Chapter Thirty
Kristen
“I was thinking…”
“Yeah?” I asked, looking up at Jake.
There was something different about him today. He seemed more open somehow. As though the beach and the walk and the conversation had given him permission to be excited about his future. I realized that this was possibly the first time he was looking towards the future with any kind of optimism.
“Maybe we could go away sometime, the three of us?” he suggested.
I wondered if he was a little nervous asking me in the first place. If it hadn’t been for the secret I was keeping, I would have been thrilled. As it stood though, I had this huge weight on my chest. I had been trying to work up the courage to tell him, but my fear of losing him and Noah was preventing me from taking the leap. I wanted to be braver, but my fear was crippling.
“I was thinking we could do a road trip of sorts,” Jake continued. “We could drive into the next state, maybe stay a day or two with Aunt Margo, and then just go wherever the wind takes us.”
I smiled. “That’s a beautiful plan.”
“I used to dream about doing that one day when I had a family of my own.”
I paused a second as Jake’s expression faltered a little. I put my hand on his. “Did you and Daphne plan on taking a road trip with Noah one day?”
“Actually, no,” Jake replied. “Daphne hated the idea of road trips. She didn’t like being stuck in a car for long stretches of time. And anyway, we never really planned any family trips to begin with. After Noah was born, Daphne was depressed for a long time, and then she re-enlisted and went overseas, and…she never came back.”
I leaned my head against his shoulder and rubbed his arm gently. “Do you think things would have been different if she had stayed?”
“Meaning would she have gotten over the post-partum?” he clarified.
“Yes.”
“I honestly don’t know,” he replied. “And believe me, I’ve spent hours thinking about all the different possibilities. Daphne wasn’t ready to be a mother… Hell, I wasn’t ready to be a father. She was twenty-three, and I was twenty-four. We had our lives planned out, and children didn’t enter into it for another decade, at least. I think she didn’t really want to be pregnant, but she convinced herself she was happy.
“Then she found herself back home living a civilian’s life, and I was still in Afghanistan being a soldier, and she just grew sadder and sadder. I think she hoped that that would change once Noah was born, and honestly, I hoped the same thing. But then… Noah was born, and everything just got worse.”
“I wish I could have been there for her,” I said, without thinking.
“What?” Jake said, looking at me with shock.
“Uh…nothing.”
“You would have wanted to be there for my wife?” He sounded absolutely baffled by that sentiment.
It was yet another opening for me. All I had to do was say ‘I wanted to be there for her because she was my sister,’ but there was no way I was strong or brave enough to say those words.
“Um… I just… It’s hard to go through something like that alone,” I said, stumbling over my words. “Sometimes you just need a little help.”
Jake frowned as though he wasn’t quite sure whether to believe me or not. “You are strange, Kristen…but you’re also wonderful.”
“No, I’m not,” I said, feeling disgusted with myself.
“Hey,” he said, hooking his finger under my chin and pushing it up so that he could see my face. “Trust me… I know what wonderful looks like. And, you’re it.”
His blue eyes were bright and open and beautiful, and I felt instantly ashamed of myself. I was allowing him to get deeper into this without coming clean with him first. Maybe my mother was right—maybe I was no better than she was.
“I’m so sorry,” I said, feeling emotion constrict around my throat.
“For what?” Jake asked.
“For…everything,” I whispered.
Jake frowned in confusion, but then he smiled. “You feel too much, Kristen,” he said. “That’s your problem. Now come on, let’s head on back to the office.”
The drive back was mostly silent. I could tell that Jake was as involved with his thoughts as I was with mine. Except I could tell from his expression that he was reflecting on good things, while I was just trying to juggle my guilt and shame with my love for Jake and Noah.
“I miss him,” I said instinctively.
“Me, too,” Jake nodded.
I realized that I’d never mentioned whom I missed by name, and yet Jake knew exactly whom I was talking about. It was the kind of connection every girl dreamed of having…and I wondered if it was all part of life’s cruel irony that I would find that with a man who was never meant for me.
We took separate elevators up to our floor just to avoid people linking us together. It wasn’t as though there was a company policy or anything, but neither one of us wanted to have to answer awkward questions from nosy work colleagues. I was already sitting at my desk when Jake walked in. He nodded to me formally before disappearing into his office. But a second later, he called me in to meet him.
“Hi,” I said, poking my head in. “What do you need?”
“You,” he said. “Come in and lock the door.”
