In The Dark

Chapter 19 #2

Amelia stepped back, stunned by the venom in Jo’s voice, but she didn’t blame her. Oh, no. She’d earned this. “I thought it would help you,” Amelia whispered, every memory she had with Jo flashing before her eyes. “I thought maybe it was better that way. Safer.”

“Safer for who?” Jo’s voice trembled. “For you?”

“I didn’t want to lose you.” Amelia’s hands shook, but she continued. “I couldn’t stand the idea of not having you in some way. I know I should have been honest the first night you walked into that room, but…I couldn’t stomach the thought of losing you.”

Jo looked at Amelia like she didn’t recognise her anymore. She glared from across the room, disgust etched on that beautiful face. “You’ve already lost me.”

And with that, Jo turned towards the door.

“Please, Jo.” Amelia’s voice broke as tears spilled down her cheeks. “Please, don’t walk away from me.”

The door opened, then slammed shut. Amelia stood alone in Jo’s flat, her chest hollow.

Lia was gone. Jo was gone. And now…all she had left was the glaring truth and a tremendous guilt.

Jo gripped the steering wheel so hard that her knuckles turned white.

She hadn’t even started the engine; she didn’t know where she was going or what she was doing.

Her flat was right there in front of her, but it felt like the last place in the world she could go right now. She couldn’t face Amelia.

Lia…is Amelia.

That confession repeated over and over in her mind, as if saying it enough times would make it make sense. As if repetition could dull the betrayal. But it didn’t, it only sharpened it. Every time the thought landed, it cut deeper.

She’d told Lia private and intimate things. Things she would never have said to Amelia if she’d known it was her in the dark room. And she’d meant every word. Every desperate whisper, every aching moan…every time she said she wanted Amelia, she’d meant it.

And all that time…Amelia had known.

Jo let out a strangled sob as she slammed her fist down on the steering wheel, her whole body jolting with the force of it.

How the fuck had this happened?

She leaned forward and rested her head against the leather, her breath ragged as she tried to calm down. She was shaking. Not just her hands, but her legs, her stomach, her chest, too. Her entire body was caught in this storm she hadn’t seen coming.

Amelia. Her friend, her ex’s mum, the woman who’d held her after her breakup, the one who had made her tea and stroked her hair while she cried into her lap. The woman who’d become her safe place after everything had fallen apart.

And now? Now she was the woman Jo had begged to fuck her in a dark room. The woman she’d touched and tasted and poured her heart out to, not realising it was the same person who sat across from her day in, day out, pretending she didn’t know.

It was all a lie.

Every moan in the dark, every stroke of her hand, every time Lia had pulled her close and whispered, ‘I’ve got you’, it had all been Amelia, and Jo hadn’t known. She hadn’t been given the fucking choice to know.

Her eyes burned as she looked out through the windscreen. She blinked repeatedly, not allowing herself to cry. If she cried, she’d fall apart completely, and if she fell apart, she didn’t know how or if she’d ever put herself back together.

She reached blindly for her phone on the passenger seat, her fingers trembling as she opened her contacts.

Ada. The only person she could stomach right now.

The call connected almost instantly. “Hey, babe. You alright?”

Jo tried to answer, but all that came out was a shaky exhale.

“Jo?”

“She lied to me,” Jo whispered as her bottom lip trembled. “It was her. Lia was Amelia.”

“O-oh, fuck.”

“Yeah.” Jo wiped at her face when a single tear fell. “Oh, fuck.”

“Okay,” Ada said gently. Jo could hear her shifting, as though she was sitting down. “I know you’re spiralling, but…can you talk me through it? What happened?”

Jo closed her eyes. “She came over and told me Callum’s coming home. Something about him wanting to try again with me. And then…she told me the truth. That it had been her all along.”

“She just came out with it?”

“Y-yes. It’s been her the whole time, Ada. Every time I touched Lia…it was Amelia.”

Ada let out a slow, controlled breath. “Jesus.”

