“I know what I saw you do for my mom. I know I couldn’t have done that. You’re smart and talented, and you’re wasting it! I know you were devastated when your mom…and when George…but it’s been five years, Katie! Snap out of it!”
“You’ve been back in town a few days and you think you know me? You don’t know shit about my life!”
“So tell me! What am I missing? Fucking tell me!” He grabbed my shoulders and gave me a shake. “Whatever it is, I can help, but you have to tell me!”
“You think money fixes everything? It doesn’t! Newsflash, Jackson Jacobs, money can only fix problems that you create, not real-world problems. None of my dad’s money helped a bit when Mom got sick, not a bit! What you perceive as problems are nothing!”
He stepped back. “Are you”—he cleared his throat—“are you sick?”
“No, not me,” I said. He noticeably relaxed.
“Who then?”
“No one is sick. You’re missing the point. I’m just saying that you have a skewed view of the world.”
“Okay, fine, so set me straight. Show me. Spend time with me. Show me how you see the world.”
I rolled my eyes. “You have to go. I need my job, and being your fuck buddy is not worth throwing away everything I’ve worked so hard for.”
He tilted his head and gave me the angriest look I had ever seen him wear. “Fuck buddy? Have I treated you like a fuck buddy?”
“I really wouldn’t know.” I lifted my chin to him as not to lose my nerve.
“I haven’t. There’s a difference between having sex and fucking.”
“No, there’s a difference between making love and fucking, Jake.”
“And what have we been doing?”
“Fucking,” I said.
His jaw muscles tensed, and his eyes narrowed as if I had hit a nerve. I meant to. “I have yet to fuck you.”
“I can’t tell!” I said, turning my back on him to walk into my room.
“You want to get fucked? Is that it?” He pressed into my back, pushing me against the wall. He leaned down and whispered into my ear from behind. “You don’t even know what it’s like to get fucked. I don’t think you know the difference. All you’ve done is play house.” He pulled my hips toward him with one hand and pushed my head against the wall with the other. The next thing I heard was my panty hose rip. Then I felt cool air on my bare backside as he flipped up my skirt. “You want me to fuck you?”
His hands on me were all I could think about. The anger I felt mixed with his forcefulness clouded my thoughts, “Jake…”
I never thought I would enjoy being spanked, but a shudder of pleasure ran through me when his hand connected with my backside.
“Now it’s Jake? A minute ago, I was Jackson. Who do you want?” He ran his fingers down my center, and I let out a whimper. “This part of your body doesn’t seem to care. I’m going to ask you again. Do you want to get fucked by Jackson Jacobs?” I hesitated, which earned me another slap on the ass, harder this time, and I actually clenched with a mini-orgasm. “Don’t make me ask you again.”
I inclined my head the slightest bit, and that was all it took. He pushed inside me slowly, and I wondered what made this any different than what we’d already done, but then he answered my silent question by pulling back and pounding into me. I bit my lip to keep from crying out. I refused to give him the satisfaction of knowing how good it felt.
“You don’t like this?” he said without changing his pace. “I do.” He palmed my breast roughly through my uniform before ripping the zipper to reveal my bra. “Take. It. Off.” he commanded, slapping my ass again. I slipped the straps of my bra down, releasing my breasts. My nipple tingled for the touch of his fingertip, but instead he pinched it. My jaw went slack, my eyes clenched tight as I tried to keep from moaning. I didn’t have to say anything for him to know how much I enjoyed what he was doing. My body reacted to his touch.
He continued his relentless pace until I shattered around him.
“You done?” he asked as the spasms slowed. His fingertips dug into my hip impossibly harder. “Are you done?”
“Yes,” I managed. Then I was empty. He pulled out of me, but I didn’t feel the warmth of his release. I just heard him zip up his jeans. “What…what are you doing?”
“That’s what it’s like to get fucked. That’s all I’ve known for the past seven years so you can see how I might perceive what we’ve been doing as a little different.”
I was shocked. He hadn’t made love to anyone? He hadn’t had that? I pulled my broken zipper together to cover myself.