Tentatively, I walked in and shut the door behind me. Jake was leaning against his desk with a strange glint in his eye. He looked like some roguish model, with his tousled dark hair and his perfect blue eyes smiling at me. I came forward, still recovering from the conversation we’d had over lunch. I wanted to be near him, but at the same time, I wanted the weight on my chest to lift. I wanted to be with him without the worry and the guilt.
“Are you okay?” Jake asked, taking my hand. “You seem a little stressed.”
“I… I suppose I am a little stressed.”
“Why?” he asked, pulling me closer to him.
“Um… I have had a lot on my mind lately,” I admitted.
Jake appeared to be only half-listening to me. His lips came down on my neck and he started to kiss me slowly. “What’s bothering you?” he asked as he continued to tease me.
“Uh…nothing.”
“It can’t be nothing if it’s bothering you.”
I shivered a little as his tongue traveled along the length of my neck. “I… I know…”
“Well?” he pressed, as he placed soft kisses on my lips. “What is it?”
“Um…you know… I can’t quite…remember just now,” I managed to say.
His smile was boyish and teasing. “Am I distracting you?”
“Yes.”
His smile grew wider as his hands slipped up my skirt towards my panties. At first, I thought he was just feeling me up a little, but then his fingers hooked around the waistband of my panties and pulled them off me in one swift move.
“Oh my God,” I gasped, as I tried to pull away from him. “What are you doing?”
His arms were vice-like around me, refusing to let me go. He held me close against his body and pushed two fingers inside me. I gasped and clung to him as he started fingering me urgently. My eyes rolled back in my head, and against my will, my leg raised up a little to help him push deeper inside me.
“We can’t be doing this here,” I gasped, trying to gain control over my weakened resolve. “What if someone… Oh, God… What if someone walks in?”
“You locked the door, didn’t you?” Jake said, as he pushed his fingers right up inside me and shook so hard that my head spun with delirious excitement.
I was soaking wet when Jake pulled his fingers out again. I was also so turned on that I was willing to have him fuck me in front of the entire office and the board of directors, as well. Sensing that I was now completely pliant, Jake grabbed me by the waist and turned me around so that I was leaning against his desk. Then he pushed open my legs and stepped between them.
His cock was rock hard, and I reached out to encircle it with my hand. He unzipped his pants and pulled out his erect penis. The sight of it sent new shivers of pleasure running through my body. He didn’t bother undressing me. We kept all our clothes on, and somehow that excited me, too. Then he pushed inside me, and I had to bite my lip to stop the gasp from escaping my lips.
I was so wet that he slid in and out of me easily. There was nothing gentle about the way he fucked me this time. He rammed into me so hard that I wondered if everyone outside the office would be able to hear us. The sound of his pelvis slamming into mine had to be one of the most erotic sounds I had ever heard.
His hands worked over my chest, unbuttoning my blouse and undoing my bra. Luckily, I had worn my front clasp bra today. He played with my nipples, sucking them from time to time when his pace slowed, and he needed to catch his breath. Then he pushed me back onto his desk so that I was lying spread-eagled against the surface, disrupting his papers and files. He didn’t seem to care, and even I couldn’t muster up the willpower to stop him.
I was just about to cum when he pulled out of me. He sat down in one of his large black chairs and pulled me down on top of him. Desperate for the feel of his cock inside me again, I mounted him quickly and sat down on top of his cock. Again, he slid inside me easily, and I rode him hard, matching the pace he had set earlier. His hands moved from my hips to my ass, squeezing as I bounced on top of him.
I came so violently that I felt my eyes roll back in my head and I was forced to bite down on my tongue so hard that I actually wounded myself in the process. I just sat there for a few minutes, on top of him, while he encircled me with his arms. I could feel his breathing at my neck and the scent of him clinging to my skin. It was primal and animalistic, and I liked the idea that I smelled of him now.
“That was…fun,” he said, at last, breaking the sex-fueled silence.
I let out a low laugh. “I hope no one heard us.”
“I don’t give a fuck if they did,” Jake said. “I’m finally happy, and I don’t care who knows it.”
I smiled and cradled his face in my hands. “I make you happy?”
“Happier than you could possibly imagine,” he confirmed. “You’re my happy place.”
I felt my heart do cartwheels. Was it possible to fly? At that moment everything felt possible. “And you’re mine,” I whispered in his ear. “I love you, Jake.”
He pulled his face back a little and looked right at me. His face was unreadable for a moment, and then he smiled. “I love you, Kristen,” he replied.
And just like that, I had dug myself an even deeper grave. But at the moment, I didn’t let myself think about that. At that moment, I decided to cling to blissful denial and forget the secret that was threatening to steal away my one chance to true happiness.