19. Chapter Nineteen
Jacob knows about me?
Jacob paid Daniel?
How did he know?
When did this happen?
How much does he know?
Jacob never said a word. Not one syllable. Thoughts split my head but no answers magically appear through the thick, dark dread.
I thought Daniel had given up when I refused to pay him last time, but I should have known better. I’m delusional. Head-in-the-sand delusional. Daniel doesn’t give up.
He’ll never give up.
God, oh God, oh God.
Jacob knows, he knows, he knows.
My cold fingers strangle my cell as I hold it to my ear. My surroundings slowly filter back around me. I catch someone looking at me and drop my head, covering my face with my hair. I end the call and stare at my cell.
His distance makes sense now. Horrible, drastic sense. Why would he want to be around someone like me?
My cell rings and Jacob’s name flashes on the screen. I said I would call him when I landed and I haven’t.
I won’t.
I can’t.
I have to.
Things will never be the same between us again, no matter how desperately I might wish otherwise.
The cases begin to cycle on the conveyor belt. I stand back and let the crowd take their cases and depart. I stand until my one case circles around. People from the next flight begin to filter in to wait for their cases before I take mine, blindly walk outside and hail a cab. Dread and heartache war within me as I give the driver my address and settle into the back seat. I want nothing more than to rewind time and somehow prevent this entire catastrophic event from cracking our world.
But I can’t do the impossible.
I wonder if Jacob paid Daniel before our weekend. Black oil coats my stomach and I gag.
“You all right, miss?” The driver shoots me a concerned glance via the rearview mirror.
I plaster a smile on my face. “Never better.”
The campus sprawls ahead, a looming monolith of brick and concrete that was once my safe haven, my sheltered academic cocoon. Now it feels more like a minefield waiting to detonate. We pull up in front of my building. I pay the driver and slide from the back seat.
Need to see him.
I don’t wait to drop my case inside. Instead I grip the handle, knuckles white, use the weight to center me and force one foot in front of the other across campus. Students stop and stare. I see them look at me, even with my head down and hair covering my face.
Word gets around quickly on campus. And why wouldn’t it? I’m big, juicy gossip. The center of the very thing I’ve avoided for so long.
The cacophony of whispers and furtive glances prickle over my skin. Each murmured utterance, each poorly-veiled stare in my direction, slices through me anew—a stark reminder that my private world has been blown irreparably wide open.
I keep my expression calm. But deep down, anguish claws at my throat as flashes of that searing image—Jacob’s euphoric expression as he takes me from behind—sear through my mind. I can’t unsee it, can’t unhear Daniel’s words. My worst nightmare and reality combine.
Daniel knows about us.
Jacob paid Daniel.
Everyone knows who I am.
A ragged breath shudders out as I finally reach the door to Jacob’s office. I wait for students to pass behind me before I draw in a fortifying breath and muster the strength to rap my knuckles against his office door. The door swings open and Jacob is there right in front of me.
I want to launch into his arms. Want to cry. Want to rage. Want to love.
For a suspended moment, he just...stares, those ocean blue eyes drinking me in with surprise, bewilderment, happiness before morphing into shuttered caution as realization dawns. I thought I’d masked my expression, but he’s seen something there. Something I can’t hide. Dread plunges into the pit of my stomach.
“Professor Black?” My voice cracks on the formal address, and I hate how it makes me feel...diminished somehow, like the easy intimacy we’d built has already crumbled to ash. “I was hoping I could speak with you about our dissertation now that I’m back?”
I make sure to raise my voice enough that the words carry down the corridor. The words are pointed, deliberately audible for anyone who might hear and assume this is simply a casual visit between student and teacher. But we both know the truth.
Nothing will ever truly be casual between us again.
Jacob’s throat works convulsively before he gives me the smallest of nods, expression still carefully impassive as he steps back to let me enter the office. But I don’t miss the reflexive way his gaze darts up and down the corridor first in both directions, checking for any potential observers. “Of course, Miss Smith. I have a few minutes.”
The sight is a vice around my heart, constricting until I can scarcely breathe. I know he’s simply reverting to our old patterns of discretion and caution, the ingrained habits drilled into us by necessity. This time, the gesture feels less pragmatic, more...shame-laden somehow. Like he’s putting up those boundaries to protect whatever tattered shreds of propriety he can salvage between us.
