Though I've still to actually hear him play his guitar, I'm certain he must be good at it. Everything he does with his hands he does with assuredness and skill; arousing touches, deep tissue massage, cooking, sustained violence.
I've stopped trying to contain my pleasured moans as he kneads the arch and ball of my right foot in deep hypnotic circles. I wonder how quickly he'd learn moonlight sonata on the Steinway.
He's sitting slouched at the opposite end of the sofa, his eyes fixated on the football highlights which he'd thoughtfully turned down because I 'hate football' and so I could 'read my book in peace'.
The book, a love story set during the Trojan War written by someone I went to Cambridge with, is exceptionally well written but I'm struggling to give it my full attention. I manage only a few lines at most before my mind takes a left turn down a dark shadowed alley full of horrendous possibilites and shadowy figures that look like Mark, Dan, Kevin and Vicky. His mum too. It takes extra effort to guide my concentration back to the page in front of me.
When I look over the book at Jake to see if his mind is also wandering, I can't honestly tell. He looks to be completely engrossed in the TV, listening intently as the commentators talk passionately about the effect whatever new manager seems to be having on whatever struggling team and how this turnaround is more than whoever would have thought. The volume is low but I can still hear the words and I understand what they mean, but as always with football, none of it makes any sense to my brain.
My gaze lingers on him a little while before he finally senses my eyes. He turns his head halfway to the side and smiles lazily at me.
"Want me to turn it down more?" He asks.
"What? Oh, no it's not that." I shake my head. His smile dissolves and he drops his eyes to the cover of the book.
"Any good?"
"Mmmm. It is actually. I'm just finding it difficult to concentrate on..."
"Distracting you am I?" He smiles again. When I return it he nods. "I am pretty distracting - I get it baby," he sighs, skimming his fingers a little further up my leg to my calf where he squeezes softly.
He does look distracting right now. Edible even. He's wearing a well worn white t-shirt that shows off the thick muscles of his chest and arms, dark tattoos spilling down from the sleeves temptingly. On his lower half he's wearing those loose cotton jogger trousers I think I'm obsessed with. Especially when he wears them with nothing underneath. Which he's doing now. My mouth waters.
Twisting fully onto my back, I open my legs a little in invitation and his eyes flash with heat. He curves his fingers under my knee and squeezes gently, pulling my thighs a little wider apart. His mouth opens and he licks his lips temptingly sending a little shot of heat directly to the space between my legs. I curl my toes in need but he grabs hold of them and flattens them out, rubbing my foot against something semi-hard at the front of his trousers which he tilts his hips up to emphasise.
I swallow thickly, heat flooding my cheeks. "I should try and finish the chapter at least," I whisper, making a pathetic attempt to look back at the pages.
"You should try..." He nods before lifting my foot to touch his lips to the underside of my toes. When he sucks one into his mouth I gasp and my entire body trembles. I'm not ticklish in my feet, not at all, but I am over sensitive in certain places. And where Jake is concerned those places are everywhere on my body.
It feels extremely erotic as he flicks his tongue between my toes and drags his mouth over the top of them and across my foot to my ankle. He moves his hand further up my thigh until he reaches the hem of my shorts where he slips his fingers under. When I feel him graze my entrance outside the fabric of my knickers my blood speeds up further, rushing out from my heart down towards his fingers, as though desperate for his touch too.
"Why don't you read it to me?" He suggests, raising an eyebrow at me.
"Ummm, I don't think it's your kind of thing." I smile through a half moan of pleasure. He's so close.. I certainly won't be able to give the book any attention if he keeps doing this.
"Your voice is my kind of thing," He says. "Read it."
Smiling wide, I drop my head back onto the cushion and try and refocus on the words in front of me. They swim slightly as Jake places my leg behind him so that his body is now fully between my thighs.
" 'The vault of the sky was a rich ink black, cowering over my trembing form. It breathed life into the shadows around me and under it they came alive: breathing their whispered secrets in a voice that sounded to me like death itself,' "
His fingers tug my underwear out of the way to expose me to a rush of cool air. I need to pause for a long moment before I can go on. His mouth reaches the apex of my thigh and he flicks his tongue over me causing the words catch in my throat on a gasp. He lifts his eyes and smiles wickedly at me. "keep going," his stare says, before refocussing on the aching spot between my thighs. Oh my god..
