The Darkest Secret: A New Adult Romance Novel (16 page)

My grades were in the toilet. Justin kept calling me day and night - sometimes tender, other times vicious. I was starting to get scared of my own shadow, and even Everglade was beginning to lose patience with me. When my Dad came down to see me he was convinced I had an eating disorder and wanted to take me back to L.A., but I was in too much of a mess. I was in this tangle of worry and fear and self-blame and there was no yanking me out of it.

"I don't get it," said Everglade. "Why can't you go back? All you're doing here is sitting around flunking anyway. One more semester like the last and they'll kick you out."

I shook my head. All I knew is I didn't want to go back. I didn't want to go back to being John Gillespie's daughter. People would look at me, take pictures of me, gossip about me.

"Amber, this is fucking stupid," she said. "What do you think is going to happen?"

"What if he kills himself?" I said.

"Um...like, I dunno?" said Everglade, doing the Valley Girl voice she often did when she was being sarcastic. "If he kills himself he'll be, like, dead? I guess?" She sighed. "You are not responsible for his fucking damage," she said, in her normal voice. "How many times do I have to explain this to you? It's not your fault when he punches a wall and breaks his knuckles - you didn't do that to him. He did that to him. Just like it's not your fault that he sends you serial killer doodles from the twisted depths of his asshole mind."

"But I slept with him!" I yelled.

"Yes, because he knew you would!" she yelled back. "Oh my God, Amber - how fucking stupid are you? I know you're not a moron, but are you so blind to his bullshit that you can't see through him? The girls who all looked like you - the 'suicide attempt'. It was all so you'd feel sorry for him and take him back. There is not a single thing he's said or done that wasn't about manipulating you in some way, shape or form. He's a sociopath - and I know sociopaths - he's ticking so many boxes on the Hare checklist that he makes Tony Soprano look like Mr. Rodgers. You're not a person to him - not really. You're the leading lady to the starring role he's playing in his own life - and that's all you are. He has to get the girl, because that's how the script plays out in his fucked up little head. You're a reward. An objective."

I stared at the floor. I couldn't keep listening to this. She'd hated him from the start and never understood him.

"I'm not surprised your Dad was worried," she continued. "Have you looked in a mirror lately? You look sick - you look gray. Do you even have enough body fat to ovulate any more? There's a box of tampons collecting dust in the bathroom..."

"I was on birth control."

"Was?" Her raised eyebrow said it all, and I slammed out of the room as if she was my mother. I'd stopped taking the pill when Justin and I broke up – they gave me moodswings and I was relieved to stop taking them. I'd had condoms with me the night after the hospital - I remember because he'd bitched about wearing one. He'd promised he wouldn't come inside me, but I'd stood my ground, thinking of all the girls he'd probably said that to in the last couple of months. Was it possible that he'd taken it off without me knowing?

I don't know how I knew he’d done that, but I did. Like I’d always had a sixth sense for his crap right from the beginning. Just like I knew I was pregnant.

Amber

I
f I believed in ghosts, this house would be haunted.

I need to pee, but my muscles are still tight and twitchy from my last orgasm, and it takes forever to go. I sit and shiver and stare at the tiles – the grout between them is remarkably clean and I wonder who cleaned the bathroom. And what did they use? One of those miracle infomerical products that Billy Mays use to yell about? Shazam – and the evidence is gone! Clean enough even for Lady Macbeth!

Then I see it – a darker spot where the floor tiles meet the tiling on the side of the tub. It’s an indistinct color and could just be the beginnings of mold, but
I
know it’s not. His? Or mine?

“Are you done?” Jaime’s voice floats in from the bedroom.

“In a second.” I get up, unsatisfied – open the door and dive back into the bed just as he jumps out, taking my place. I stretch into the warm spot he’s left behind.

Maybe I should give him more than the edited highlights. It’s not like he couldn’t find out everything for himself, but that’s the deal between us – he doesn’t want to do that; he’d prefer to hear it from me.

I just don’t know how you even say those words to someone you want to stick around.

When Jaime comes back out of the bathroom I stare shamelessly. He has the most beautiful body I've ever seen on a man. No tattoos - how I grew to hate those, those quotations that Justin misappropriated and had scrawled all over his skin. Nietzsche's 'God is dead' across his knuckles, parts of Hamlet's soliloquy up his thigh.

