Page 133 of Into the Dark

I feel like laughing. “Oh, I know the kind of guy you were before me, Jake. He haunts every moment of our bloody lives.”

“With women, I mean,” he says, sheepish.

I let out a breath. “What happened with Stephanie, Jake?”

He closes his eyes. “Fine…” he grumbles, defeated. He’s silent for a few long, torturous seconds before he begins to talk, not looking at me while he does. “We used to hang out at Talia’s a lot. It’s a bar…with dancers. This is before I had a club to run, before I had a girlfriend I wanted to be with every minute of every day. We used it as a place for doing deals, setting up deals—a meeting place, really. When we weren’t doing that, we watched women take their clothes off for money.” He looks at me to check my reaction.

I try to keep my face impassive.

“Steph was new,” he goes on. “New girls were always…interesting, I guess.”

“Interesting, you guess.”

He gives me another pleading look.

“So Steph was new…?” I urge. It seems too late to stop now.

“Anyway, she’d been there a few weeks, and I knew she liked me.” This makes him uncomfortable. He strokes a hand across the back of his neck. “She was young—too fucking young—no clue what she was getting herself into. None of them ever do…” He shakes his head, and I wonder if I also fall into this category for him. “It was after they’d closed up. We were all hanging around drinking, coke too—it was one of those nights, you know,” he explains as if I’ve ever had one of those nights. Suddenly, his head snaps up and he meets my eye. “I don’t do that shit anymore, Alex. The last time I touched any of that shit was about not long after that. I’m done with it. I need you to believe that.”

“I believe you,” I say.

His mouth softens, and he nods and then he’s serious again. “Steph was all over me—literally—telling me shit about her life, her family problems…her stepdad was a prick, and her mum wasn’t much better. But I didn’t care. I just thought she was hot.” A guilty look flashes across his eyes as he turns to look at me. “I asked her to suck my cock, right there, in front of everyone, and she did.”

I have no idea what my face is telling him as he watches for my reaction. My fists curl, and heat creeps up my neck. In my head, I see Steph on her knees in front of him as he thrusts up into her mouth. Jealousy. That’s what I feel. I didn’t even know him then, but the thought of him with her makes me feel a deep, hot jealousy that curls sickeningly around my spine.

There’s something else too though. Something I’m too embarrassed to admit even to myself.

Jake’s eyes flicker with something.

“Is that all?” I ask.

He shakes his head, miserable. “I fucked her that night. Over a pool table. In front of everyone.” His voice is flat and matter-of-fact. “Some watched. Some didn’t. The next time I saw her, I pretended I couldn’t remember a thing about it. Which was mainly true. I treated her like shit.” He looks and sounds deeply ashamed of himself, but it does nothing to dispel the image of him fucking the gorgeous slim dancer over a pool table, loud and bright and vivid in the confines of my car.

Aside from the jealousy, the encounter makes me feel so…safe. So boring. So unexciting. It’s not the point in Jake’s confession, obviously, but it still makes me think, So thats the kind of sex he used to have before me? Risqué public sex with gorgeous dancers? “Well, that definitely explains why it wasn’t a secret…” I mutter, turning to look out the windscreen.

“Fred wasn’t there, but he heard about it.”

I’m sure he did. The image of it is hard to shake. A lick of sweat dampens my spine suddenly as a rush of nausea washes over me. I need air.

I pop open the driver’s door and step outside, closing him in with the confession. Then I’m bending over and emptying some of Fred’s spaghetti all over a private road in the middle of Surrey. Jake opens his own door an instant later, stalking around to stand beside me, rubbing small circles into my back.

“Baby, I’m sorry,” he says. “I told you before, I’m not proud of who I was then. I’m different with you.”

I stand up and meet his eye. “Why is that?”

“What?”

“Why are you different with me?”

He frowns, looking confused. “You know why.”

“Because I’m different to the other women you’ve been with?”

“Yes, and because—”

“Different how?” I ask. “How am I different? You mean more…square? More boring?”

He shakes his head, confused. “No, that’s not what I mean, Alex.”