" 'I hurried, my back pressed flat against the cool stone, my feet gliding over the soft cushion of earth...earth that had felt a thousand million footsteps just li-.' " I can't do this. I'm panting as he spreads my legs wider and blows gently over the throbbing space.
Lifting his eyes back to mine to command me with them, he presses his finger to the now throbbing heat of my clitoris, a mere whisper of a touch that sends a jolt of electricity shooting through me. The current zips up my body, clenching my thighs and flooding my chest before exiting my throat on a soft pleasured moan.
"Jake..."
When he pushes his finger inside me ever so slightly my body reacts like it always does - greedily. I push against him, trying to entice him further inside, but it doesn't help. He's disciplined and strong as always. Instead he pulls his finger out and brings it to his lips, wetting his bottom lip with it before he pushes it into his mouth and sucks. Jesus Christ.
"Keep going," he says out loud this time. He's smirking a little now and I shake my head, laughing a little in disbelief. Honestly, his sex games never cease to surprise me.
I've just begun to read the rest of the page when he lowers his head again and starts kissing and sucking halfway up my thigh instead of where I need him. When I moan in frustration, he chuckles but then grasps the waistband of my shorts and pulls hard, yanking them down and off and discarding them on the floor. Then he grips his T-shirt and pulls it over his head and discards that too. When he spreads my legs wide open again and covers me with his mouth the book drops to the floor too.
"Oh god..." I gasp, my body arching up off the couch to meet his mouth. "Yes..."
He groans in pleasure and sinks his tongue deep inside me. "Fucking hell, you taste so good, Alex," he murmurs between the loud hungry sounds of his mouth and tongue. He drapes my leg over his shoulder and tilts his head sideways to take me deeper into his mouth, skimming the folds and drawing my clitoris between his lips before flicking his tongue wildly over it. When he inserts his finger too and fucks me with it, I feel myself come apart. Sliding one hand into his hair I pull at it hard, as the other hand digs into the skin of his shoulder. I move my hips up into his mouth and hands shamelessly.
"God Jake, please.... please don't stop, please," I beg.
The growls from his throat deepen, vibrating against me, and the precise touch of his fingers and mouth is all that exists in this moment. Bliss. Nothing else matters. Nothing else is real. This is the only time I can fully forget everything. When he's here. Nothing else seems to matter when we're like this. I need him like this. We need each other like this. The scream peels from my throat in he next instant. White, bone-softening pleasure rolls over me. My stomach contracts. Release shuddering through me.
He sits up and pushes his trousers down over his hips and takes himself in his hand. Then with his eyes locked on mine he strokes the tip of his erection over my throbbing aching spot.
My eyes widen but he only smiles, eyes filled with lust as he teases me with his cock. "Is this what you need now?" He asks me in a sinfully rough voice. I can barely breathe, barely think, barely contain the amount of need still rolling through my body. "Tell me you need it, baby."
"Jake," I plead.
"Say it."
"I need it." I reply obediently. With a nod he grips hold of one of my still trembling thighs and slides into me in one long deep deliberate thrust.
"Fuck...." he groans as he pushes all the way in. "You're so fucking wet. You came so fucking hard for me didn't you?" he asks, his eyes glittering with arousal. "You always come so fucking hard for me don't you?"
I say nothing, unable to speak as his body spreads me wide. I reach up to capture his lips with mine as a kind of response. He lowers his head and kisses me deep with tongue and teeth before separating our mouths again. I feel his fingers at my lips and he pushes them inside and orders me silently to suck, which I do, slipping my tongue between each damp finger to taste him. He tastes of salt and sex and heat and need and he moans in satisfaction as I curl my tongue around them.
He thrusts a little harder then causing me to moan louder and then his fingers are out of my mouth and between our bodies and he's fingering my sensitive clitoris once more as he thrusts. It's exquisite. His fingers are exquisite. His cock is exquisite. He's large and I'm full and so sensitive from before that I don't know how long I can stand it. My head flops back and he lowers his mouth to my throat, sucking and kissing down it towards my breasts.
