much to bear. The thought of the beautiful peaks that lived underneath her small waist only made him lose even more of what little control he still had left. “All this time I’ve let you pretend, but I’m not going to let you anymore. You’ve always known how much I love you. Haven’t you?”
Lila couldn’t speak.
“You’ve always known that I would die if it meant just one night with you. Beside you.” His voice lowered. “Inside you.”
Lila’s wet eyes met his. She barely recognized the green orbs she saw looking back at her with such raw, unabated hunger.
“You’ve always known,” he whispered. “Haven’t you?”
Lila kept her hands pressed against his shoulders, her fingers clawing into them against her will.
“I’m done letting you pretend.” His breathing grew shallow. “And I’m done pretending. Tell me you don’t feel the same way, Lila.” He swallowed hard and pulled her closer, feeling like he might explode at being so close to her, but so unable to do anything about it. He yearned to have all of her, so badly that he was sure he could feel in coursing through his viens. “Tell me you don’t love me and I swear to god I’ll leave you alone.” He shook his head, exhaling. “I swear to god I’ll never speak to you, again.”
Lila faltered. “It’s not that simple.” The last thing she ever wanted was to hurt him anymore than she already had. Apart of her wasn’t even sure she knew how.
“I’m making it that simple.” Chase said. “Nothing you say right now will hurt any more than knowing that Jack has you… that he had you first…”
“Is that all this is about? About Jack having me before you? You would have never had me, Chase. Okay? Not ever.”
“Then it should be simple for you to tell me you don’t love me. Tell me right now. Say it.”
“You’re just a kid.”
He’d always hated that word, but coming from her lips he downright despised it. “How many kids do you let rub their dick against your leg for this long, huh?”
Lila’s blood froze. “I think you’d better let me go right now,” she said through clenched teeth.
“Is that how he talks to you?” Chase’s voice deepened. “Is that what you like? Huh? Is that what it takes?”
“Chase.” Her voice barely squeaked out the plea, “please.” Lila wasn’t sure what she was begging for, and that scared her to death.
“Just give me tonight, Lila. I love you so much. I know you love me, too. Please just let me… let me make love to you.”
Lila gasped softly when he took the back of her head in his hand, attempting to place his lips over hers.
“No. Chase.” She turned her head away, jamming her eyes shut when she felt his soft lips brush her cheek right at the edge of her ear. This was so wrong, she knew it, could feel it in the deepest part of her. She whimpered when he took her earlobe between his teeth gently, licking it, sucking it.
“I need you,” he begged, licking the side of her neck gently. “God, Lila, I need you so fucking bad.”
“Chase.” Lila pushed at him, “God damn it. Stop!”
“No, you stop,” he cried, releasing her waist and taking her wrists. He pulled her to him until they were nose to nose. “Tell me you’re not wet for me right now.” His entire body shook. “Tell me that you don’t love me,” he whispered, passionately. “Tell me you don’t, Lila… Say it and I’m gone…”
Lila’s wide eyes searched his frantically.
Chase licked his lips as his gaze fell to her mouth. “Say it,” he demanded, shaking her softly. “God dammit, say it.”
“I can’t,” Lila cried, her lips trembling. She clenched her hands into fists as tears fell from her eyes. “Chase, I can’t,” she sputtered.
Chase’s face fell. “What?” he gasped, sure his mind was playing tricks on him.
“I can’t,” she said, again, snatching her wrists away, relieved when he allowed her to do so.
Chase was suddenly hit with a violent regret as he watched her slowly stumble away from him. His quivering hands went to the top of his head. What had he done? His brain raced for the right words to say, but he was out of his mind. It was as if he’d just come back down to earth after watching the entire scene unfold from a distance.
“Oh Lila,” he breathed, as awareness caved in all around him. “Lila, please forgive me.”
He couldn’t move as she turned and ran away from him, falling to his knees in the sand.
---
Later that night in her hotel room Lila was startled by a knock at her door. Taking her head, which she’d been currently holding in her clawed hands, out of her head she crossed the room to the door. She hesitated. There was only one person who could be on the other side.
The moment she opened it, she knew she shouldn’t have.
“Chase, you have to go.”
Chase crossed the threshold of the door Lila held in her hand, gazing down at her. His eyes explored her face openly, for longer than he’d ever dared, and when they met hers he was
riveted. He swallowed in the night air, so thickly that he could hear it in his throat.