My vision blurs with a film of scalding moisture. Because this visceral, devastating ache lancing through me is a death knell—the beginning of our inevitable, irrevocable end.
Daniel’s reach has corroded more of my life.
The tears slip free as Jacob closes the door firmly behind me, sealing us into the sanctuary that’s about to shatter into a million jagged pieces.
“Steph...” His low rasp wraps around the syllables of my name like a caress, sending traitorous little tendrils of wanting shivering through me despite everything. Jacob’s gaze bores into me with scorching intensity. That familiar heat I used to crave now feels like being pinned beneath a searing spotlight.
“You paid him.” The accusation slips out in a tremulous rasp before I can stop it. “Daniel. You paid him off.”
Jacob doesn’t flinch or try to deny the ugly reality. He merely gives me a solemn nod, jaw tightening almost imperceptibly. “I did what I had to in order to protect you, Steph. To protect us.”
Anger and bewilderment war within me in a volatile cyclone. “Protect me? From what, exactly? The guy’s been blackmailing me for years!”
“Years?” He steps toward me, arms reaching for me but stops when I step away. He can’t touch me. “I…didn’t know that.”
I’ve already said too much. Given away more than I wanted to. “You don’t know a lot of things.”
He swallows hard, his gaze flitting over my face. “I did it for you.”
“And you thought paying the degenerate would make him just... give up and go away? That’s incredibly na?ve, Jacob.”
Using his name with no pretense feels like picking at a healing scab—unnecessary and pointed. But I’m hurting and lashing out is currently my only salve, even if deep down I know it’s only delaying the inevitable.
Because Daniel will never stop. That hideous truth is one of the few certainties left in this rapidly deteriorating situation. He made that abundantly clear, his threats about those ‘other photos’ lingering like a cancerous shadow over everything we are...everything we were.
My chest constricts hard enough to steal the breath from my lungs. “Tell me you didn’t think throwing a few thousand his way would be the end of it.”
Jacob releases a harsh exhalation, sounding every bit as pained and cornered as I feel. “Of course I knew it was only a temporary solution. That’s why I warned him in no uncertain terms that it would be the one and only time.”
One stark disbelieving look from me seems to drain all the fight from his broad shoulders, because he knows the truth just as acutely as I do. There is no ‘one and only time’ when it comes to someone like Daniel.
“Five thousand dollars though?” The words slip out. “Where did you even get that kind of money?”
Jacob shifts almost imperceptibly, gaze skittering away from mine like he can’t quite meet my eye anymore. He’s keeping something from me, another gut-punch of a secret just waiting to detonate.
“That’s...not important right now,” he deflects in a tight rasp. “What is important is those photos of you on the internet at the wedding. Your father...your father is David Chandler. Was that...was that Daniel’s doing too?”
Bile burns at the back of my throat. He’s seen them. He’s seen the photo of me. But of course he has. It’s hot news. Gossip no one could resist.
“I...”
“Why didn’t you tell me the truth about who you really are?” His gruff voice pulls me from my tailspin, laced with an undertone of something that sounds perilously close to reproach. “If you’re David Chandler’s daughter, surely that means you have access to resources, connections to put a stop to someone like Daniel, once and for all.”
The statement detonates like a grenade between us, reawakening the smothered embers of resentment and hurt burning in my chest. “Are you kidding me right now?” I practically spit out the words.
Jacob blinks, clearly taken aback by my venom. But I can’t find it in me to care or moderate my response anymore. Not when every inch of my soul has already been carved open and laid bare.
“You think I’d ever stoop to asking my father for bail-out money to coddle some sleazy no-one’s depravity?” I demand. “Give me a little credit, Jacob. Or did you think that’s the sort of entitled, spoiled brat you’ve been tangling with this whole time?”
He has the good grace to look sufficiently chastised, even shaking his head slowly as hurt flickers through those soulful eyes. “No, Steph, I didn’t mean—”
“Because if so, you’ve been deluding yourself into seeing only what you wanted all along.” I barrel onward, needing to unleash this scathing torrent before it consumes me from the inside out. “The sweet, coddled poor little rich girl who’s oblivious to the shady inner-workings of her family’s empire rather than—”
“Steph.” Jacob’s voice washes over me, grounding and gentle despite the razor-sharp anguish surely etched into my features right now. “You’re not like that. I know you. I see you. The real you. I would never think any less of you for anything.”
