I wriggle out of his embrace.
He sighs, and his darkened eyes meet mine. “Okay, what the f**k’s going on?”
“Nothing.” My voice has gone squeaky. Traitor voice.
“Tru?”
I glance down at my feet. “I just…” I bite my lip.
“You just, what?” There’s no happy in his tone.
“I just feel weird having sex in your house.”
“You mean our house.” His eyebrow lifts. “And why? Because Stuart lives here?”
“No. Because of all the women you’ve f**ked here.” Okay, so that didn’t come out exactly as I had intended.
I look up, meeting his eyes, biting my lip, hard.
Jake’s face is a mask.
I also note he doesn’t deny that he’s screwed other women here.
I know it was a long shot, but I was harbouring a tiny flicker of hope that maybe he’d never brought a woman back here.
Stupid, right?
Sighing, he shoves a hand through his black hair.
I move farther away, increasing the gap between us, and lean against the counter. “How many women have you had here?”
“Do you really want me to answer that question?” His eyes burn into mine, waiting.
Looking away, I focus on the wall. I fiddle with the hem of my T-shirt.
Do I really want to know?
The sadistic side of me does. Thankfully self-preservation wins out.
“No.” I shake my head.
Pushing off the counter, I start to walk away. I just want to go to bed, sleep, and leave this conversation behind.
“Where are you going?”
I stop by the archway and turn back to him. “To bed. It’s okay, Jake. I get your past, I do…sort of.” I drag my fingers through my hair. “And I know there’s nothing you can do to change it, no matter how much I may wish it. But I can’t pretend that at times it doesn’t bother me…affect me.” I point. “Out there, I can cope with it, mostly…but in here, our home…just knowing that you’ve been…with hundreds of women…here.” I try to shake the sick-inducing images out of my mind.
“It’s not hundreds.”
“What?”
“I haven’t brought hundreds of women here.”
“Thanks for the clarification.” My tone is sharper than I mean it to be. “Look, however many it is, it’s more than one, and that’s enough to have me feeling like this. I just need a little time to figure out how to get around it—being here, knowing that. And don’t think I’m punishing you because of your past, because I’m not. It’s just my own jealousy and insecurities getting the better of me. Just give me time to figure out how to get past it, okay?”
I can see his hands curled around the edge of the stool, knuckles white from the intensity of his grip. He looks like he is having to physically restrain himself from coming over to me. I can almost smell his need to touch me in the air, floating around me like a physical presence.
I need to touch him too. Just without these images in my head.
“Okay,” he sighs. He sounds defeated. “I’ll follow you up to bed in a minute.”
Leaving him where he sits, I go upstairs, get dressed for bed, and brush my teeth. When I reemerge from the bathroom, there’s still no sign of Jake.
Turning off the light, I climb in bed, and for the first night in a long time, I fall asleep without Jake beside me.
CHAPTER FOUR
You promise you can’t see anything?” Jake asks for the tenth time.
“I promise I can’t see anything.” I sigh, feeling a little exasperated and a lot blind.
I’m currently sitting in the passenger seat of Jake’s treasured Aston Martin DBS, aka the James Bond car.
Jake’s driving, and I’m wearing a blindfold.
Yes, a blindfold.
A makeshift one, made from the silk scarf I was wearing.
Why?
Because Jake has a surprise for me. A surprise that apparently requires me to be blindfolded to get it.
We’ve been back in LA for five days.
Jake has spent most of that time at the label, dealing with the accountants, trying to sort things out with the fraud. It’s definitely five hundred thousand dollars stolen, but they are no closer to finding out who took it.
It’s consuming all of his time. He is literally getting home as I’m heading to bed, and he’s gone when I wake.
Am I worried about the strain this will be putting him under?
Absolutely.
Am I checking for visual signs of him using again?
Definitely.
I hate that I am, but he’s not long clean. I would be stupid not to be a little worried. I don’t want either of us to go through what we did before.
It’s not that I don’t trust him, I do. I just know how easily a slip can happen. I watched it happen to him before and I was blind to it, and it got too far too fast.
I won’t let that happen again.
Have I checked the cisterns in the toilets and other hidey holes in the house for drugs?
Yes.
I know it’s horrible, checking on him like that, and I know he would be really angry if he knew. But when Jake’s life is in play, nothing is more important.
I know he went to a meeting with his drug counsellor on our first day back, and I heard him on a call with someone I think is his sponsor late the night before last.
It’s natural that he’ll still be struggling, especially now back in the real world, surrounded by temptation. I’m just glad he’s making use of the professional support he has to help him get through it.