2. Chapter Two
Chapter Two
J essica walks into her house and climbs the stairs to her bedroom. Climbing being the key word because the sobs that took over the moment she pulled out of Kade's parking lot have her hunched over and require her to use her hands and feet to reach the second floor.
Her entire body aches as the pain continues to flood through her. How could she be so blind? So blind and so stupid? Kade saw other women the entire time they were together. Does she need to go and get tested? No, they were safe. Maybe she should make an appointment just in case. It would be the smart thing to do.
He never gave her any indication they weren't exclusive. Sure, they never had the talk , but they spent every free moment they had together. Why would she ever believe he entertained any other person, let alone another woman, besides her? Even when they weren't together, it felt like they were in constant communication. When did he even have time before tonight to bed multiple women?
She knew almost everything about him. The difficult workers he dealt with daily as a construction manager. How one of his men desperately needs rehab but refuses to go, even after his wife left him and took the kids because he always chose alcohol over them. How worried Kade is that the man will cause an accident, but HR won't allow him to force an ultimatum of either rehab or his job.
Then there's Jordan, the guy who hates Kade because he got passed over for the promotion Kade received. They started at the same time, and unlike Jordan, Kade poured his heart into the job. He not only showed his worth but his ability to lead. Everything they needed in a contractor and now manager. Because of this, Jordan does everything in his power to make Kade look bad.
And then there’s the fact he's an only child who was raised by his aunt and uncle at the age of eight when his mom died and dad went to prison. His cousin, Drew, is more like a brother than a cousin to him, which makes the situation with Lena even creepier.
Drew has a son and a daughter, and Jess has gone to dance recitals and band concerts because they're so important to Kade. She formed a friendship with his family and a bond with their children. She goes shopping with Drew’s wife, Sarah.
It's not only that she knows him, though. He knows her, too. He knows that her boss, Paul, is more like a father and mentor than the owner of the company. How she hopes to continue to move up and buy Paul out one day when he decides to retire. How angry she feels when she thinks about how his kids want his money rather than take over the prestigious architecture firm he's created and carry on the legacy. That it'll be bittersweet if she does achieve her goals because it means losing the mentor she never knew she needed in the process.
Jess met Kade five months ago, but she knew a couple of weeks in she was in love. For the first time in her life, she thought she knew what real love felt like. It didn't hurt he checked off almost every box of the list she created when she was twenty-two and fresh out of college when it came to her future husband. Every box except monogamy, it seems.
The night they met felt like the type of story people tell their children and grandchildren. She'd been at the bar on one of the worst dates of her life. The guy she met was obsessed with himself. Everything he talked about circled back to his looks. Or how cool he was in high school. Which was over fifteen years ago. She heard multiple versions of the same story about how he took his team to state as the second-string quarterback. Of course, he should have been starting the moment he stepped on the field his freshman year, but the coach understood the mistake he made. When the coach put him in, he made history. Brought the team back from a guaranteed loss after two starters got injured, and they won the first championship in forty years. The number of points they scored changed based on which number beer he was on.
No matter how hard she tried, she couldn't stay in the conversation. Not that her input or attention was even necessary. It was completely one-sided, and she just basically sat there drinking her drink. On top of that, he'd had four drinks to her one since she arrived, and he had how many in the hour before she met him. There was not enough alcohol in the world to make him remotely tolerable.
Kade happened to see Jess looking around for the waitress, desperation obviously written on her face. Or so he said. He walked over and asked her to dance. The guy she was with barely noticed someone else walk up, let alone speak to her.
"You know, I don't think I'm really necessary for this conversation. Hank, it was really great meeting you," Jess said and stood up.
To her astonishment, Hank just continued talking. Kade smirked and led her to the dancefloor, spinning her around to George Strait. She used to joke to her best friend that she fell in love with Kade that night. Her white knight, which she never thought she'd find endearing, being an independent woman and all. But he made everything so damn endearing.