“Taking what I can get from women I don’t want. Being sated but never fully satisfied. That’s getting fucked.”
“Jake.” I looked up it him. I was brimming with emotion. So much so that I didn’t think I could hold back the tears this time.
“Don’t. I know it’s fucked up! Don’t you think I know that?” He ran his hands through his disheveled hair. “I just…I haven’t been close to anyone since you stopped talking to me. It hurt me. I couldn’t get close to anyone like that again.”
I stood there staring at him, but I didn’t know what to say. We hadn’t been intimate when we were friends, but I had broken his heart by cutting him out of my life, and it had affected him. I hadn’t meant to cut him out when I got married—that was George—but what had happened five years ago, after my mom passed away, was all me. It hurt me that my poor judgement had affected him so harshly, no matter whose fault it was.
“Your new car is out front. You shouldn’t be driving that piece of shit you have. It’s a hazard. The keys are on the kitchen counter. Drive it, sell it, burn it, I don’t care. I’ll walk home.” He grabbed his jacket from the coat rack by the front door.
I wrapped my hand around his on the doorknob. “Jake, you can stay.”
“No, it’s okay. I don’t want to cause you any more trouble than I already have.” He let his chin drop to his chest. “I knew the media would come between us. I knew it!”
I stepped in front of him, dropping my uniform, letting him see my scars for the first time. He squeezed his eyes shut, and I thought for a second that I should cover myself, but then he brushed his fingers over my hipbones. “I’m sorry…I didn’t mean to…”
I looked down and saw the fingerprint-sized bruises starting to form on my hip where he’d held me in place a few minutes before. I decided I did have something to offer him that no one else had. I just had to let all of my emotional walls down to do it.
I brushed his cheek with my thumb and stood on my tiptoes to kiss him softly. He didn’t react at first.
“Don’t do this unless you mean it,” he whispered.
I knew what he meant. He didn’t want me to get close to him if I didn’t plan on staying close to him. I knew I wouldn’t pull away from him again for the world, now that I knew how much it had hurt him, so I pulled his face to mine, and he melted into me. As we made our way to the bed, our kiss was unbreakable. Each time our tongues met, I felt a stir deep within me that had nothing to do with my raging lust for him. It scared me and excited me at the same time, spurring me forward. I took his hand in mine and led him to the bedroom, where I lifted his shirt over his head and took care to kiss all of those muscles I’d traced with my fingers.
He was hesitant, and his body trembled beneath me like it had the first time we’d done this. “Why are you shaking?” I asked softly, trying not to ruin the moment.
“I’m scared,” he whispered, so low I almost didn’t hear him.
“You don’t have to be. It’s me,” I told him, staring into his beautiful blue eyes.
“You scare me more than anyone,” he said, and I captured his lips with mine again.
I didn’t know how long we lay there just kissing before he rolled me over and kissed down my body. My hand instinctively went to the scars on my stomach, but he gently pushed it away. He placed a soft kiss on each scar and bruise on my hip, even tracing my C-section scar lightl
y with his fingertip.
My thoughts were everywhere, nowhere, as he kissed me all the way down to my ankles and back up to where I ached for him. I fisted his hair, but he was in no hurry. He pulled my hand from his hair, lacing his fingers in mine.
When I was writhing beneath him, he crawled back up, sliding himself into me fluidly. He rocked gently inside me, letting me set the pace. I matched the depth of my kisses with the pleasure I felt until it felt so good we were sharing the same air with our lips touching.
With me still clenching around him, he pulled back, but I pushed him deeper and whispered, “It’s okay, just let go.” I felt the warmth of his release inside me as I captured his moans with a kiss.
We lay there together for I don’t know how long. His phone had gone off at least a half a dozen times, but he hadn’t made a move to get it. I swept his dark hair from his forehead. “Are you okay?” He nodded into my chest. “Are you still scared?”
“More than ever,” he whispered, and I knew how he felt. Everything had changed.
Chapter 8
“I need food,” I said as the sunlight through the bedroom window dimmed.
