Chapter 24
Chapter
Twenty-Four
JAKE
July, 2013
“Jake,” she said, “Some things…some things have happened. There are things I need to tell you and I don’t even know where to begin.”
A few short months ago I would have been riveted, thrilled to be on the cusp of her confession, a window to her pain. But now, with a gut feeling it was to be the end of us, I didn’t want to hear it.
She set her drink on the table and ran her hands up and down her legs. She looked up at the ceiling and took a deep inhale. She didn’t look at me as she began to speak, focusing instead on her hands and the way her fingers wrapped around her thumb.
“I met Ari when I was nineteen. He was everything I thought I wanted. The way I grew up, with parents who were so strict, so…hands off, Ari was like the sun. He drew me in with his confidence and swagger. He was so attentive, affectionate, and passionate. Four months after we started dating, I got pregnant. I didn’t want a baby then, I was in college, I wanted a career. I wanted to wait and see how things went with Ari. But this baby, the only grandchild…Ari used him as leverage to get his parents to invest in him, in culinary school and in a restaurant. They planned and paid for a huge wedding and bought us a house. It was like I had gotten on a train and wasn’t able to get off. And it was the wrong train. To a terrible place.
“Ari’s confidence and swagger were the shiny surface hiding his narcissism. He was a difficult person to deal with most of the time. He would twist everything little into something big and he had an awful temper. His attentiveness and passion turned into a possessiveness that scared me. He was very controlling. Especially…especially in the bedroom.”
I couldn’t speak. Somehow even though I’d guessed most of this, it was too horrible to imagine Shelby having lived through it. Again, my rage for someone I’d never met, someone I would never meet, boiled lava hot inside me. My spine stiffened and I clenched my jaw before realizing that Shelby didn’t need me to react. She needed me to listen. I relaxed by my body the best I could, and I reached out and gently grabbed her hand. She let me.
“He took advantage of my need for his attention, and he used my sexuality as fuel for his sadistic games. He knew he had me backed into a corner—that I would do anything to please him, and he used that against me. He’d edge me to the brink over and over, not to enhance my pleasure, but his own—he got off on the control and the cruelty. He humiliated me. He degraded me. He…he hurt me. And because I was aroused, because I came, he assumed I liked it. So, it kept getting more intense. And he would push further and further. And while I know that there are people who have healthy, satisfying relationships like that, that’s not what this was. When it was over, and I’d hide in the bathroom for hours and cry, he wouldn’t care. There was no safe word, no soothing. No balance. No…aftercare.”
It was then I understood every erratic moment Shelby ever had. Even the praise, even the “good girl” had been laced with dark intention and had not been praise at all.
She looked up at the ceiling again and sighed. My heart broke for her, but in a way I wasn’t used to. For the first time in as long as I could remember, I saw someone’s pain as their own and something completely separate from me. It was as if a force like a hundred mile an hour car crash pushed me into a universe separate from hers, and while I could see and hear and touch her, I would not be able to affect her.
It was a fucking breakthrough. And while Dr. McCallum would have been so proud, I was completely gutted.
“I know I’ve been a lot,” she continued, “I’m so sorry for the way I treated you.”
I grabbed her hand tighter. “Hey,” I gently touched her chin to turn her face up toward mine. “Hey, it’s okay. I understand. I can’t begin to tell you how sorry I am that you went through all of that. You were traumatized. You have triggers. I get that.” I turned my body further towards hers and sat up straight, trying to convey as much of the optimism I was feeling as I could. “We can work through this, Shelby. You can let me know when things get… tricky. We can take our time.” I let myself believe for a minute that we’d be okay.
She shook her head, taking her hand away and with it, all the breath from my lungs.
She wasn’t finished.
“There’s more.” She drained the last of her whiskey. “A few weeks ago, I was in the hospital. A ruptured ectopic pregnancy.”
I sat there silent, blinking, trying to absorb what she had just said.
Hospital.
Pregnancy.
“Oh, Shelby. God. I’m so sorry. Why didn’t you tell me? I could have…” I trailed off as she shook her head. There was nothing I could have done. I’d already done too much, apparently.