“God, I feel sick.” Jo pressed a hand to her chest. “I feel like I’ve been fucking violated. I told her things in that room I didn’t even know I felt until they came out of me.”

“Jo…”

“Oh, God.” The realisation suddenly sank in. “I told her I loved her. During the roleplay, I told Lia I loved Amelia. And she didn’t even fucking stop me!”

“Do you want me to come over? I can be there within the hour.”

“No. I’ll be okay. I don’t think I can face anyone at the minute.” Jo pressed her forehead to the steering wheel again and sighed. “I don’t know if I’m angry or humiliated or heartbroken. I just know I feel like I’ve lost something I never really had.”

“Jo, listen to me for a minute, okay?” Ada cleared her throat.

“What she’s done is fucked up, it really is.

She took your consent and turned it into her fantasy.

That’s the first thing I want you to remember.

Consent. You signed that form to go into that room, knowing it could potentially be someone you knew.

It says it in the small print, and I know you—you don’t miss the small print. ”

Jo winced. Ada was right. Jo had spent over forty minutes online reading through all the Terms and Conditions, the nondisclosure agreement, and everything else that came with a Satin membership.

“But,” Ada continued, “I also think she did it because she didn’t know how else to be close to you. You’ve been so clear about what you can’t have with her because of who she is, so maybe she thought this was the only way.”

“That doesn’t make it okay.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Ada agreed. “But it does mean you need to decide whether you can forgive her or not. It means you need to give yourself some time to sit and process before you make any decisions.”

Jo let her head fall back against the seat, her gaze fixed on the graffiti-covered lamppost across the street. “I don’t know if I can.”

“And if you can’t, that’s okay.”

“I don’t know who she is anymore, Ada.”

Ada sighed. “Maybe Amelia doesn’t know who she is anymore either.”

Jo closed her eyes and swallowed. She knew she had a lot of thinking to do, but right now, she was angry. Far too angry to sit and have a conversation with Amelia, and far too angry to see any kind of reasoning as to why she’d done it. “I think I need to lie down and be alone for a while.”

“I know.”

Jo lifted her head and glanced at her living room window. Unless Amelia had left via the back exit and scaled several garden fences, she was still in there. “Can I call you tomorrow when I’ve got some sleep? If I can sleep.”

“You know you can,” Ada said. “And Jo?”

“Yeah?”

“If I find out that you’re considering taking Callum back, I will kill you.”

Jo snorted. “Trust me, I’d never consider taking him back.”

“Well, at least we can agree on something right now. Get some rest, and when you want to talk, you know where I am.”

For the first time in weeks, Jo didn’t feel turned on. She didn’t feel those intense butterflies, she didn’t feel giddy with the promise of something forbidden and electric, she just felt…tired. So fucking tired.

Amelia sat on Jo’s couch, trembling. She hadn’t moved since she’d left.

She’d simply lowered herself to the couch when the front door slammed shut, then sat in the silence ever since.

There had been no car engine firing up, and no speeding away from the kerb…

just the oppressive stillness of a flat that was drenched in fury and heartbreak.

Amelia hadn’t cried in years. Not since her life changed some twenty-odd years ago and she’d become numb. She hadn’t even cried when Callum left for Southeast Asia without a proper goodbye. But now, she sobbed with her hands pressed to her face as broken gasps shook her whole body.

Her chest ached, her head pounded, and she couldn’t breathe properly.

How had she let it get this far?

She should have told Jo weeks ago. She should have been honest from the start. But every time she thought about confessing, of risking even a sliver of what they had, fear had overruled her honesty.

And now, Jo hated her.

She lifted her head as the door opened. Jo stepped inside with a clenched jaw and glassy eyes, her keys still in hand. The moment Amelia saw her, she got to her feet and wiped at her cheeks with the back of her hand.

“Jo, I—”

Jo’s mask slipped for half a second, but she quickly forced it back into place. Amelia watched it happen in real time. “I want you to leave.”