Jaime’s skin is brown and unblemished, smooth but for his legs and a tidy little tangle of black hair at his crotch. He's not bulky but he's hard when I touch him. His hips are narrow and agile; the last time we fucked he made me hold perfectly still, so that he could rock and grind into me in the hope of persuading me that sometimes slow was better. It wasn't an unqualified success - I'm far too impatient.

"Enjoying the view?" he says, sticking his hip out like a pin-up girl.

"God, yes." Once again I feel the thrum between my thighs. I'm close to sore but I could still go again. Last night I made him touch himself so I could watch - tit for tat. Then I sucked him off. Then he returned the favor, groaning all the while like I was the most delicious thing he'd ever tasted. He did it again when I went out for a smoke, kneeling between my thighs with his back to the railings. The night air was cold between my legs, making his tongue feel even hotter.

"Get back here," I say, holding out the covers. I like the hunger in his eyes when he looks at me; he's already half-standing to attention.

His kiss tastes of mint and I frown.

"Mouthwash," he says. "At some point I'm really gonna need to lay hands on a toothbrush."

"We'll get one. And groceries." I want to get some nicotine patches; for the first time in ages I have reason to care how my breath smells.

"You mean get out of bed?"

"Yeah."

"And put clothes on?"

I nod.

"To go grocery shopping? Probably a good idea." The tip of his cock nudges between my open legs. I add more condoms to my mental inventory. He lowers his head and traces the edge of my nipple with his tongue, wetting it before blowing softly on it. I watch my nipples crease under his touch. Justin never paid much attention to my breasts and it caught me unawares last night when Jaime sucked at them and set off a bunch of nerves I never knew I had. Just the touch of his breath makes me shiver, thinking of how his mouth felt.

"Can't we just go as we are?" he murmurs, his hand on my hip.

"It'd be kind of cold."

"Counting on it. We'd have to huddle together for warmth."

I arch up into his hand, the movement spreading my legs wider so that he's almost inside. He's only the second man I've ever had and I'm so pathetically grateful to discover that another man can make me feel the way I thought only Justin could. "You want to go again?"

He sighs.

"I do, but don't you think you should call your dad?"

I blink up at him.

"Way to kill the mood," I say, half annoyed, half relieved. I feel bad enough that I spent most of last night comparing him to Justin, especially when they're nothing alike. Jaime is a far, far better man. No question.

He flops down next to me.

"Come on. Please. Just let him know you're okay. You can't be mad at him about Vegas forever."

"Who said I was mad about Vegas?"

"It's obvious. You said yourself that those annulment papers broke your heart. I figure your Dad was the one who shoved them under his nose, right?"

I scowl at him for a moment. If I weren't so chilled out from a night of really good sex then I expect I'd be pissed at this kind of deduction. As it is I just grab the covers in mock outrage and pull them up to my chest.

"I don't like you."

"You don't have to like me," he says, looking way too pleased with himself. "Just let me give you orgasms and we're good. Now text him already."

He's not going to let this go, and worse, he's right. I compose a quick text - I'm safe. With Jaime. Don't worry. xoxo Amber. "There," I say, shoving the screen in his face.

"No 'I love you'?"

"No. He's
British
, you dingbat. If I told him I loved him he'd think something was really wrong."

Jaime sighs.

"Okay, fine. Thank you."

"What for?"

"For doing what I asked. I like your old man, for what it's worth. I don't like the thought of him worrying."

I hit send and kiss him quickly, before he can spot the tears I'm trying to blink back. I know sooner or later he's going to raise the subject of going back to L.A., but at least now I have some means of distracting him. I don't ever want to go back. I just want to stay here with him and never put our clothes back on and do filthy things to one another whenever and however the mood takes us.

For our shopping expedition I get dressed up in the standard off-duty movie-star get up - yoga pants, sweatshirt, baseball cap and giant sunglasses.

"You couldn't look more L.A. if you tried," he says.

I dig him in the ribs as we enter the supermarket.

"Shh. Be gentle with me - it's my first time."

"In Big Sur?"