“Yeah, I could eat.”
“What do you want? I could cook you something.”
“No, let me.” He kissed me again before sliding on a pair of sweatpants and leaving me to my thoughts. “It looks like you’ve got spaghetti or spaghetti,” he shouted from the kitchen.
I laughed. “Hmm, I think I’ll take the spaghetti.”
“Do you have anything out in the deep freeze?”
“Just Lean Cuisines. I’m going to grab a shower,” I told him.
“Okay.”
I let the warm water soothe the sore parts of my body that had been overused. When I got out, I wiped the steam from the mirror. I couldn’t stop smiling. Despite the situation I had put myself in with Jake, I just couldn’t stop smiling.
Yeah, I had put myself out there, and yeah, he would be leaving in a few days, but so what? It felt so good to let myself feel again. I hadn’t realized how badly George’s deception had screwed me up until now. I couldn’t believe I’d gone five years without feeling love…
Love…Did I love Jake? I shook my head. I couldn’t think like that. I knew he would be leaving. I had always just accepted what life dealt me, but with Jake, I decided to just enjoy him for as long as he was here, but first, I had some things to tell him. I had secrets that he deserved to know about.
I quickly dried my hair enough so that it wasn’t dripping, threw on something comfortable, and walked out of the bedroom. I found Jake sitting on the edge of the couch with Ty’s monster-sized stuffed rabbit.
“What is this?” Shit. I shook my head, shame written all over my face. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I was just about to.”
“Yeah? Why just now? Why not before?”
“I-I don’t know. I just didn’t want you to worry about our slip-up. I didn’t want you to worry about me getting pregnant.”
“Because you can get pregnant…as in, you have before…?”
“Yes. But it was a miracle. The doctors were amazed. You really don’t have to worry about it.”
“You think I’m upset because I’m afraid that you’re pregnant?” I stood there admittedly confused. “I don’t care about that. I mean I do, it wouldn’t be ideal, but I’m upset that you kept this from me and let me find out from my assistant.”
“Joan?”
“Yeah, Joan. She called to see how Tyler was handling all of this.”
“It’s Ty,” I said sheepishly before the thought dawned on me. “Wait, there aren’t reporters following him around, are there?” I panicked because that would surely freak him out.
“No, Joan found out first, but the press will find out.”
I started pacing. “They can’t. I mean there has to be a law against them going after my son!”
“There is. Calm down.”
“You don’t understand!”
His tone softened. “Help me understand then.”
“He’s only four. He would freak out if a bunch of people started following him!”
“Yeah, I get that. But why didn’t you tell me you had a kid? It doesn’t make any sense why you would hide that from me. I mean you just made love to me, right?”
“Yes, but I wouldn’t just bring him around a guy. He wouldn’t understand that.”
“I’m not just a guy. Even before this weekend, I wasn’t ‘just a guy.’ We’ve been best friends for so long.”
“I know.” I rubbed my face. “I don’t know, Jake. I don’t have a good reason. Julie picked him up from school on Friday. She’d already planned to keep him all week. You’ll be leaving a couple of days after he gets home. There’s just no reason to confuse him.”
He drew his eyebrows together with that hurt look but nodded. “Okay. I understand, but you should’ve told me, you know? I mean, I would’ve understood. You shouldn’t have to hide your kid from your best friend. We can talk about anything.”
“I know.” I accepted his arms around me. “I should have told you; I’m sorry.”
“How could I not know this? Surely my mom knows…”
“She does. We have lunch with her every Sunday. She loves Ty very much.”
“How have you managed to keep her from telling me anything about you?”
“I simply told her I didn’t want to see you. That’s it. Don’t be angry with her for respecting my wishes. She does love me like I’m her own daughter.”
“I know, but you having a kid. That’s huge! How? I mean George is the dad, right?” I gave him a look that could double as a slap. “Yeah, sorry. Stupid question. Does he know?”
I shrugged. “I doubt it. Everything just happened so fast, you know?”
“No, I really don’t know. Tell me.”