Amelia’s heart broke again. “Please, just listen to me.”

“There’s nothing you can say that will make this okay.”

Amelia stepped forward instinctively, her arms half-raised before she lowered them to her sides again.

She was desperate…exposed in a way she hadn’t been in decades.

When Jo took a step back, Amelia’s tears threatened all over again.

This woman couldn’t stand to be in the same room as her, and Amelia only had herself to blame.

“I didn’t plan for any of this to happen. You were hurting and I just—”

“You lied to me for weeks, Amelia.”

“I know, and I hate myself for it.”

Jo’s voice broke. “You let me say things in that room. You let me do things. You knew it was you, and you still let me—” She cut herself off and turned her back. “I can’t even look at you.”

“I didn’t do it to hurt you. I never wanted to hurt you.” Amelia chanced a step closer again, placing a careful hand on Jo’s shoulder. “Please believe me when I say I never wanted to hurt you.”

“You’ve made me feel like a fool.” Jo spun around. “I trusted you. I trusted Lia. And you…you kept up this lie, and I didn’t know who the hell I was talking to.”

Amelia took a breath, knowing that brutal honesty was the only way she would get through to Jo, but even that didn’t feel like a possibility right now.

“I was scared, okay? I didn’t think you’d want me if you knew it was me.

I thought that maybe a part of you could be free in that room without the weight of who I am. Who we are to one another.”

Jo scoffed. “So you thought deception was the answer?”

“No,” Amelia whispered. “I thought it was the only way I’d get to be close to you.

The only way you’d let me in.” She wanted to reach out and touch Jo’s face, to feel that skin against her own, even if only to ground her, but she wouldn’t dare.

Instead, she would say what she had to say, and then she would leave.

“I know I’ve hurt you, and I know you’ll never forgive me, but I have to live with that now.

That’s a pain I’m not sure I can carry, but I deserve it. ”

“I don’t know who you are.”

“Maybe you don’t, not anymore, but I will say that I finally know who you are.

Behind the pain and the anguish, away from the torment and the hurt Callum caused you…

you’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever had the pleasure of knowing.

” Amelia lifted a hand and stroked her thumb against Jo’s cheek.

“In that room, you were yourself. In that room, you valued yourself, and you didn’t let what he did to you affect you.

Seeing that, being a part of something so beautiful and transformative…

I feel privileged to have been the one in that room the night you walked in. ”

Amelia leaned in and kissed Jo’s cheek, lingering for a moment longer.

“I hope you continue to rebuild yourself, Jo. I hope you find the love of your life and thrive in ways you never would have done with Callum…or me. You deserve something extraordinary, and though you won’t see me again, I will be cheering you on.

I’ll be out there, waiting for the day when I hear you’re married, or you’ve just moved into a beautiful new home with your partner. ”

Jo looked away and folded her arms across her chest, blinking back tears.

“I’ll go, but please know that I’m so very sorry for hurting you.

” Amelia didn’t want to go; she wanted to fall to her knees and beg for forgiveness, but Jo wasn’t hearing her, and Amelia knew she never would.

“I’d say I’m always here if you ever need anything, but I know you won’t take me up on it.

So, all I can really say is that I hope you’ll be safe, and don’t let this experience with me ruin your relationships moving forward. ”

Amelia walked to the front door and took her coat from the hook.

Her heart felt painfully heavy, her limbs numb, and as she turned and took one final glance at Jo, she knew she’d fucked it all up.

“I love you.” Tears slid down Amelia’s cheeks as she put that out into the world.

“Not as Lia and not because of Satin. I love you, Jo. I have for a long time, even when I shouldn’t have. ”

Jo didn’t look at her. She didn’t move, she didn’t speak, she didn’t give any hint of a reconciliation in the future. So, Amelia turned the handle and left Jo’s flat, her chest caving in as she landed on the doorstep with tears running down her face.

As the door closed behind her, Amelia knew that she’d lost Jo once and for all.