Laying on my side, I stared at the antique clock on the nightstand. It was 8AM and I’d been awake for an hour, but the second I heard Jackson begin stirring behind me, I closed my eyes and pretended to be asleep.
“Mmm, baby.” He rumbled something deep and content, wrapping his sleepy arms around me and trying for the thirtieth day in a row to act like this could be just another one of our pre-Gabrielle mornings. Kissing the back of my neck, he rubbed his hard cock against my back, sliding his hand from my side to my stomach, then slowly up to my breasts. “Good morning,” he murmured into my skin, kissing along my shoulders as his fingers tugged on the neckline of my cotton nightgown, pulling slowly down until my breasts popped out. “Mmm.” I could practically hear his mischievous grin. “Sawyer could barely take his eyes off of you last night,” he said, referring to his friend and one of the other investors of Monarch, a much-anticipated hotel in Chelsea. “Mila was sitting right next to him and all he could do was stare at these beautiful fuckin’ things all night,” he murmured, turning me onto my back and climbing on top of me. As he kissed my neck, I wondered if he was more turned on by me or the fact that his friends wanted me. Blankly, I stared at the ceiling, trying to find the hot, desperate need that once took over my body the second Jackson touched me.
After all, I hadn’t left him. I was still with him. The love I was so sure would fade was not quite gone despite everything that had happened and it was leaving me with conflicting feelings I couldn’t reconcile. A part of me just wanted to go with what Jackson had suggested and never talk about Gabrielle again. I could go with the suggestion the police had put forth – that she had possibly run off due to recent stresses in her life. It was finals week after all, and she’d apparently skipped her first two already. A straightA student before that, the cops deemed this the behavior of a runaway. It didn’t help her case that many of her drawers were found emptied, and that close friends had claimed she was depressed as of late.
With all that said, the blood in her apartment seemed just an accident – the result of a drunkenly broken wine glass.
I found the theory dismissive but it was much better than my own paranoia, which had me wondering if I’d have been too wild with rage that night to remember hurting her seriously. Maybe I had. After all, she’d bled. A lot. Had I hit her head? Had she had gone for a walk to blow off steam after our fight and fallen into the Hudson River?
I didn’t know and I couldn’t handle my guilt or paranoia alone. So I stayed with the man who had seen me through all my recent trials and tribulations. It felt right and wrong at the same time. With all our hearts, we loved one another. But my skin still crawled when Jackson touched me. All I could see were flashes of those tapes, of Gabrielle’s wide-open mouth and his deep thrusts between her legs. In a way, I hated him. In another, I felt obligated to stay.
Because what if I was somehow to blame for Gabrielle’s disappearance?
At my request, Jackson had deleted her panicked voicemail about me on his phone. But my bloody T-shirt was still nowhere to be found. While I found my jeans from that night washed in the dryer, the stained top was still missing. I asked Greta, our housekeeper, and repeatedly, she insisted that she’d never even seen the shirt in the laundry.
Twice, I dreamt of Jackson keeping it as evidence.
But it was a dream, not a premonition and regardless, I told myself that that wasn’t my reason for staying. My reason was that we’d been perfect together for four years. I hated him now but I loved him as well. Clearly, that love was strong. Clearly, it meant something if he could do something so heinous and still have my heart. On top of that, my mind was in pieces over Gabrielle’s disappearance. I couldn’t handle any radical changes right now. I needed the familiar comforts of our apartment, my friends, Jackson and my shared social life. I needed distraction.
And Jackson himself. I was pretty sure I needed him too, even though I had yet since the incident to let him have sex with me.
“Fuck, Lara, how long is it going to be?” Jackson groaned when I stopped his wandering hand above my panties. He flopped onto his back, thrusting his fingers into his messy morning hair. It was still so cute to me – the only thing that ever made a man like Jackson look remotely boyish – but I couldn’t bring myself to smile and giggle about it like I used to.