When Kade asked her out again, she nearly jumped for joy. Two dates later, she let him take her to his place and his bed. Her expectations were higher than she'd like to admit, considering how everything transpired between them, and he did not disappoint. In fact, Kade was the best sex she'd ever had.
Jess woke the next morning in his bed alone. She immediately feared the worst. Was it a one-night stand, and he disappeared to get rid of her? Was he waiting across the street for her to leave before coming back home? Never in her life had she had a one-night stand, and she struggled with the thought that her white knight would turn into a horse's ass come daylight.
Getting dressed, she walked into his kitchen. He set his keys on the counter that night as they kissed their way into the entryway, and they were now gone. He up and left her in his condo.
The front door opening captured her attention, and he smiled at her as he stepped inside with a white paper bag and two to-go cups of what she assumed to be coffee.
"Hey, I didn't want to wake you. I made an assumption that you like lattes, but if not, I'll drink it. I also got us some breakfast to refuel after last night," Kade said, a sly smirk on his face.
She remembered everything they did the night before, and she never felt so sexy and naughty in bed before. He had a way of making her lose all inhibitions and give into the moment. Yeah, she definitely deserved that sly smirk, and she wanted nothing more than to strip down naked and do it all again.
Just like that, Kade was her white knight again, and she couldn't get enough. They talked and spent as much time together as possible from that morning forward. For the first two months, their time was spent consistently naked, but they had a few moments of clothed goodness, too. Her plan to be married by thirty and have her first of two kids by thirty-two seemed to be coming together. For the first time, she felt she found the person she'd been looking for her entire life.
Her phone rings, and her heart sinks when she sees Noelle's name instead of Kade's. He hasn't even texted an apology. She at least expected a simple I'm sorry message. Deep down, she wanted him to beg for forgiveness. Hell, she'd even settle for another lame excuse. Something.
"Noelle..."
"Where does he live?"
Noelle Drake stands barely above five feet tall, but she has the personality to take on any man in the city. The feisty redhead may look like a pixie, but she doesn't talk or act like one. In fact, if you didn’t see her, you'd assume she stood over six-foot-five with biceps the size of basketballs.
"I'm pretty sure it's over."
"What happened?" she asks, the phone shifting as she turns down the volume of whatever she has playing in the background. "I expected to get your voicemail, but I was checking on how your soup routine worked. I had a feeling he wasn't really sick."
He may not be sick, but Jess sure as hell feels like she is as the memory of the man she thought she'd marry pounding into Lena plays on a loop in her mind. "No, no, he wasn't."
"What'd he do?" she gasps.
"A girl named Lena."
"Excuse me?"
The sound in the background turns off completely, and Jess hears car keys. "Yeah."
"Who the hell is Lena?"
"The girl he said was his cousin."
She may not be able to see Noelle, but she knows her jaw has dropped as low as hers did when she realized who Lena was while in his condo. "He boinked his cousin?"
"She's not really his cousin. Just who he said she was when I asked him. Like a skeeze."
"Jess! You walked into the bedroom you sleep with him in to find them going at it like horny gorillas? You didn't just put the soup in the fridge and hightail it out of there, did you? You confronted him and scalded his naked unfaithful dick with it, right?"
"Well, it was hard not to just put the soup in the fridge and leave when he was doing her in the kitchen, so..."
"He pulled a Shaggy? Did he turn and say 'it wasn't me?'"
Letting out a small laugh, she feels more grateful than ever to have this sassy woman as her best friend. The moment Jess is ready to give in and throw in the towel, Noelle reminds her there's always humor in any situation. Even the ones that feel like stabs to the chest with a nine-inch blade. "No, but I kind of wish he did."
"Tell me you hit her."
"No."
"Is she still there? I'll go hit her. Hell, I'll hit him, too!"
Swallowing, Jess lets out a breath. "It's not Lena's fault."
"The hell it's not!"
"She didn't know about me. When she realized Kade and I had been seeing each other for five months, she freaked out. Got pissed at him, and then she broke down in tears, begging for my forgiveness."
"Oh, come on, Jess. That's the oldest trick in the book. She did it to stop you from beating her ass."