“Chase,” Lila whispered.
He stepped in closer to her, closer than he’d ever been. Taking her dove necklace, he stroked it between his fingers before looking up at her, leaning down, and covering her lips with his.
Lila’s eyes jammed closed, unable to handle the feeling that swept over her. A soft whimper escaped her lips as she set her hands on his chest, pushing him firmly away.
She placed the back of her quivering hand over her lips, gaping at his. Gently, her eyes rose.
“I’ll wait for you for the rest of my life,” he whispered.
“Chase,” Lila’s unsteady hand went from her lips to her chest. She covered it with her hand, feeling it pound like thunder under her rips. “You have to go.”
Chase stepped back and quietly left the room.
---
An hour later Lila was face to face with a ticketing agent at the airport.
“I don’t mind waiting on standby,” she said, leaning over the chrome Delta Airlines counter with an entire flight worth of people standing behind her, “I don’t care how long it takes. I’ll sleep in the terminal if I have to. I just need to get the hell out of this city as quickly as humanly possible.”
When she was finally sitting in a terminal what felt like ages later, Lila dialed Jack’s number. It went to voicemail.
“Jack.” Just saying his name brought tears to her eyes. “Um… I came to Cambridge for a job interview and… it went well. Actually well might not be the right word but… I got offered the job on the spot. I’m on my way back to New York and I really, really need to talk to you as soon as possible so... So once I land I’ll probably just head over to the law firm, and if you’re not there I’ll try the brownstone. I still have the key so I’ll just let myself in. I’ll uh… I’ll see you soon. Bye.”
Lila hung up the phone, and told herself to be patient.
---
Jack didn’t notice the missed call from Lila until hours later. Having been passed out in the terminal, he’d just gotten in line to board his plane when it occurred to him to check his phone one last time before boarding.
He brought the phone to his ear, listened to her voicemail, and the color drained from his face.
Much to the alarm of all the people around him, Jack turned away from the gate and broke into a run.
---
“Jack?” Lila pushed the door to his bedroom open and her eyes fluttered shut as his smell—a mix of soap, a hint of cologne and something simply Jack—reached all the way out into the hallway and wrapped itself around her. She found herself dropping the bag from her shoulder and breathing deep, disappearing into the door of his room. For the first time that day she realized how exhausted she was, and his rumpled, but Jack-smelling bed sheets seemed like just what the doctor ordered.
She climbed into his California King bed and tucked her head contentedly into his pillows, inhaling once more. Damn she missed him. Just the smell of his sheets had her wanting him in every way a woman could want a man, right then and there. For now, however, sleep seemed like the next best option.
She was seconds away from dozing off when she slid her hand under his pillow and poked her hand on something. The small stick was enough to startle her awake and, with a frown, she lifted the pillow and her mouth dropped at what she saw.
Dozens and dozens of photos of her and Jack. Sleeping, walking, eating, doing any number of things together. Her heart pounded as she snatched up the photos and began frantically flipping through them until she came to the last few. These were much more intimate, consisting mostly of her and Jack making love in her apartment.
Holding the photographs in her hand she slipped out of the bed and stood, the moonlight seeping through the curtains illuminating the photos as she flipped through them, one after the other. The first was a close up photo of Jack’s sculpted chest—so close that she could see the baby hairs dusted along his pecs. The next photo was clearer, she could see his chest, his plaid boxers, a hint of his stubbled chin… and she could see herself. Just in the distance Lila’s form was visible, lying naked in her bed. She flipped to the next photo and it was one she recognized. Her and Jack making love. It was the same angle, the same lighting…
“Jack?” Shock stole Lila’s breath, and as the photographs slipped from her trembling fingers the weight of the truth nearly crushed her.
Jack had taken those photos.
Chapter 10
Lila wasn’t ready to believe it. Not even as the photos danced under her trembling fingers. Not even when, an hour later, the sound of his engine roaring outside of the window rang in her ears. Not even when she heard him bounding up the stairs. She couldn’t see him, but she could hear him. There was urgency behind the way his feet sounded stomping up the stairs. He knew she was there--she’d left him a message saying so--and he was now getting up to his bedroom as fast as he could before she found something he didn’t want her to find.