“I don’t know, Jackson, it’s going to take time. My heart is still broken and I’m putting the pieces back together on my own,” I said between my teeth. After all, I couldn’t tell anyone about Jackson’s infidelity. Gabrielle was nowhere to be found and news of their affair would no doubt bring an investigation to our home. I couldn’t have that. And while Sloane would know that I had nothing to do with it, I couldn’t tell her because she’d break her hand slapping Jackson the next time she saw him. And that, of course, would force Caleb to choose between his fiancé and his best friend of ten years, which would spark a drama th
at I didn’t want, so I opted to cope solo. “Just give me time, Jackson,” I exhaled, ruining my manicure by chewing its edges to nothing. My voice was a dead monotone. “It’s going to pass but it’s not going to happen right away. If you don’t recall, you fucking cheated on me.”
“And I regret it more than anything. I’ve never made a mistake this stupid before in my life and lately, I’ve been thinking about it every second of every fucking day. I dream about turning the clock back so it never happened. I can’t stop reliving that day we fought and then you ran off with Sloane.”
That was apparently how the affair started. On a random Thursday, I blew up at Jackson for lying to me about his smoking. For years I thought he’d quit, but the night of the Winter Ball, I found a pack of cigarettes in his Zegna suit pocket. At home, upon searching the rest of his closet, I found three more packs tucked neatly away in his shoe closet, hidden safely from my eyes. Still drunk off champagne, I screamed at him. We argued for an hour and while he slept that night, I opened a bottle of wine and booked a flight for myself to Naples. Sloane and her sister were already in Europe together so she met me there and we spent two-and-a-half weeks on the Amalfi Coast.
In that time, a neglected Jackson had apparently begun sleeping with Gabrielle.
“Three times. We did it three times in four months. Fucking Caleb’s always ordering those fourth, fifth rounds when we’re out. And she always happened to text when I was hammered. Saying things like she wanted me to tie her up. To make a video. That kind of shit.”
“Yeah.” My fingers dug into the mattress. “A video that you jacked off to while I was in the Hamptons with Sloane.”
“I was watching it like any other porn, Lara! Just to get off while I waited for you to get home. Babe, goddamnit, I swear. She meant nothing to me. You – you’re my world. You’re the only person on this Earth I can’t live without and it’s killing me every day I feel this barrier between us. I don’t feel like myself with it there. I get why it’s there. I deserve it. But I fucking want your body as much as I love you, Lara, and I need to feel you again. I need to.”
“Or what? You’ll cheat on me again?” I didn’t mean to drawl with such attitude but I did. Jackson turned to stare at me and then suddenly burst off the bed, a frustrated growl escaping his throat.
“No. Absolutely fucking not.” He paced for a second before stopping at the foot of the bed. Standing before me in his navy boxer briefs, Jackson stared at me, his six-pack rippling as he raked his fingers through his hair. “I’ll never make a mistake with you again. But I need my girlfriend back. I need to feel my other half again soon because it’s killing me. It’s killing me to know that you’re right next to me but we’re nowhere near each other. You’re somewhere else, far away and I miss the fucking hell out of you. I miss my girlfriend. That’s all.”
And with that, he got in the shower. Hugging my knees to my chest, I sat blankly in bed, swayed by Jackson’s desperate words but still hollow inside, disconnected from him. Even as I watched him fully undress through the crack of the bathroom door, I felt nothing. I was used to wanting him so bad it hurt till I could touch him with my fingers but now my body was dreary, unfeeling, emotionless. And I hated it. I wished for the spell of conflicting emotions to end but had no idea when it would and it was driving me toward the edge of insanity.
If only I knew.
It would all end that very night. By that night, I would want – no need Jackson’s arms wrapped around me again, his strong hands cupping my jaw and pressing his lips against mine. I would finally feel like we were us again. But the relief would come at a brutal cost.
Chapter Four
It started at Caleb’s birthday party, held as usual at Buccieri Wall Street, a historic bank turned party venue. The morning of, Dane McNulty had texted Jackson a picture of his date for the night – some twenty-year-old Victoria’s Secret model who was ninety percent legs. Looks like I’m top dog tonight, read the words accompanying his picture. Jackson’s blue eyes flicked across the message with irritation. Scoffing, he tossed his phone on the bed and returned to buttoning his crisp white shirt.
“Nult’s a fucking idiot,” he sneered.
“Dane McNulty? What now?” I sounded almost interested.
“Nothing, he’s just up to the same juvenile shit.”