"No. Grocery shopping with a man."

He looks at me like I just told him I was abducted by aliens.

“What, never?”

“Nope.”

“But you got
married
. You never bought groceries together?”

I reach out and grab a bag of lemons, remembering the pleasure I’d used to feel before Justin, back when I’d drift around the exclusive little groceries up on Laurel, where every new ingredient presented new possibilities and menus.

“We didn’t have that kind of relationship,” I explain. “Justin always said we were soul mates. We weren’t meant to be bogged down in the mundane details that kill people’s passion.”

Jaime gives me a look – part amusement, part pity – and confirms my deepest, darkest most secret thought; that Justin was really just a silly, pretentious kid with an attitude problem. Maybe he deserves more than that, but I’m evil and I can’t stop.

“One time he said pie was bourgeois,” I say, eager to make Jaime laugh. “It was ridiculous really – I probably could count on the fingers of one hand the number of times we saw each other eat.”

“In how long?”

“Eighteen months, give or take. Is that weird?”

He shakes his head.

“Bizarre.”

“I thought so. And I used to like grocery shopping.”

“I hate it," he says. "The AC is always too high and everything costs so damn much." Then he catches himself bellyaching and gives me a brilliant smile that makes my heart twist. "And that was me channeling my Pops, by the way. Now you know how I'll sound when I'm seventy-five."

I laugh as we scoot down the aisle.

"Your mother's dad or your dad's?"

"My Dad's," he says, the smile fading from his lips. "He kind of fell apart when Dad died - you're not supposed to bury your children, are you?"

"No. I'm sorry. Was it a long time ago?"

Jaime shakes his head and grabs a carton of eggs, holding it up for inspection.

"Three years," he says. "They always say the younger you have the first heart attack the worse it is. Papi was only forty nine."

"Jesus. I'm so sorry."

He shrugs.

"What can you do? It was weird the way my sister got pregnant right away after he died. We always say it was like his soul was trying to make its way back to us, like he knew he'd left us too soon and never got to say goodbye."

I cover his hand with mine on the rail of the shopping cart. He pushes a lock of hair out of his eyes and sighs.

"These things happen. I can't imagine how it must have been for you – losing your mother."

I shake my head.

"I was too young to really understand it. I know that sounds cold, but that's how it was."

He doesn't say anything and I'm glad - I don't think I could handle anyone telling me I wasn't cold right now. Once I used to worry that I was empty and felt nothing. I got heavily into nihilism and sloped around in black eyeliner, convinced I was somehow broken inside. And maybe I still am.

It creeps up on me as we go around the store. I was as surprised as anyone to find that I wasn't panicking the second I set foot outside the door. I thought maybe I'd burned out all my panic cells with that big-ass attack yesterday. A couple of times Jaime tells me I'm doing well, but my heart keeps racing and I keep feeling it once more - the huge, devouring emptiness that I once thought had scooped me hollow.

"Are you okay?" Jaime asks, as we load up the Escalade.

"I'm fine," I say, but when we get in I'm antsy and I recognize the symptoms - the frantic desire to feel something, anything. The same stupid desire that led me to pick fights with Justin, just so we could scream at each other and make it up. It settles in my gut and between my legs, tugging at my frayed nerves, so that by the time we get back to the cabin I'm the same twitchy idiot who allowed that creep to manipulate her, the dumbass girl who didn't care how ridiculous the fight was, just so long as she got her fix of drama and a dick in her at the end of it.

I tell myself I won't subject Jaime to this, but his hand lingers on my ass while we're unpacking the groceries. His lips graze the edge of mine and it's all the encouragement I need to grab him, fist his shirt in both hands and stick my tongue down his throat.

"Whoa," he says, softly. "You missed it that much already?"

"Yeah." Luckily I didn't put the condoms at the bottom of the bag.

"You want to go to bed?"

"I don't much care," I say, pulling off my pants and leading him by the hand into the living area. I feel twice as naked, stripped from the waist down like this, and I can tell he likes it too. He helps me unbutton him and springs up in my hand, warm and eager. And from there it's easy - I roll on the condom and straddle his lap. This is how he likes it. Dirty and hot, with me all but crawling the walls until he fills the void inside me with his solid flesh.