Page 140 of Into the Dark

I laugh and bring my hand up to brush my fingers through his beard. “You really do. Beautiful, smart, adorable ones.”

“You will too,” he says. “Fucking hell, it’s going to be perfect, isn’t it?” Below the sheets his hand moves back and forth over my stomach tenderly.

“Mmm. I just wish the timing were better.”

Jake only shrugs. “When we met the timing was shit too, but look at us now.”

He leans over to kiss me, this time slipping his tongue between my lips. He moans softly and pulls me tighter into his body as he strokes a hand over my hair and across my back. When he pulls back, there’s a look of wonderment in his eyes. “I honestly can’t believe we’re having a fucking baby,” he says.

“Well, believe it. It’s happening. In about seven months.” I shoot him a nervy smile.

“Things will be fine. I promise, baby.” He’s silent for a moment, gaze turning distant. Then he says quietly, “Things are gonna be different this time. So fucking different.”

“You mean different from how they were when Caleb was born?”

He half-nods before dropping his stare from mine.

“What happened?”

He sighs, closing his eyes momentarily. “I just…wasn’t there. I was a fucking mess, and on top of that I hated her for it. It felt like she’d planned it. Like she thought it would bring me back. So I hated her for it. So I hated him too, I guess.” He shakes his head, looking miserable and guilty.

“I’m sure it was a shock. And if you weren’t together, I sort of understand why you felt like that.”

Jake looks up at me. “You still don’t get the kind of person I was back then, do you?”

“Our chat about Stephanie certainly helped paint a picture.”

“Yeah, well, I was worse with Vicky. I’m surprised Freddy didn’t cut my fucking balls off for how I treated her.”

Loath as I am to admit it, Jake’s relationship with Vicky has always intrigued me. The obligation he spoke of—which I now know had to do with Fred. The kind of relationship they had when they were together. The circumstances around their drunken mistake that resulted in Caleb. I still can’t see them together as a couple no matter how hard I try, my brain protecting itself maybe.

“Did you ever care about her?”

“Maybe when we first got together, yeah. I was young, and we were into each other the way young people are. I guess I thought I loved her back then.” He laughs bitterly. “But all we did was fight. Sometimes physically too.” His eyes snap to mine. “I never hit her, but fucking hell I wanted to—a lot. This…” He touches the faint scar on his eyebrow. “She smashed a glass in my face one night for looking at another girl in a club. Eight fucking stitches.”

“Christ!” I exclaim. I’ve always liked the little scar over his eyebrow. Now I hate it. Another person in Jake’s life who was supposed to love him hurting him.

Was he ever truly loved until Caleb and I came along?

“I swear I used to think that was what love was—fighting all the fucking time, wanting to kill each other all the time… I thought it meant we cared about each other.” He laughs emptily and shakes his head. “Madness.”

“Is she still violent?” I ask. It’s Caleb I’m worried about. She looked murderous that day in Jake’s apartment.

“I think I brought out the worst in her,” he admits shamefully.

“So with Caleb…?”

His eyes darken, and he shakes his head again. “She’d never hurt him. She’s a lot of things, but she isn’t that… She knows I’d kill her if she ever laid a finger on him. No. I’m positive that’s never happened.”

“So…how did he happen then?” I ask after a moment of strained silence. “You were drunk, you said.”

Jake groans very quietly, an uncomfortable sound of regret. I know he doesn’t regret Caleb, just what it took to get there. “Yeah. That. And we weren’t careful.” He flicks his eyes to me and catches the look I’m giving him. “I know what you’re thinking, but Alex, she and I weren’t like you and me. The night we were together I can barely even remember. We’d been apart for a while by then, and it hadn’t ever happened before. I didn’t fucking want her like that anymore. But that night…I was wasted. Beyond fucking wasted. And she was just…there. Sometimes it felt like she was the only one there, you know? She was consistent. And no matter what state I was in, what I’d done, she still wanted me.” He looks haunted as he tells me this. “We never used anything, and she told me she’d sort it.” He shrugs, looking deeply uncomfortable. “Next time I saw her was a few weeks later.”

An awful notion washes over me then: the idea that Caleb might not be Jake’s. Though I’ve seen the similarities. They’re practically identical.

“I told her it wasn’t mine at first. I mean, what were the fucking chances? One fucking time?”

I give him another long look.