The Storm Inside (16 page)

Thank goodness it was such a physical workout or we would have wasted away.

I’d never been happier.

We glossed over the necessary things. There were certain assumptions we both felt free making. For instance, I’d always been psychotic about my birth control and monitoring my cycle, so Jake had assumed (correctly) there was nothing to worry about there. But we did go over it, along with a cursory declaration of our clean health. Neither one of us wanted to explore why that was necessary.

But it was the kind of thing that we couldn’t run away from forever. Eventually the topic came up—and it was my fault. My curiosity finally got the better of me.

“What?” he asked.

I shook my head and frowned as I looked back at my iPad, “Nothing.”

He set down his Kindle and raised a speculative eyebrow. “Bullshit. You don’t look at me like that for
nothing
. You have a question on your mind.”

I sighed and looked back up at him. I still wasn’t sure if it was really the time to bring it up, but then again, it was going to come up eventually. I gathered up what little courage I had, set aside the iPad, and dove in. “I want to know about the women you were with between me and… me.” It was odd to refer to that span as the time between our relationships.

He sat straight up and turned to face me, his eyes growing deadly serious. “I’ve been waiting for this.” He threaded his hands together in his lap, taking in a deep breath. “I want to start off by saying I’ve never been in love with anyone but you.”

The reassurance was nice, but he had already said that. “But…”

He contorted his face and I knew I wasn’t going to like what was coming next. I don’t know how I knew; it was just a gut feeling that hit me like a punch right in the breadbasket.

“I had a
friend
over there. We helped each other out in that department.”

Yep, the world fell away as the wind poofed right out of my lungs.

I guess I wanted to hear he’d had a bunch of random women over the years. A
friend
kind of sounded like a relationship, and I hated the idea of Jake in a relationship with anyone. “For how long?”

I didn’t want to know. I didn’t want to know any of this. Why was I asking?

“Five years.”

I had to move. I hopped off the bed and started pacing around my bedroom. Back and forth, back and forth, across the floor. My heart was thumping and my stomach was churning as my mind took off in a million directions—not one of them helpful. I wasn’t so sure dinner was staying down. “That’s a pretty long time…”

Jake was following my movements across the room, his hands folded carefully in his lap, “It was just sex, Eve. The way work shifted around sometimes we wouldn’t see each other for months… but it was just sex, we had no romantic attachments. She had needs, I had needs…” his voice trailed off when I put my hands in the air for him to stop.

I had enough information and I needed a moment to process. And processing involved a lot more frantic pacing. I felt like I was coming apart, I had an overwhelming urge to run and escape, but I fought it back.

Finally I ended up at my window looking out over the lawn. I tried to picture what it would have been like. Did she call him? Did he call her? Did they randomly bump into each other and hit a bathroom? Was she pretty…? Oh, god, I didn’t want to know that.

Suddenly his arms were around me and his lips were behind my ear. “Only you, Eve. I’ve only ever loved you.”

I leaned into his embrace. God I loved being in his arms.

“Why did it end?”

He squeezed me tighter, “When I realized I was ready to come home. About a year ago.”

“You haven’t had sex in a year or were there others?”

He sighed and rested his head on my shoulder. For the life of me I wished I would stop asking questions I didn’t want to know the answers to.

“I’ve been with a few others since you.” He didn’t answer my question.

The world got a little spinny with that info and I pushed him off of me, beelining for the bathroom and emptying my stomach of all the wretchedness swirling inside me. Unfortunately it didn’t help my racing heart. That was still pounding on the inside of my chest like it wanted out of my body.

Intellectually I knew Jake was young and sexy and over the course of ten years having sex with a few different women probably wasn’t all that insane. And it wasn’t like I didn’t have my own list of partners. Of course we’d continued to live our lives. But I wish we hadn’t.

He was mine and he should never have been gone from my side, never had the opportunity to be with anyone else.

I heard the faucet and found a cup of water in my hand a moment before I felt his hand on my back. “I’m sorry.”

I smiled at him weakly as I picked myself up off the floor and brushed my teeth, attempting to get all the vileness out. I think it only partially worked.

“I don’t really remember a whole lot about those first few years. What I know mostly comes from Tom. I told you I was wild and out of control, and that included women. I remember hating myself—”

I pushed him out of the way as I made a repeat visit to the toilet. The very idea of him being with another woman… I shuddered. But at least this time I was pretty sure I was done.

Back to the sink, my mouth clean once again, I eased myself back onto the bed feeling like I’d just been through a marathon. “So, in summary… you fucked around for a few years, got yourself a whore, fucked around with her and a few others, and then decided you were healed so you cleaned up your man whore ways and came home to me.”

He stood a safe distance away in the doorway to the bathroom looking at me, but not looking at me. His mind was in his past, not here with me. “I wish I could stop hurting you.” he said simply.

I wish that too.
“Then explain it to me so I understand.”

He grimaced and looked down at the floor, “I was lonely and angry. I acted out in every way I could, including with women. Eve, I honestly thought we were done. I never thought I’d be able to come home, or ever deserve you. I just tried to survive.”

I closed my eyes and laughed at the way it hurt.

Jake sat down beside me, the bed dipping under his weight, “My five years with Ashley was nothing but two screwed up people using each other to get through life.”

Ashley.
That name was moving to the top of my Most Hated Names list.

“I only loved you.”

I sighed and leaned into his shoulder. I wanted to blot out all that dreaded information, but I knew it was etched into my brain forever. And I knew it was a consequence of the path Jake chose. I had no power over that choice any more than I had any power over how he chose to recover. It was. And my comfort was in the fact that he did, in fact, love me.