"You feel so good wrapped around my cock Alex," he says he pulls my top down to expose my breast. He sucks one hard nipple into his beautiful mouth before nipping it gently with his teeth. His fingers, mouth and cock never slow, they work in perfect orchestration together, practiced exquisite movements that dissolve my thoughts to pure feeling.
Thrust, touch, suck, kiss, thrust, suck, touch, kiss. Slow deep circles of his hips on every other thrust.
I dig my nails into the soft warm skin of his shoulders, desperate to mark him in some fashion. His groans grow louder, his motions harder, more rough, more desperate, more everything. When I signal my second orgasm Jake lifts his head and watches me for every second of it, his eyes filled with love but also with something utterly primal.
"I love you," I manage through fast hard gasps of breaths.
He smiles and lowers his mouth to mine once more and quickens his pace again. "I know you do, baby, I know you do. I love you too..." He breathes against my lips.
Shifting, he grabs my wrists with one hand and holds them over my head while sliding his hand up to my hip with the other. Then he pounds harder. Harder than he ever has maybe. Frenzied and raw and loud. Skin against skin. Wet against heat. His groans become louder and I hear a strangled curse rip from his throat before I feel him spill deliciously inside me. Hot, soothing, bursts of heat that scorch my insides.
His orgasm is quiet given the force of it as it moves through his body. He muffles the sound of it against my neck where he bites and sucks and kisses at my damp skin, his hips continuing to move for long moments after his climax. He releases my wrists and drags his mouth up my throat and to my chin where he nibbles, growling in that soft adorable puppy-like way he often does.
Sated and soft, I scrape my nails lightly over his chest and up to his throat, before reaching my mouth up to press my lips to the hard adams apple under the rough skin of his throat. His beard tickles my nose but I inhale deeply because he always smells so delicious here. Something to do with the cedarwood wax he massaged into his facial hair every morning, but also something to do with the natural scent of him. His scent is absorbed by my body gratefully, settling itself comfortably in the back of my brain.
We swap positions so that he's settled on his back, and I'm tucked snuggly under his arm my leg thrown over his thigh. Tracing my fingers over his damp chest, I mark the outlines of his tattoos without having to look at them. I no longer need to look at them to trace them. They're memorised. He releases a deep sigh of satisfaction and kisses the top of my head and I twist my head to look up at him.
"Was that too hard?" He asks, eyes playful.
I shake my head. "It was perfect."
"Mhm, it was pretty fucking good," He grunts in agreement. His eyes go thoughtful then and he reaches out and brushes my hair back from my cheek. "You're the bravest person I've ever met." He says completely surprising me.
I give him a perplexed look. "Because I let you fuck me hard?"
"No. Because of everything else." His eyes are serious.
My breath catches in my throat and I swallow it down. Oh Jake, I'm not. I'm not brave. I'm a coward. I've always been a coward. I haven't told him about his mother or his brother yet because I'm a coward.
I look away from his eyes. "I'm not brave, Jake." I shake my head.
I feel his finger on my chin and he directs my head back up, forcing me to look at him.
"Yeah well that's beacuse you don't see yourself the way I see you, Alex. You never have."
"Well, you don't see yourself how I see you either."
A sigh. "Yeah, that's true..." he concedes. "But you are brave, Alex. You'll see that eventually."
Brave. The notion is almost funny. Except for the fact that nothing about any of this is funny.
He's the brave one. He's the one navigating his way through this dangerous double life. He's the one telling me everything I ask him to, no matter the consequences. He's the one risking everything for someone he loves. He's the only thing that's brave about me.
I've risked nothing. I'm selfish. I'm a coward. Do something about it then why don't you? Do something brave why don't you?
"I need to talk to you about something," I hear myself whisper against his warm chest.
"Sounds serious," he says with a half groan. "I just came inside you — can you just let me enjoy the moment for a bit?"
My stomach clenches and I nestle my head deeper into the warmth of his body, wrapping my leg tighter around him to pull him closer. I can still feel the echo of him between my legs, the hot sticky pleasure he spilled inside me coating the insides of my thighs.
"I can't. I need to say it now," while I feel brave. "I need to tell you and I want you to listen to everything I have to say - I need you to try and understand why I did it. Promise me." I turn my head up to look up at him again, the guilt and fear roiling in the pit of my stomach. I feel sick. "Can you promise me that?" I plead.
