Impulse - The Companion to Pulse (Pulse 4.50)

l me that she knew she'd find someone better and then I came along.

"I didn't know he'd be at the wedding, Nathan." Her hand brushes over the leg of my pants. "I wouldn’t have gone if I knew he was there."

"Is that why you were so reluctant to agree to it?" The question first occurred to me when she told me that Thomas had been at the wedding. All the pieces of the puzzle had finally fit together. It made sense that she'd try to avoid going to a celebration where she knew he'd be.

"No." Her hand drops from me back into her own lap.

"You should have told me that night, Jessica." I try not to sound as annoyed as I am. "You should have told me you saw him."

"You see women all the time that you fucked."

I hate when she pushes my past back at me. I cringe when she uses it as a tool to hide behind her own flaws. "I saw one once." It had only happened once. For a split second in time, a woman I fucked back in Boston was working as a waitress at Axel NY. Her name is Alexa. She couldn't even register our night together in her mind. Jessica and I had laughed about it together later that night.

"You only told me about the one, Nathan." She holds up her index finger to exaggerate her point.

I cross my arms over my chest. Her need to divert during every important conversation is exasperating. I'm not going to pay forever for the sins she thinks I committed before we met. "Jessica. Why is he in New York?"

"He's here for me." She doesn’t even attempt to sugar coat it. "He came here to talk to me."

"I want to meet him." I step back behind my desk and reach for the phone on my desk. "Do you still have his number? Give it to me."

"I don't have it," she says it too effortlessly for it to be a lie. She always hesitates before she says anything that isn't one hundred percent the truth. "He tried calling me I think but I didn't answer it."

"You don't have his number?" I ask. I don't even try and hide the surprise in the question. I assumed, because of my overly active jealous imagination, that they had been in constant contact since the weeding.

"No." She reaches down and pulls her small tan purse into her lap. I watch in silence as she shifts through it. "You can check my phone and see for yourself."

It's a gesture born out of her need for transparency in our relationship. After she'd stumbled on a phone I kept filled with women's numbers, I've left me phone within her arm's reach whenever we're in the same place. We have an unspoken understanding that she can pick it up and scroll through it whenever she wants. I have nothing to hide.

"Take it and see." She pushes it towards me.

I don't give in to the overwhelming temptation I feel to rummage through it at warp speed. I need to show her that I believe in her as much as she believes in me. "I don't need to." I want to. I fucking want to rip that phone out of her hand and search every single text message, email and call.

"You don't need to talk to him." It's a statement that's ripe with unspoken innuendo. "I told him not to contact me anymore."

"When did you tell him that?" I cock a brow.

"Yesterday."

I want to probe her about why she didn't mention it to me before now, but I bite my tongue. "Did he leave New York?"

Her gaze falls down to her hand. I watch as she taps her index finger and thumb together. "I don't know. I told him to stay away from me."

"Jessica." I kneel down now, my left knee touching the floor. "When you don’t share things with me, my mind jumps to places it shouldn’t be going."

She nods in understanding. Her hand glides over my cheek. "I know, Nathan."

"If you would have told me at the wedding about him, we could have cleared it up that night." It's wishful thinking on my part. She didn't bring him up because she wasn't ready to. That's what I'm telling myself. It may have much more to do with the fact that she wanted to talk to him before she shared any of it with me. I want to believe that she's as much an open book as I am, but these past couple of weeks aren't doing anything to bolster that.

"I love you so much." Her thumb pad skims over my lips. "I knew you'd blow your lid."

I smile at the words. She's right. I've proven that to her. The past few days I've been on edge just holding within me the knowledge that she was talking to a man she once shared a bed with. "That's why you should have told me right away," I press. "I could have blown my lid back in Connecticut. I would have helped you when he showed up here."

"I didn't need help." She stares at my lips. "I needed to handle it myself."

I nod in understanding. I want to press her about why she skipped work and what was so important that he had to travel all the way from Connecticut to see her. The questions are all sitting there, in queue, waiting for me to ask them. I can't right now. All I can do is accept what she's told me. Pushing her more now won't get me any closer to what I want. I want this woman to be my wife and if that means accepting that she has a few skeletons in her closet, I'll do it. I have to. I can't live without her.

Chapter 13