65. Chapter 65 Jack
Chapter sixty-five
After another day of dealing with the fallout from our security breach at the club, I have one more stop to make before I can get home to my girl.
I’ve been shaving off an hour here and there, making sure her ring is resized and polished to perfection.
She picked it out herself years ago in a vintage shop, some offhand comment about how she’d never settle for another ring and her true prince would know and find this one.
In a tiny shop. Off the beaten path. Naturally, I snatched it up, thinking I could at least keep it until she found a man worthy of her, then give it to him.
All I need now is the perfect time to ask.
Soon, I think, before LJ is born. Maybe even while we’re in Paris.
We’re meant to be together, and I’m ready to be her emergency contact. There’s no reason to wait.
Well, maybe one reason. I haven’t come clean about being her Sir yet.
I’ve meant to, we’ve just been so fucking happy.
And at this point, I know I’m a giant piece of shit, so what else is new?
But now I think she’ll see the positives, and see my heart, and we’ll be romantic together in the City of Light.
At least this is my hope. If this all blows up in my face, I’m not even entertaining that as an option.
I’m whistling with a pep in my step as I open the front door, ready to smell Margot’s hair and let the worries of the day melt away before we head to our favorite Thai restaurant for dinner.
Immediately, I know it’s too quiet. Beyond that, it’s as still as a tomb in here. Unnaturally so. Fucking creepy.
“Margot? Princess, are you okay? Are you here? What’s…” I trail off as I enter the kitchen and see the items left on the counter. I freeze, waiting for anything at all to happen to make this not be my reality. But it is. She found out.
She found out about my absolute bullshit, and she’s gone.
I can’t do anything but fall to my knees and crawl to the island, sitting back on my heels to look at the pieces of Margot left behind.
Both my Margots. Her collar and leash, the phones, the keychain.
The bow. I lose it at the bow, crumpling to the floor in a heap of sobs, ruining the silk with my tears as I clutch it to my face.
I remember how it felt when she said she wanted a J instead of an M.
I thought I was going to burst with love.
Now, I feel like I’m going to burst with pain.
Fuck, and I deserve it. I allow it to wash over me, sobbing until I don’t have tears and then dry heaving until my abs burn with the effort.
I hadn’t even wanted to keep the phone, but every time I almost got rid of it, I thought of Margot feeling like she needed her masked man for something, and showing up to the room and him never coming.
I convinced myself I couldn’t hurt her like that, so I kept it in my nightstand just in case.
And now everything’s exploded in my face.
She’s gone. Two years, and I had her for not even a month, and she’s gone.
I must literally pass out from panic and grief because the next thing I know, I wake up to a darkened apartment and a million missed texts and calls from the entire family.
Immediately, I fear the worst, that they’ve figured out about Margot and me, and now how I’ve hurt her.
Instead, it’s just the group chat popping off with more baby stuff, work texts about the security updates, and calls from Ledger trying to confirm new hires for the clubs.
I lie on the floor, twisted uncomfortably but unwilling to adjust because I deserve every bit of this.
Time passes, and I remain there until I see the first beams of the sunrise start to move through the apartment.
Finally, I stand to rinse my mouth and use the bathroom, and when I come back to the living room, I see the sunlight hitting the polished top of her piano.
She’s played for me every time I’ve asked in the last few weeks.
I asked her if she thought our kids would have her musical talent, and she gave a coy shrug and said, “We’ll see.
” The tears threaten to fall again when I realize I’m not doing this again.
I’m not giving up. I gave up two years ago, and it was the wrong thing to do.
I knew then and didn’t fight. But now I’ve had her again and she’s magic, all the fucking good in the world.
I’m not letting her go. One of the missed texts was from Blanche saying she wouldn’t come for dinner tonight since we were in Paris early.
Margot must have told her she was going ahead, and Blanche assumed I was with her.
Clearly, Margot didn’t feel like explaining, but that’s to my advantage.
I know where she is, and nobody else in the family knows what’s going on.
I can work with this. Packing the lightest possible bag and planning to buy everything else when I get there, I’m on the next flight across the Atlantic.
I told you I’d follow you to the ends of the earth, Princess. Time for me to prove it.
After a frustrating text exchange with Ledger while I was en route, I finally land in Paris and make my way to the pickup spot for the car service.
I mean, how hard is it to just confirm or deny whether he thinks a turkey baster pregnancy is a reasonable method to trap a woman with you forever?
He acted like he never considered it with Sloane, which I know he did, and tried to be all high and mighty about it.
The man hacked her medical records and put cameras in her house!
His high horse is a fucking miniature pony at this point.
I’m running on fumes by the time I reach Margot’s apartment, ready to beg, grovel, plead, disfigure myself, anything she wants if she’ll just let me in and listen to me.
My hand is raised to knock when it opens and a supermodel walks out wearing a red, skintight latex midi dress, a coat slung loosely over her shoulders, carrying matching gloves and wearing sky-high heels.
Large sunglasses cover most of her face, and her blonde hair is pulled back into a tight chignon.
It’s not until she sweeps past me without a glance, and I catch a faint whiff of her scent that I realize it’s…
“Margot?”
She freezes, before turning to give me a stare over the top of her sunglasses. Clearly not impressed by what she finds, she turns to continue strutting away.
“Margot, please. Please, Princess. I came to apologize. I need to talk to you. I know I’m despicable.
I know I fucked up and it was wrong…” I’m begging as she makes her way down the hallway toward the lifts, but something I’ve said has made her stop and turn to face me again.