He shifts, sitting up slightly, his eyes narrowing. "Baby, you're freaking me out."
I imagine all manner of considerations that must be flitting through his head right now and I wonder how many of them I'd swap for what it is I actually do have to tell him.
"I know. And I'm sorry," I nod.
A frown falls over his face. "Alex, what the fuck?"
"Promise me."
His face screws up in puzzlement. "How the fuck can I promise you when I don't know what it is?"
That does sound ridiculous. But I plead harder with my eyes until finally he shakes his head and lets out an impatient breath. "Okay fine. I promise you," he says. It takes effort for him to say the words, that much is obvious.
I lick my lips carefully and then nod. Swallowing, I open my mouth to speak, internally repeating the words over and over again in the silence before I do. Please forgive me. Please forgive me. Please let him forgive me.
I meet his glare of expectation head on, trying to ignore how tense and hard his body now feels under me. "I spoke with your mother." I say.
Nothing happens. Not right away.
Then slowly, very slowly, the dark cloud of rage rolls across his eyes. It moves down his face, flaring his nostrils and tighteing his jaw before settling over his mouth.
"You did what?" He says finally, his voice cracking at the edges. His eyes are screwed up now too like maybe, just maybe, he might have heard me incorrectly.
I take a deep breath. "I met with her. After the day she came to see you. I met with her and we talked."
His mouth falls open and his eyes widen. There's betrayal there, and pain too, and it edges it's way into the clear blue/green of his eyes. It magnifies my guilt to a level I didn't honestly think was possible. To my own surprise however, I manage to hold onto his eyes. In spite of the dark cold look now seeping back into them. Naively perhaps, I decide to go on.
"I wanted to find out what she wanted, why she came... I wanted to..." I trail off as he moves. He slides his arm out from under me and sits up. Then he moves down the couch and stands up, pulling his trousers roughly up his legs. I sit up and reach after him, finding a grip on his arm which he immediately pulls out of my touch. Panic floods through me.
He lifts his T-shirt and pulls it hastily over his head and when he reappears his hair looks ruffled and just fucked and for some reason this adds to the immense feeling of loss currently flooding through my body. He sits down across from me on the floral chair and lifts his trainers around in front of him and sets them by his feet. Then he shoves his foot in one.
"Jake where are you going?" I ask, the panic clear in my voice. He says nothing but lifts his head and throws me a look so full of rage that it sends a shiver down my spine. "It's after midnight, you can't leave."
"Watch me," he replies startlingly calmly as he slides his foot into the other one.
"You promised you'd listen."
He lifts his head and gives me a look of betrayal. "I think it's better for both of us if I leave now. Before this gets any fucking worse. So I need you to stop talking Alex, yeah. Can you do that for me?"
"No," I shake my head. " I can't do that for you. You promised you'd listen and try and understand. You promised." I sound like a child. A stupid silly child.
"Yeah, well tough. Because I'm not staying here to listen to this. I don't want to fucking hear this. Not from your mouth. And Alex, if you loved me," he lifts his head and meets my eye. "and I mean really loved me - like you're always telling me you do, then you'd stop fucking talking right now."
"You know I love you." I state rebelliously, chin up.
He growls quietly, his nostrils flaring. "Seriously?"
"Yes, seriously."
He throws me a withering stare and stands, dragging a hand over his perfectly ruffled hair. Then he turns in a circle and looks about the living room for something. I can't let him leave. I won't. If he moves toward that door I'll throw myself at his feet and hold onto him if I have to. He'll have to drag me out of the front door with him.
In preparation for that event I sit up fully and perch on the end of the sofa. He's still looking about the room for something, my lack of common sense perhaps, breathing erratic and loud. "Jake, I know you're angry with me," I start.
"Oh you think?!" he flares, whipping round to glare at me. "What the fuck did you expect Alex? Seriously?"
"I don't know. I honestly don't know," I drag my hand through my own hair desperately. "I'm sorry, I thought it might help. I don't-."
"Help?? You thought going behind my back, doing something that you knew I wouldn't want you to do, would help?" He sounds like he's never heard anything so stupid in all of his days. "I mean you knew that bit, right? You knew that I would never have fucking wanted you to do this? You knew I didn't want you near her. I mean you couldn't have been in any fucking doubt about it because I'm pretty sure I made that crystal fucking clear. I mean I did, didn't I?" he roars, eyes wide and expectant.