I sank into the nearest chair, knowing that it was time I shared my past with him. “I thought we had a good solid marriage. All of our dreams were coming true. Work was going well for both of us; we had a nice place. I’d been accepted to medical school at the university. We were happy; I thought we were happy.” I shook my head. “The whole thing was so random. I got off work early on that Tuesday. I stopped at the mailbox just like any other day. I found a few letters going out from George, which I thought was odd, but I went on inside and ate. Then I started noticing things out of place. There was a Post-it on the bedside table with an arrow pointing to a box. I looked over and found it full of papers, a journal, and a DVD. I picked up one of the folders. It just had some bank statements in it. The balances were all zero, but I thought maybe they were old closed accounts, so I moved on to the journal.”
I looked to Jake for reaction, but his expression wasn’t judgmental as others had been. It was soft, wide-eyed and sincere.
“The journal started in April, and it was October, so that piqued my interest. I read the first page dated in April, it started like: Kate, I messed up. It went on to explain that he’d been picked up and interviewed by the FBI. He apologized for all the lies he’d told and told me he loved me but that he couldn’t go to jail.
“At that point, I dropped the journal and picked up the DVD. I watched as my husband sat on our living room couch and told me that he was sorry and that he loved me, but he couldn’t go to prison.
“I actually chased the mailman down to get the letters George meant to mail. They were to his parents and best friend. Both apologies, but I still didn’t know what he was apologizing for. I ran back inside and called every number I had for him, which included an extra work phone that he’d been carrying around for about a year, but there was no answer. All of them were turned off.”
Jake squeezed my knee, urging me to continue. I got up and began to pace as I recounted the rest of the story.
“When the phone rang, of course I thought it was George calling to explain everything. But it wasn’t George calling. It was a man who said he was a U.S. Marshal. He wanted to know where my husband was. I
told him I had no idea and that I was really worried. He and his partner were at my door within a half-hour explaining that George had been due in court that afternoon. Court…I mean I was reeling. I still didn’t know that he’d been laundering money for some of the top crime bosses in New York, Atlantic City, and Atlanta. Apparently they’d contacted George and made him an offer he couldn’t refuse, or maybe George contacted them. Either way, they thought it would be foolproof to have someone from the Deep South in a small firm do their dirty work. Sort of off the radar, I guess. I still don’t understand why he did it. I mean we weren’t rich, but we were doing well financially.
“Anyway, it seemed that George had been using his work phone to make these deals. I should have seen the signs. He was spending a lot of money, but since we had separate accounts, I just thought his brokerage firm was doing well. We never talked about money. I know that sounds crazy, but it’s true. I was making good money; I paid half of the bills, and he paid the other half. I always thought it was ideal. We never argued about money because we didn’t share it.”
“I can see that,” Jake agreed.
“The marshals told me that the only reason George had gotten caught was because I had used my home phone to call his prepaid work phone one night when he was late getting home. I remembered exactly when they were talking about because George had told me to never call that phone and I had done it anyway, because I was worried about him. They’d said that prepaid phones were very difficult to track, but when I had made that call, they’d tracked him through me. They also told me that George had been to hearings several times over the course of the previous six months. He had been given the option to plead guilty, and spend twenty years in prison, or to turn evidence, testify against the crime rings and just get probation. Through reading his journal, I realized that he had pled guilty with no intention of going to prison, but only to keep from being a snitch. He had written that if he had ratted on his partners in crime, then they would come after his family, so he was doing it for me, to keep me safe.”
I sat back down next to him. “I felt so stupid. How could I have missed all of that? The police believed that I wasn’t involved because they’d been following me the whole time, monitoring my phone calls and bank accounts, gah! How did I not notice? Stupid doesn’t even describe it. Even though they knew I didn’t know what he had been doing, they didn’t buy that I didn’t know where he’d gone. They still don’t. I gave them all of the notes that he’d left behind. He’d been making plans to run since the moment he was first interviewed, but he didn’t leave a clue as to where he was going.”
Love Reconnected (Hollywood Series Book 1) Page 13
