Page 132 of Into the Dark
“Does Freddy know?” I ask.
“Know what?” he replies.
I wait, giving him time to change his answer. A memory of Steph’s large, round eyes on her pretty face. Innocent eyes. Friendly eyes.
Jake shuts his eyes and lets out a loud sigh. “Yeah, he knows. It’s hardly a secret.”
“It was a secret to me,” I point out. “So I was the only person at the dinner table tonight who didn’t know you and Steph have slept with each other.”
“I’m sorry.”
I glare at him. “What are you sorry for, Jake?”
“For upsetting you.”
“I’m not upset.”
He looks lost. “For making you pissed-off then.”
“Guess again.”
“Then I don’t fucking know, Alex. What is it you want here?”
“What I want is for you to have told me before I went in there. So I don’t feel like such a fucking idiot.”
“You’re not an idiot, Alex. I am.”
I give him a withering look and sulk in silence for a few long seconds. “So will I just assume you’ve fucked every girl in London until you inform me otherwise? To be on the safe side.”
He looks down, guilty.
“What the hell does ‘hardly a secret’ mean? Were you and her a thing?” My cheeks burn. Christ, does she still have feelings for him? No. She cares about Freddy—that much was obvious. My head hurts.
Jake shakes his head fervently. “No, we weren’t a thing. It only happened once.”
“So what then? It happened once and you told everyone about it? She must have been bloody spectacular.”
He sighs, looking deeply uncomfortable now. “No, that wasn’t it either.”
“Then what, Jake?”
He scrubs a hand over his face and pinches the bridge of his nose, his usual body language for wanting to be anywhere but this conversation. “Alex, please. Baby, can we not do this?” He’s pleading with his eyes.
I stare him down. His reaction is only making me more curious. No—curious isn’t the right word. But the more he doesn’t want me to know, the more I realize I need to. “What is it that you so clearly don’t want to talk about?”
“Alex, I don’t want to fucking go there right now. Or ever.”
“Oh, trust me, Jake, I’d love to not go there, but you took me in there and paraded her in front of me. Now you’re acting like this. If you weren’t in a relationship and it only happened once, what the hell does ‘hardly a secret’ mean?”
“You really saying I should have told you beforehand? Like, ‘oh, by the way, baby, you know Steph? I’ve fucked her—let’s go enjoy our spaghetti’?” he asks, incredulous. “I mean, is that what I should have done? Would that honestly have been better?”
I think about this. “I don’t bloody know, but it would be better than feeling like the biggest idiot in the room! And now you’re looking everywhere but at me. What the hell am I missing here?”
He gives a firm shake of his head. “Baby, you’re not missing a fucking thing, trust me. It happened once almost two years ago. It was…nothing.” He drops his eyes again.
“One time that meant nothing that everyone knows about?” I can’t keep the skepticism from my tone.
He lifts his head to meet my eye for a moment, then he turns it away again. When he looks back at me his eyes are resigned. “You seriously you want to know this shit? Who I was then? The kind of guy I was before you?”