Off Limits

‘I’m sorry for that,’ I say quietly.

‘Yeah. I was, too.’ His smile was haunted. ‘The guy she’d left just before meeting me seemed to have thought of her as his own personal punch bag.’

I nod slowly, imagining what that must be like. I have nothing to reference it to. It’s beyond my remit even to comprehend that kind of fear and pain.

‘I’m sorry,’ I say again.

‘Yeah.’ He nods, too. ‘Anyway...’

‘So you guys started seeing each other?’

He winced. ‘I proposed to her a week after we met. I’m not good at the whole dating thing. I don’t have the patience for it.’ His smile is shaded with self-deprecation. ‘I steamrollered her rather than dated her.’

I can’t help the soft laugh that escapes me. ‘Why does that not surprise me?’

It’s further proof that when Jack wants something he goes after it—immediately and unequivocally. But it’s taken him two years to realise he wants my body, and there’s no sign he wa

nts more than that. He felt the same love for Lucy that my grandma describes having for Grandpa. So perhaps it is normal and common and I just don’t realise that because I’ve never felt anything like it.

It’s pretty obvious Jack doesn’t feel it for me. Jealousy bubbles in my gut.

‘I wanted to make her life better. I wanted to fix it all. To take away her pain and make her smile and laugh.’

‘I’m sure you did,’ I say, with truth.

I’ve only seen a few photos of Lucy around the mansion and, yes, on the internet, when I’ve allowed myself the morbid indulgence of looking her up. And in all of these pictures she is smiling.

‘I killed her, Gemma.’ His eyes meet mine for a second and then he looks away. ‘If she’d never met me she’d probably still be alive.’

I freeze, ill-equipped to deal with this kind of confession. Nothing about it makes sense. And yet the way he drinks after he’s slept with someone... Is it possible there’s a darker truth at play? No. I know Jack. I know him through and through. He’s being dramatic, not literal.

‘What are you talking about?’

He swallows, then closes his eyes. ‘She was pregnant. We’d just found out and then the tests showed that she had cancer. I wanted her to start treatment immediately, but it would have meant her having an abortion.’

Sadness for Jack, for Lucy and for the baby they would have had fills me all the way to the top of my soul. I don’t consider myself maternal, but I know instantly what decision she made and why.

‘She didn’t want to do that.’

‘No.’ His face is grim. ‘Even with treatment she had pretty much no hope.’ He clears his throat. ‘But still... There would have been a chance. If she hadn’t fallen pregnant.’ He shakes his head angrily.

‘Then she wouldn’t have found out about the cancer until it was too late,’ I say softly.

Sympathy makes me crumble. How can I be strong in the face of his loss? I cup his face and draw him to me, kissing him gently, tenderly, hoping to reassure him and wipe away this baseless and yet unending guilt.

He is still. Not kissing me back. His guilt is still cloaked about us, but then something clicks into gear and he groans into my mouth, cupping my butt and lifting my legs to wrap them around his waist, holding me against his arousal and letting me obliterate his sadness. For one more moment. One more night.

I see now that this is how he’s getting through.

A night here and there to stop feeling this weight of responsibility.

A different woman to bury himself in and forget that he got Lucy pregnant and that because of her pregnancy she refused treatment.

His words swirl through my head. ‘I wanted to make her life better. I wanted to fix it all. To take away her pain and make her smile and laugh.’

It’s exactly how I feel about Jack.

And I know one sure-fire way to bring him back from the haunted brink of the misery he’s inhabiting. I kiss him hard, moving my mouth over his as I press against his cock. My hands tuck into the elastic of his swim shorts, curving around his arse, holding him tight against me.