Thank fuck, if I can just beg, maybe kneel and kiss her feet, maybe she’ll…
“You. Fucked. Up?” she says lowly, and I realize that somehow I’ve already managed to say the wrong thing. Jesus Christ, Jack, never once in your life have you managed to say the right thing at the right time . I’m going to keep my mouth shut now, for once.
“You think that’s what you did? That you fucked up?
Made a mistake, came to apologize, and we would what?
Go back home to our little life we were having so much fun with?
” Her voice is completely calm while she’s talking.
I’m so happy to see her that I could cry, but I know calm is probably the worst possible reaction from her in this situation.
She takes off her sunglasses and puts them in her bag, coming close enough that I can see her bloodshot eyes and the bags under them. Fuck, I did that.
“I don’t think your pathetic, pea-sized man brain will ever actually understand what you did, but let me at least try to spell it out so you have a fighting chance to feel as shitty as you actually should.
A little recap, just for you. I idolized you growing up, Jack.
You were my knight in shining armor as a child, my crush as a teen, my only love as an adult.
Mom wasn’t exaggerating. I thought you were perfect, and I was sure you were the only man I could ever be convinced to marry. ”
Tears stream down my face now, but her expression remains blank.
“This is obviously too much pressure to put on one human. Nobody is perfect. But we had our night together, and I really thought you shared my feelings. Naivety of youth, clearly. You sent me away with that note and shattered my dreams, and blah, blah. Old history.”
She’s coming closer now, her blank gaze turning fiery when she stops inches away from me. God, just yesterday I was allowed to touch her, and now every inch feels like a thousand miles between us.
“I came back to New York, forced to work with you. And you wormed your way back into my heart. Saying all the right things, doing all the right things. The plays, the memories, the cuff links, God. That was so smooth. You had me fooled.”
“I wasn’t trying to…”
“No,” she spits. “You don’t speak. You don’t ever speak to me again. You only listen. The entire time you were wining and dining me, convincing me you were the same Jackie I always loved, and you had made a terrible mistake… you had me on a leash crawling to you on the floor! ”
She realizes she’s screamed the last bit and takes as deep a breath as her dress will allow before continuing, again calm and in control.
“You knew who I was, and you knew full well that my consent to our activities would have changed had I known it was you, and that kind of deceit is so rotten and disgusting that I can’t even stand to look at you.
I went back through the texts, Jack. Playing both sides to your advantage.
One Jack enjoying the sex and the power, the other being my best friend again when I desperately needed one.
You abused an inherent position of power over me as my Dom, while literally telling me I could trust you completely and build a life with you.
I would never build a life with a man who could take advantage of a woman like that and then hold her close at night.
You fooled me twice. There won’t be a chance for a third. ”
She takes a deep breath, and her eyes flare, the anger there hitting me harder than any physical punch.
“We’re done. In every capacity. What we’ll tell the family isn’t my concern.
We can cross that bridge when we come to it.
You can lose my number and my address. Honestly, don’t even think about me.
I don’t plan to exist in your world at all, anyway.
I don’t plan to ever direct my gaze, or my voice, or my thoughts toward you again.
Hopefully, you can’t do the same, and you miss me for-fucking-ever. ”
Looking down at her watch, she rolls her eyes. “Now I’m late for my meeting. Goodbye, Mr. Carter.”
With one middle finger in the air, she’s around the corner to the lifts and gone.
She was right that I hadn’t fully registered the depths of my betrayal, particularly the fact that she wouldn't have consented if she had known it was me. I’ll carry that shame for the rest of my life, and no amount of rationalizing will make that right.
Her points about me playing both sides…it had seemed like the right thing to do at the time, a means to an end, but she’s right again. It was despicable.
She’s wrong about one thing, though. She can’t cease to exist in my world.
She’s the axis it turns on. I’m not fucking leaving.
I let her go once and told her I wouldn’t do it again, and I meant it.
I don’t care what she does. She can move to India, fuck a million men, or become a nun.
I’ll be one hundred feet away in case she needs me.
I don’t think that’ll happen, though. I think her soul will realize I have half of it, just like she’s walking around with half of mine.
When that time comes, I’ll be right here.
For weeks, I follow Margot as she takes Paris by storm.
Or tries to. She’s losing weight and looks terribly tired, with nobody to carry her bags for her and rub her feet at night.
She sends back the flowers I send as mulch and donates any food to the local soup kitchen.
Her schedule is too packed, and I worry that she’s getting close to burning herself out.
My Princess is true to her word, though, never glancing in my direction once, regardless of how close I am. She’s so stubborn. Fuck, I love her.
Tonight, something is off. She’s wearing more makeup than usual, and she had an intimate dinner with a man at a romantic restaurant, laughing and being way too tactile with him.
This is clearly someone from her time here years ago, hopefully just another friend.
My stomach falls when they make their way back out of the restaurant, and his hand slides past the small of her back to the top of her perfect ass.
The red cloud of rage that falls over my eyes almost causes me to crash the motorcycle I’m using to follow them, earning me curses in French and getting my head back into the game.
Finally, we’re back at Margot’s apartment, and I watch to make sure she gets in safely before I can go upstairs to the unit I bought across the street.
Instead of this asshole escorting Margot to the door of the building, though, she gives him a wide smile, and he follows her in, hand now fully on her ass.
Holy shit. I’m going to die on this sidewalk, in Paris, of heartbreak.
The worst fucking part is I deserve it. I would honestly sit in a chair five feet away and watch Margot fuck this guy if it meant I got to be near her again.
But I see the lights turn on in her apartment, and their silhouettes come together too closely to be anything but an embrace.
As she closes her curtains, I realize I don’t exist in her world, but she still exists in mine.