I could feel the prickles of threatening tears. For her. For me.
“I’m fine now. Everything is fine.” She didn’t seem quite convinced.
I stared at her in sheer awe. Here I had thought she was this damsel in distress and I, the clumsy, oblivious white knight, would come riding in and rescue her. But no. She was a warrior goddess slaying her own goddamn dragons this whole time. And then left to face the ultimate battle alone. After what she had just told me, of course a pregnancy would have been the ultimate trigger.
“It… it brought it all back. It all got churned up again.” She became quiet, tightly pressing her lips together trying to hold back something desperate to get out. When she opened her mouth, the words came out with a gut-wrenching sob. “And they told me if I wouldn’t have gone to the doctor when I did… if everything hadn’t happened the way it had, I might have bled out. I might have died. And… and…,” she was hardly able to get it out. “Brody. I would have left Brody. He would have lost both of his parents within a year.”
Her body wracked with sobs as the tears fell fast and hard. I grabbed and held her close to my chest as she shook. This whole time, she hadn’t cried until now.
Ari had betrayed her. He didn’t deserve her tears.
I hadn’t nestled into her heart in the way I had hoped. I hadn’t earned them.
But Brody. Her tears were all for her son. He was her entire world and the thought of leaving him broke her. It didn’t matter that the circumstances were accidental and not the result of her having done anything overtly reckless. She still felt responsible. She still felt the guilt, a weight far heavier than she was able to bear.
There was nothing I could do. Nothing. And it was killing me.
Anything I said in that moment, all my promises of how it would all be alright, any confession of my love and devotion, any amount of begging and pleading, it would all have been meaningless. Screaming into the fucking void.
“I can’t do this anymore, Jake.”
“What are you saying?” I knew, but I needed to hear the words. The words that would shatter my already broken heart into tiny shards and send me careening away from her orbit. Directionless. Helpless. Hopeless.
“It’s over. It has to be over.” She looked at me. There were no more tears. Her resolve was set.
How ironic . I finally no longer wanted her to need me. I desperately needed her to want me. And she didn’t.
“I’m sorry about having you come all this way… for this. But I needed to tell you in person.”
“No, I get it. It’s okay.” It wasn’t okay. None of it was okay.
“You don’t have to leave…it’s late. You could…,” as soon as the words came out and she read the look on my face, she knew I had to go. “Jake, I’m…I’m so sorry.”
I felt the hint of an instinct to try and make her feel better, but I was empty. I had nothing more to give.I got up and walked toward my bag I’d left by the door without giving her another reassurance.
Shelby stood up and hugged her arms over her chest.
I bowed my head as I realized leaving her like this would have broken me, and I would have regretted it forever.
I put down my bag and walked back over to her. I put my hand gently on the back of her head and kissed her forehead, then pressed my own forehead to hers and closed my eyes. “Goodbye, Shelby,” the two words ripping and burning their way through my soul leaving a trail of ash in their wake.
I made my way to the downtown hotel I had been so certain I wouldn’t need. I drove in a fog, not wanting to pay attention to any landmarks or things that Shelby might have wanted to show me in the alternate ending. The ending where we’d have fallen asleep in each other’s arms, all breathless and sweaty after round two of devouring each other. The one where we’d have gone down to the lakefront, or a museum, or a festival, or a baseball game the next day. The one where I’d have moved heaven and earth to have been back here as often as possible to spend time with the most amazing woman I’d ever known. The one that wouldn’t have been an ending at all.
I passed a billboard plastered with a handsome, smiling, silver haired man advertising the ironically named Ristow Investment Group. I slammed the brakes on my brain before it could go down the rabbit hole of wondering if he was related to her.
I was beyond grateful that the hotel bar was still open. As I sipped on my scotch, I wondered how many glasses I would see the bottom of before I found enough anesthesia. I was wholly unprepared for how much this hurt.
Fundamentally, I understood why she had to let me go. But my heart could not hear and would not listen to any of my brain’s logical explanations. It was wailing and screaming too loud, and in the days and weeks ahead, I would continue to drown out the logic with melodies and lyrics that affirmed and enabled my suffering.