Jess shakes her head. Noelle frequently references whatever this book with old tricks is, but Jess has a funny feeling these opinions are just made up by Noelle on the fly. She never really read the same books as her best friend.
"No, it wasn't a trick. She was really pissed to find out he'd told me they were cousins. And then she got after him for stringing me along for five months before leaving when I did."
"Okay, do we like her or hate her?"
"It's weird, but I think we like her. She was more upset than I was at the time. I think I was in shock, and she got dressed and moved to stand by me in a weird show of solidarity."
"What'd he do when this happened? Was he just standing there naked in the kitchen, his thing shriveling from the cold and humiliation? Did you both point and laugh?"
Chuckling, she leans back on her bed. "He grabbed a pot from the stove to cover him. Which is kind of stupid because we've both obviously seen all of him."
"His little guy has seen the inside of both of you, so, yeah...."
"I hate you."
"You love me."
Jess sighs and rests her arm over her face. "The worst part is how damn attractive he still looked. No one deserves to look that good, like that, after what he did."
"Did you take a picture of him with the pot covering his shriveling manhood? Please, tell me you thought to take a picture. What I'm envisioning can't actually do the scene any actual justice."
"I didn't think to do it. It took Lena walking over to the door for me to realize I should and could leave. He called after us to get one of us to stay, but we both left."
"What kind of explanation did he have? Just look and say, 'whoops' or something equally stupid? I can't really think of anything else he could say in this situation."
Tears stream down her face again. "He said he wasn't cheating."
"The hell he wasn’t!"
"In his mind, it wasn't cheating. We never talked about what we were or weren't. Where we stood with each other. There were no titles, and I guess that meant spending the past five months together and clawing each other's clothes off every chance we got meant we weren't committed to each other."
"Are you serious? He thinks semantics makes it okay?"
Shrugging, her lip quivers as more tears fall. "I mean, we never did talk about what we were. I just didn't think we needed to. We spent so much time together. Evenings, mornings, weekends. We talked all day, every day. I have things at his place, and he has stuff here. God, he took me to family functions, and I've gone shopping with his cousin’s wife. It was only five months, and I know you think I’m crazy, but it really felt like we were going somewhere. That there was a solid future."
"This isn't your fault," Noelle says, knowing exactly what Jess needs to hear.
It makes her feel a little better because she'd really felt like she would get some form of an I told you so from her. Noelle had doubts from the beginning because he seemed too perfect, but Jess brushed them off. "I never had the conversation with him, Noelle."
"Because any rational person would believe you two were on the same page with how much time you spent together and talked. If I'm letting a guy leave shit at my place, there's an implied commitment. And vice versa. I mean, how else is a dude gonna explain tampons in his bathroom when he's a single man with no roommates?"
She has a point. "I don't know what to think right now."
"What'd you say when he begged for your forgiveness?"
A fresh wave of tears falls. "He hasn't."
"You're kidding!"
"No," she says and can't hold her sob in. "I wish I was. I wish this whole thing was just one big joke. A nightmare I'll wake up from tomorrow and laugh at. But at least he did me the courtesy of cheating with someone better looking than me."
Noelle scoffs. "How is that a courtesy?"
"If someone's going to cheat, they should always make sure to upgrade. She's about three levels above me, so it feels a little less terrible. Not a lot, but a little."
"Jess-"
"She's gorgeous, Noelle. A damn model who should be an actress. She's even pretty when she cries. Who the hell is pretty when they cry except for actresses? She's got great boobs, curves to die for, gorgeous blonde hair, and high cheekbones. She also looks just as good naked as she does clothed."
Silence.
"Noelle?"
"I'm just waiting for you to come back to reality. This Lena girl isn't better than you, Jess. You're deflecting to avoid feeling the pain, but it's not going to stop it when it hits you. It's best if you just let it hurt."
"I don't want to let it hurt. I want it to not be true. I want to wake up and find out it was all a terrible dream my mind made up, and I can be happy again. That he didn't disappoint me."
"I know, babe. I know."