Impulse - The Companion to Pulse (Pulse 4.50)

"It was a lot of money." She looks up into the air. "I've never told anyone about this."

I can see how pained she is by sharing all of it. I know that it's wearing her down inside. "You can tell me."

"Nathan." Her hand juts to my chin. "I'm not a bad person."

I see through the tears that are now clouding her eyes. I see the conflict that is pulling her apart from the inside out. "You're the best person I know."

"I wish that were true." Her voice breaks with a sob. "I should have been a better person then. I was young."

It's a telling confession. She rode my ass so hard when we first met about the life I'd had before we met. This is the first time I've heard her talk about her own shortcomings. Other than the brief moment in time when she blamed herself for Josh's grandfather's death, I've never seen Jessica crack like this. "We all make mistakes."

"Your mistakes were nothing like mine." She pushes closer towards me. "I'm way worse than you."

I smile at the proclamation. I've worked hard to change who I am. Before I met Jessica I'd think nothing of picking a woman up with a drink, fucking her senseless and then sending her home, without even knowing her name. I'd rarely think of the women I was with after they walked out of my hotel suite. I was an asshole. I used them for my own selfish pleasure. "I'm trying to be a better person."

Her eyes catch mine. "I didn’t mean it like that."

"I know."

"I met Thomas the summer after I graduated from high school." She stares directly at me. "I was eighteen. He was a lot older than me."

I nod. I don't know his exact age. It doesn't matter. I just know that he was too old for her when she was that young. She had to have been even more fragile than she is now. "Where did you meet?"

"I worked in his campaign office." She pulls her hand across my chest. "It was a summer job and I needed the money."

"His office was in Bloomfield?" It's a small town. I didn't realize exactly how small until I went to the wedding. It's hard to imagine any senator setting up shop in a ghost town like that.

"No," she pauses before she continues. "It was in Greenwich."

I had no idea that she spent time away from home after high school. We've never talked about that time in either of our lives. I instantly regret that. "You went there to work?"

She nods and her chin hits my chest with each movement. "My friends were renting a house there for the summer. I couldn’t afford to go without a job in place, so I asked around and someone told me Thomas was looking for help."

It was so innocent. She only wanted the chance to spend a summer away with her friends. Who knew that she'd end up in the bed of the man who hired her to work for him? "Did you work for him the entire summer?"

"I did." She blows out a breath. "I went to school in the fall but we still kept in touch."

Kept in touch? She means they fucked right through the fall semester. "When did it end?"

"Around the holidays." She closes her eyes briefly. "I went home to see my mother and a lot changed then."

"Like what?" I don't want to sound insensitive but I'm hearing about a relationship that has completely defined the woman I care for. I want to skip past all the inconsequential details and dive right into the part about why she had to sign a confidentiality agreement.

She stops and stares past me to the headboard. Her lips open slightly and her breathing increases. "My mother had cancer. She was diagnosed right before the holidays."

It's the first I've heard of it. Judging by the way her mother was fondling me; I'd say she's recovered nicely. "Cancer?"

"Breast cancer," she clarifies. "She needed a double mastectomy."

"Christ, Jessica." I run my hand down her back. "I didn't know."

She shivers slightly. "We don't talk about it. She doesn't like us to talk about it."

It's hard to imagine a teenage girl being thrown into the middle of a medical mess like that. "I'm sorry, Jessica. That's a lot to deal with."

"It was." Her eyes dart back to my face. "My sister was away. She went to school on the west coast. She didn't come back for the surgery."

"You had to take care of your mother alone?"