I was beginning to feel the dulling of heartbreak’s sharpest edges near the bottom of my third drink when I heard the words that made my skin crawl.
“Oh my God! Jake Ford! You’re Jake Ford.”
No, no, no. Not now. Please, not now.
She plopped herself down on the barstool next to me and angled her head in front of mine. I hadn’t even turned to acknowledge her at all.
“Hi! Oh my God. I’m such a huge fan! I loved you on Sault St. Marie .”
I shifted my eyes to look at her. She was older than I was, probably six or seven years. She had most likely been a young mother watching soaps while her kids played outside. Now, she was too blond, too tan, and wearing so much perfume I could taste it when I made the mistake of breathing through my mouth.
“Hi.” I nodded and forced a polite smile. I’d hoped that would be the extent of it.
“Hey, excuse me,” she waved enthusiastically to the bartender. “I’ll have what he’s having!” She decided she was joining me.
Fuck .
She was already a little drunk. Which made her brave. I could see it. I could see her wheels turning like now was her chance and she was going to take it.
I was in no mood.
Normally, I am good natured with fans. Especially now when most of them want to talk about Dare Me. But sometimes the soap fans get a little…intense.
Shelby had been the exception, and of course I didn’t mind one bit.
“Soooo…what are you doing in Milwaukee?” She crossed her legs toward me. As the bartender set her drink in front of her, she reached toward his bar caddy and pulled out a stir straw. She stuck it into her scotch and took a sip.
She made a face and coughed, and I had to seal my lips shut to keep from laughing. She was trying so hard.
“Oh, I don’t like this.” She waved the bartender down again.” Can I get a margarita instead? Blended…,” she second guessed herself as the bartender glared at her. “Oh, I guess on the rocks is fine.” I rolled my eyes as he and I shared a smile.
“I’m in town scoping out some ideas for my new show.” She needed to know nothing of the truth.
“Oh, I think I heard about that. Where you go around and do icky things that no one wants to do, right?”
“Something like that.” I had no energy to engage her, so I just left her to her assumptions.
“I bet you look sexy when you’re dirty,” she said in the smokiest voice she could muster, wasting no time at all.
I shrugged. When you aren’t flirting, what the hell do you say to something like that?
“‘Cause you sure look sexy when you’re clean.”
Is that your best line, lady? Jesus. I racked my brain to try and figure out a way to get her to leave. I didn’t want to be the first to walk away and have her try and follow me to my room.
“Ya know I used to fantasize about you when I’d watch you on TV. Mmm Foster McBride was so sexy.” She traced a finger on the bar, then walked two fingers toward my arm. “I might even be fantasizing about doing things with you right now.” She stroked my arm up and down.
I stared at her hand touching me. It felt disgusting. I wanted no part of it. Of her. And I didn’t care enough to try and spare her feelings. I was angry at her for intruding on my private pain.
“Well, reality is never as good as the fantasy, sweetheart.” I growled as I snatched my arm away, the action and tone hopefully making it clear the ‘sweetheart’ was not a term of endearment.
“Oh, now I don’t think that’s true.” She reached up and twirled a piece of my hair.
Jesus Christ. Stop.
I couldn’t take it anymore. I snapped.
“Well, if you don’t believe me, we could just go in the bathroom over there and I could disappoint your brains out.” I spat.
She recoiled, stared at me for a second, and then grabbed her drink.
“Wow. You’re an asshole.” She stormed off.
“Ah, shit,” I said.
The bartender put another drink in front of me. “You okay, man?”
“Yeah, just…she’s probably going to go around blabbing about what an asshole Jake Ford is. Or tell people I wanted to fuck her in the bathroom.”
“I wouldn’t worry about the type of people she would tell,” he said. “Doesn’t seem like she runs with a crowd that would matter.”
I still felt bad. She was a fan taking her shot, albeit way too aggressively, but I’ve had this happen before. I can usually be affable, letting them down gently so they have a good memory or story to tell.
She was just coming at me at the wrong fucking time and got caught in the crossfire.