Honestly, the anger in his voice isn't even half as bad as the hurt in his eyes. It makes tears spring up into mine and I drop my head in shame.
"You did make it clear, you did," I nod. "I knew and I did it anyway and I'm sorry." I don't know what else I can say. My throat feels thick and hot and useless. Horrendous actions followed by useless words.
"You're sorry?"
"Yes," I lift my head to look at him again. My heart aches at the sight. "But I did it for you. I was doing it for you."
He laughs, coldly. "Yeah, well that's bullshit for a start."
I shake my head, confused. "No, it's not, it's the truth. I did it for you."
"Okay, okay then baby," he nods condescendingly. "So despite what I said that day, despite what I said after, despite you knowing that I wanted fuck all to do with that woman, you went ahead and did it anyway. For me?" He cocks his head to the side, a puzzled expression on his face. "Explain that to me then, Alex? Explain how you got there — explain how this was all about me."
He's leading me. His net, poised just above my head, waiting for me to step right under it. I swallow hard. "Because you were so angry and you wouldn't talk to me about it. I thought I could help you."
He nods slowly. I've said the wrong thing. Of course I have. The net drops. "Because you know better than I do? Because you're smarter than I am and more caring than I am and because you're a better person than I am? That's it isn't it?"
I frown and shake my head again. "No, that's not it." I shift forward on the couch, desperate just to be close to him again. "Not that, not at all. You were just so angry, Jake... and I was scared that you weren't thinking straight, that you'd come to regret it, after, and I didn't want that. I didn't want you to regret not trying. I wanted to try for you - to help you. I knew how difficult it must have been seeing her—"
"Difficult??" he roars, incredulous. "No, baby, you know what's difficult? Finding out that the woman I love went behind my fucking back. Finding out that the woman I love is a liar. Finding out that despite what she says and what she promises — she doesnt trust me at all. Because when it comes down to it, she does whatever the fuck she thinks is best for us, regardless of what I want. That's the only thing that's fucking difficult, Alex."
The tears spring up into my eyes but Jake turns his head away from them and squeezes his eyes shut with his fingers instead.
"That's not fair. I didn't lie," I withheld. Withholding isn't lying. Is it? "And I do trust you, you know I do — how can you even think that now?" My voice is a half whispered sob.
When he turns back to me his voice and face are softer and it floods my body with hope. "Well what am I supposed to think? You knew that this was only going to go one way, you knew that, deep down you must have known that, I know you did. But you did it anyway."
"Because you wouldn't even discuss it with me!" I shout with an energy I didn't have a second before. "You didn't want to talk about it, you shut the whole topic down and I didn't know what to do! You left me no bloody choice." Oh god that isn't true. He did leave me a choice. To stay out of it. My choice was to get involved. I drop my head again as this realisation hits me and wind leaves my sails.
"I told you to leave it the fuck alone." He growls.
"Oh, because that's what all of the women before me would have done, Jake?" I sniff pathetically, pointlessly. "Exactly as you told them to do? Well I'm not them!"
The look he gives me says, I'm not even going to dignify that with an answer, I think. And I don't blame him. He's silent for a long time before he lets out a tired breath.
"What was it was you thought was going to happen here, Alex?" He asks me. "What was the reaction you wanted from me exactly? How did it all play out in your head? Tell me? I'm curious?" I open my mouth to speak but nothing comes out. What did I think was going to happen exactly? "Did you think me and her would have a good old cry and a cuddle and that would be it? Sorted?" He's doing the sarcastic nod again. "Then I'd turn to you say thank you for sorting out all that childhood misery and we'd all live happily ever after. That what you thought?" I feel the embarassment flush my cheeks hotly. "Is that what you saw happening here? Seriously?" he laughs then, at my complete and utter stupidity, and runs a hand over his face and shakes his head in disbelief.
I watch him silently as he paces over to the living room window and then back to the fireplace, which he then grips in both hands, leaning into it with a shake of his head. The silence expands so that it looms large and almost alive in the soft warm glow of the living room. The TV is now showing some late-night comedy chat show full of hilarity and crude jokes. It makes my next words seem even more obscene.