Lila’s wet eyes fell to the photos she must have looked at a million times. A tear fell from her eyelid and splashed against the picture on top. In it she was fast asleep on her stomach with Jack lying across her back. He was fingering a lone curl that had popped free from her flat ironed hair during one of their sweatier sessions. The smile on his face was one of a man in love, but now Lila knew better.
She blinked again, and another tear fell.
Perhaps she was jumping to conclusions and Jack had a perfectly reasonable explanation for why he had the very photos that had been terrifying her under his bed.
She swallowed heavily. That had to be it. She couldn’t accept that a man who could look at her the way he was looking at her in that photo--hell, in most of them--could be capable of hurting her in any way.
So she stuffed the photos back under his pillow exactly as she found them--or as close to exact as she could get--and covered them back up, lying down on the bed just in time to hear the door to Jacks room open. Her body shot up and she attempted to feign surprise as she took in the sight of him barreling through the door with his black trench coat flowing haphazardly behind him. The rain had made as much of a mess as Mother Nature could manage on a man as beautiful as him, leaving his hair a wet mess on top of his head and the white button down he wore underneath his coat soaked. She could see every dip at curve of his torso. His pecks, his abs, the same ones that contracted to alarming degrees just a second before he drove his body into hers, deeper, harder…
Lila blinked away the thought. If she was going to get to the bottom of this then thoughts of this man putting it down had to be completely off limits. He was too dangerous to her psyche.
She loved him too much.
The thought hit her like a ton of bricks. She’d never told him. Taking in the sight of his soaking wet clothes, she was suddenly rocketed back to the night he’d shown up on her doorstep looking exactly as he did at that moment. She’d loved him even then. How had she not seen it?
How had she not seen any of this?
Maybe she was wrong on all of it, she thought, as her eyes scanned his body. Maybe he would tell her what the hell those pictures were about before she had to ask him herself. Maybe this was all a big misunderstanding.
That was a lot of maybes, and if her past was any indication, a ‘maybe’ was always more dangerous than the truth itself. ‘Maybe’ was what had gotten her into this mess in the first place. ‘Maybe’ she and Jack could pull off a casual fling, ‘maybe’ being with him once would be enough to get whatever weird tension they had between them completely out of their system, ‘maybe’ Chase would understand, somehow. In between all of those ‘maybes’ Jack had become anything but ‘maybe’ to her.
“Hey,” she said, pushing herself up into an indian style position in the middle of his bed. She watched his brown eyes pass her and lock onto the pillow that sat just behind her, the same pillow where the pictures she’d found were hidden away once more.
&nb
sp; His eyes came back to her. “Hey yourself.”
Lila stared at him. She hadn’t missed the panic in his eyes when they’d gone to his pillow. He was looking to see if she’d found something she shouldn’t have. Her stomach fell, and she yearned to turn around and make sure that she hadn’t left a photo or two peeking out but she didn’t have the courage to risk breaking her cover. “I’m sorry to just barge in on you like this, I just…”
“You look beautiful,” Jack whispered, appearing somewhat relieved as he closed the door behind him.
Lila couldn’t think one single thought. It was now clear to her that he was deliberately keeping those photos from her. If their mere existence was something he felt the need to share with her surely he would have done it by now.
“I didn’t mean to barge in on you like this,” she said once more. “I’m just--” Lila scooted to the end of the bed, stopping when she felt the tip of her toes digging into the carpet blow her. “I just really needed to see you, Jack.”
“I was at the airport. I bought a ticket to Cambridge.”
Lila’s eyes searched his. “Why?”
“Ah, I see. So you’re the only one who’s allowed to show up someplace uninvited?” The tiniest hint of a smirk tugged at the corner of his lips, but Lila knew him too well. He was only very faintly kidding, if at all.
“Is it just because Chase was there too?”
“It was only because Chase was there, Lila.”
“Are you so threatened by him that you can’t even trust me alone with him in the same state?”
“It’s not you I don’t trust.”
“Oh no?”
“No. And for the record, I’m not threatened by anybody.”
“No?”
“No. Like I said, it’s not you I don’t trust, Lila… it’s him. With all of these fucking pictures floating around, and us having no idea whose taking them I couldn’t stand the idea of you being out of state with the main suspect.”
Lila's Thunder: The Almeida Brothers, Book One Page 18