Didn’t make the next few days hurt any less.

***

I struggled, I admit it, with Jake’s list of whore’s.
Ashley.
I hated her most of all. And it brought up every insecurity I was struggling with. I fought back my fear that Jake might leave again. I pushed back on my feelings of inadequacy. But my biggest problem was confronting my anger.

I was angry at Jake for leaving. Because he left, he’d also been with other women. I rationalized that if Jake had stayed he would have been just as screwed up and might have wound up acting out with women here. He may have cheated on me, left me, ruined our relationship. Done things that would have truly ruined our relationship forever. But it didn’t help much.

I was pretty much just angry about the whole thing.

To Jake’s credit, he gave me space. He fucked me if I asked for it, but otherwise was very tender, making love to me at every opportunity. It was very sweet and reaffirmed his words… that he’d only ever loved me.

Unfortunately it was nothing compared to what happened when Jake finally found out about Sebastian.

It was a Wednesday evening; Jake had brought home a ridiculous amount of sushi for the four of us. Andrew was stuck at work so the three of us got started without him. We were around the massive island in the kitchen: rolls, sushi, and sashimi splayed out, a bottle of
sake
was being shared. We were laughing and thoroughly enjoying sampling all the different treats before us when Jennie picked up a piece of tuna sashimi.

The rectangular chunk of raw fish was perched easily between her chopsticks as she held it up in front of her face and started laughing. “Oh Eve, are you thinking what I’m thinking.”

I froze as I realized exactly what she was thinking, and unfortunately I couldn’t get my mouth to work in time to stop her.

“You screamed so loud! I think half of Samurai Blue jumped out of their seats! I still can’t believe Sebastian snatched this,” she wiggled the sashimi at me, somehow missing the look of complete horror on my face, “right out of your mouth. It was
so
not like him to kiss you like that!”

Jake was frozen at the end of the counter, his neck muscles working and his fists crushed around the edge of the counter. He didn’t need to know who Sebastian was; Jennie had given him the only information he needed.

Her face immediately fell as her eyes went wide, “Oh my god. I don’t why I just said that.” She locked eyes with me, “I’m so, so sorry.” Her voice fell away so that she was practically mouthing the apology.

I looked over at Jake who was off somewhere else in his mind. He was looking straight ahead, but he wasn’t seeing anything in front of him. “Jake…” I started.

He didn’t move, except for the muscles flexing in his arms, but his eyes shot to mine, “I need a minute.” He finally released the counter from his grip and stepped back. “I’m going to go take a quick shower, you ladies finish your dinner.” He looked pointedly at me, “Meet me upstairs in a bit?”

I nodded, swallowing down the lump in my throat, “I’ll be up in a minute.”

He nodded tightly, the sadness in his eyes so obvious I could feel it.

“Eve, please don’t hate me…” Jennie whispered, her face still twisted with regret.

I popped a piece of sushi in my mouth and carefully chewed, using the time to order my thoughts. “It was time, we’ve been putting this off… don’t beat yourself up.”

She shook her head slowly, “I’m still sorry. It wasn’t my place to push you where you weren’t ready to go.”

Maybe we weren’t ready to go there, or maybe it was a dark pall that had been hanging over us for weeks. Either way, what was done was done, and a little part of me was relieved to get it all out in the open. It felt like one of the last big hurdles in front of us. Not the very last by any means… there was one much larger still to come… but this was next in line. It would be a good test of Jake’s claim he wouldn’t run.

When I got upstairs the shower was still running and I knew exactly how I wanted to handle Jake. The bathroom was foggy from the humidity and I quickly stripped naked, my work clothes falling in a trail from doorway to shower. He saw me coming, watching me silently strip with a dark intense stare, drinking me in with each step.

By the time I reached him, the air was alive and crackling between us. I could feel him and the darkness around him. The shower door opened and his large hand wrapped around my waist, pulling me inside.

The shower was just barely big enough for two people to comfortably fit. The tiles had a rough finish and a design ran along the top. Glass enclosed it on two sides with a door closest to the wall.

Everything about our shower sex was a mix of pleasure and pain. The hot water stung as it hit my dry flesh, but I quickly got used to it, even welcomed the comfort it brought me from the chill of the air. Jake’s fingers dug hungrily into my soft flesh. I would have cried out from the roughness with which he handled me, but I didn’t want to stop him and I knew my cry would snap him out of whatever world he was lost in.

I wanted him to use me. I wanted him to have me in whatever way he needed me.

He spun my back against the wet shower tile, hiking my leg up as his tongue forced its way inside my mouth. He was intense and hard with every movement he made.

Unlike every other experience I’d had with Jake there would be no lead up to this. He was going to take me hard and fast with no foreplay or slow pleasuring.

He kept his head down on my shoulder—in fact I don’t think he’d looked at me once as he forced his way inside me. I dug my nails into his shoulder as he desperately pumped into me over and over. Then he grunted deep in his throat, thrust hard and deep, then froze, dropping his forehead back onto my shoulder until he caught his breath. When he finally looked up there was no change in his eyes, they were still as distant and dark as they had been when he first pulled me into the shower.

That was when I knew we weren’t done. We were only getting started.

He silently reached for my body wash, the scent of vanilla and honey filling the steamy room in an instant, and he slowly, thoroughly washed me. It wasn’t until he was done that he finally touched me with the intent to please.