"She's dying, Jake" I say quietly. The words still sound deafening. His body hardens a little more but there's nothing else to indicate his feelings about the information. "She has cancer. It's progressive: the prognosis isn't great and she wanted to sort things with you before she... She wants forgiveness I think."
He says nothing. But after what seems like an hour he leans up of the wooden fireplace and turns around to face me. He just stares at me hard, his expression frozen in an odd half angry, half confused look. I swallow and take a deep breath. This last piece feels like the easiest to say; maybe as it's the part that gives me the most hope. The one thing that he might somewhere deep down want to hear.
"Your brother wants to see you too."
This has the most effect on him as far as I can see. He flinches, like I might have physically hurt him. Then blinks a few times before swallowing hard.
He's so quiet and so still for so long that I almost forget what he looks like when he's moving and talking. He looks so beautiful it's almost painful. Even though his face is paler than usual, his eyes glitter with emotion and his powerful body stands hard and shaped by tension. I've no clue what he's thinking or what he's feeling or whether to go to him. Whether he needs me. God I need him to need me.
When he moves towards the armchair and sits down again, his shoulders drop and his face softens and very slowly he brings his hands up and covers his mouth with them, letting out a long deep breath as he sits back in the chair. How long had he been holding it in I wonder.
Christ I want to go to him. My body practically thrums from that need. I want to go and kneel by his feet and take hold of his hand and tell him I'm sorry. For everything. Everything I've done. Everything they've done.
But something stops me. Cowardice most likely.
"Say something Jake, please," I beg softly.
He doesn't, at least not right away, he scrubs another hand over his mouth and drops his head back.
"I was nine, ten maybe, and she was having one of her parties. They always seemed to last fucking weeks," he begins, the sound of his voice a deep comforting rumble. "At first I used to think they'd moved in and that they were never going to fucking leave. Jon and me knew better than to get in the way when she had people over. So we'd fuck off out or stay in our room and so this time that's what I did. Jon was somewhere else. Forget where this time - he'd probably ran off. He used to run away every fucking week," he tells me without emotion. "Eating was a gamble - you had to go through the living room to get to the kitchen and sometimes when you got there there was fuck all to eat anyway so it wasn't even worth it. It was either dry cereal or dry toast, but the toast took too long and the grill didn't always work - not if the gas bill hadn't been paid - and I'd get a smack round the head as I passed if she felt like it. Sometimes if I was lucky I'd only have to climb over people passed out," he explains.
His voice is strangely flat and empty sounding and altogether it belongs to a different person. It sounds nothing like the warm low tone of the voice I love. This is not a Jake I recognise. He hasn't looked at me yet, he's still staring straight ahead at some point on the wall beside the TV. "I still remember the smell of those parties. Grass and alcohol and strangers. She'd play her music day and night; sixties music that still makes me feel sick whenever I hear it. Anyway," he clears his throat, "during one of these parties of hers, the food ran out. The cereal and the bread were done and I'm
sure I hadn't eaten anything for two days. Usually when the food ran out I'd go to a mate's house and his mum would feed me — felt sorry for me I reckon — but it was summer and they were away on some caravan holiday to Portsmouth so I couldn't go there. I didn't know when or if Jon was coming back - but I knew I had to get food from somewhere. My stomach hurt, pain like I'd never felt before, I thought I might be dying. Then the music stopped."
He closes his eyes for a moment, still calm and apparently relaxed, but the action makes it look as though he knows this is the moment he should have chosen a different path.
"That was always a good indication that it was safe to go down, whenever the music stopped. That meant they'd passed out or it was over. I crept down the stairs and poked my head in. The heat hit me first. The fire on the wall cranked up full even though the rest of the house was freezing. We were on the 14th floor of concrete tower so even in summer the place was fucking freezing. But the room was boiling hot, like a fucking sauna, and they'd all passed out. I checked the beer cans first, lifted anything that wasn't empty and drank it, kept going around the room, climbing over bodies, mainly men, trying not to wake them and expecting a hand to shoot out and grab me any fucking second."
The image is vivid in my head and my heart is beating so fast that I think I might pass out.
"I spotted her purse on the other side of the room by the couch. Not like there was going to be much in it, but I didn't need much for milk and cereal, a few quid maybe, so I kept going. She was passed out facing into the fire so that if she rolled over in her sleep she'd get burned. It wasn't an open fire — just one of those ones with the bars inside, but she'd burn her face or her hair and I stared down at her for ages trying to decide if I wanted that to happen." His voice is lower now and even from here I see his eyes darken.
Then he swallows.
"In the end I reached out and turned the thing off. Was only wasting gas. Her purse was next to a little cupboard I knew she kept her drink in. I stopped breathing when I got there, terrified the sound of it might wake her up. Then I realised she might wake up cause she was cold because and I'd switched the fucking fire off. There wasn't much in the purse, some coppers and a fiver and so I took it. I put it back the way it was and then opened the cupboard and grabbed a quarter bottle of vodka, looking down at her every fucking second expecting her eyes to be open and glaring at me. They never were. When I passed the fire I contemplated turning it back on but it was loud to turn on. Pilot light was a fucker - Jon always did it. So I just crept back out out the same way I came in." He lets out a quiet breath exactly like I imagine he must have done as he stepped out of that living room all those years ago.
"I felt like I'd achieved something. But I also felt like I'd done something so bad that I could maybe go to jail for it. Stealing from shops was alright, but stealing from your mum — well that seemed wrong to me. I hid the vodka behind an old chest of drawers at the bottom of the flats and went to the grocers in the middle of the estate," he lowers his eyes and licks his lips. "When I got home the music was blaring and everyone was awake. And she knew what I'd done."
My lips feel dry. So dry. I feel sick too. I don't want to hear what happened next. I don't want to hear want punishment he got for stealing from his mother to buy food. I flatten my hand over my stomach and send a silent promise to our child.
"What happened?" I ask softly.
He turns his head to meet my eye then. It feels like hours since I've seen his eyes. Something sad passes over them which makes me want to cry. There's something so sad and so full of fear that as he sits there, he almost becomes the little boy he was all those years ago. I remember Susan's words on the bench then. He just went really quiet. He was scared of everything.
"Nothing. Not right away. She let me think I'd got away with it." He's smiling now but there's something horrible in it. "I woke up with her leaning over me holding a knife to my throat."
I gasp quietly, my hand flying to my mouth in silent horror.
"'Where the fuck is it you thieving little cunt?' she spat. When I told her I'd spent it she glared at me and moved the point of the knife so that it twisted a little and then she dug it up into my chin. Then she told me if I ever stole drink or money from her again she'd fucking kill me. She'd make me wish I'd never been born." The tears roll down my face then, hot streams of guilt and pain and heartache. "I just laughed at her. It made her more pissed off. The tears were streaming down my face and the blood was running down my throat and I was laughing at her. It was funny. She'd make me wish I'd never been born?? Fucking hell, that wasn't a threat. That was a fucking fantasy. Cause I already wished that. I wished that every day of my fucking life. I wished she'd gotten rid of me like she always told me she should have done."
I bite my lip hard to stop the sob escaping and I do move off the couch then. I go to where he's sitting on the chair and kneel down by his feet and grab hold of his hand clutching at him for dear life.
His scar, the one on his chin that I love, was because his own mother wanted him dead. The guilt seeps out of me and pours onto the carpet.
"I'm so sorry. Jake I'm sorry," I sob. I'm sorry for everything. I press my mouth to his hand and kiss it. "I just wanted..." I look up at the sad look on his face and at the hurt in his eyes and I shake my head. "I don't know what I wanted. I just wanted you not to hurt anymore. Please forgive me..." I'm openly crying now, a selfish crumpled heap on the floor by his feet.
He sits up and hooks an arm under me like he does with Caleb and hauls me up from the floor onto his lap. I wrap my arms around his neck and cry softly against his chest, telling him over and over again that I'm sorry.
"It's okay..." he whispers gently against my hair. "Shhhhhh baby.... It's okay. I forgive you. I'll always forgive you.. don't cry. Shhhhh..."
I press my mouth to his and almost pass out from the relief I feel when he kisses me back. He wraps his arms around my nakedness and squeezes tight as his mouth seeks comfort in mine. Then with me held tight to his chest he stands up and carries me towards the stairs.