Something inside me stills at the emphatic sincerity in his words, the heated flood of fury ebbing slightly in the wake of that inexplicable balm he always seems to possess.
“Then know this. I could never bring myself to beg my father for help. Daniel is my problem and mine alone,” I say.
The room lapses into a loaded stillness, both of us weighing the magnitude of everything that’s slowly bled out between us in slivers and shards—volatile emotions, ugly admissions, crippling insecurities. Eventually, inevitably, Jacob seems to find his voice again. “What does that bastard have over you?”
My head snaps up, a startled laugh coming out of me. “Apart from us, you mean?”
“You’re a strong woman, Steph. He wanted money from you for some reason other than us. You’re not a person to be easily manipulated. Not unless there’s a very good reason.” He speaks quietly, but his words ricochet off the walls.
There it is, laid bare at last. The heart of it, the core vulnerability that’s had me teetering on a razor’s edge. And he sees that too.
I blink hard against the sudden burning behind my eyes, swallowing down the knot of shame constricting my throat. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Of course it matters. Everything that happens to you matters!”
I close my eyes for a moment, but no solace comes from the darkness. “Daniel knows about us—you and me. And if he’s already been extorting you, I can only imagine how much worse it will get now.”
Jacob’s eyes flare wide, panic and disbelief chasing across his strong features. “I—Your father can help, surely? He—”
“No one can help!” The feral yell explodes from deep in my core before I can rein it in, raw and torn to ragged shreds. “No one can know!”
Scalding moisture streaks unbidden down my cheeks as I curl in on myself like I’ve been sucker-punched, wheezing for air that won’t come. Because bringing my father into this debacle would force me to admit the very worst parts—the pieces of myself I’ve fought so hard to keep hidden away, preserved under lock and key.
Illuminating those darkest corners would be the ultimate unraveling. It would finally lift the veil on every dirty, unguarded transgression that would mark me as damaged goods in everyone’s eyes—my father’s most of all. I’m so tired. Of this. Of everything. If I could sleep for a decade, I’d take the magic pill without hesitation.
Jacob’s voice is a low rumble of resonant comfort as he moves toward me, hands settling like brands against the line of my shoulders. “Of course it matters. When it comes to you, everything matters. Whatever this is, however bad...we’ll get through it together. You don’t have to keep shuttering parts of yourself away from me, baby. Not anymore.”
The endearment somehow wrenches another sob from deep within me, body seeming to fold in on itself from the searing ache radiating through every molecule. Because as badly as I crave his reassurance, his promise to stand by me through whatever fresh horror is about to be unleashed, I already know the truth.
There are some things—vile, reprehensible things—that simply can’t be overcome.
“No.” I finally manage to choke out the single syllable, shoulders shaking with the force of holding everything at bay. “You don’t understand, Jacob. Daniel will never give up. He will never stop extorting us. Sooner or later, the money will be all you see. All anyone sees when they look at me now. And I...I can’t...”
“Shhh, hey...” His palms smooth up and down my arms, attempting in vain to soothe the fractured tempest raging inside me. “I would never—could never—put money before how I feel about you. About us.”
The patently earnest admission tugs at something inside me so fiercely it damn near buckles my knees. But then another terrible possibility crystallizes amid my churning thoughts, held cold instead of burning away like every other one.
“The money...” The hoarse words scrape from my too-tight throat on a tidal wave of dread. “The five grand you paid Daniel. I’ll pay it back. You’re not responsible for that.”
Five thousand dollars is a lot of money. Please let him not have endangered his entire career and reputation alongside our already-decimated relationship. Not over me.
Jacob’s tortured silence is answer enough, it seems. My leaden heart bottoms out somewhere in the vicinity of my feet as his head dips forward, weighed down by an unseen burden. When his devastated gaze finally lifts to meet mine, the truth is laid bare at last. “I don’t want you to pay it back.”
“That’s...no. It’s too much. I’ll pay you back. I’ll do it!”
“Steph, calm down. It...wasn’t exactly my money I gave him.” His voice falters. “It was money your father donated to the university’s discretionary fund. And before you even think to ask, I absolutely intended to pay every last cent back once I got the chance. I swear it, Steph. My only aim was keeping you safe, by any means necessary.”
As the ugly admission settles over us like a suffocating pall, a humorless chuckle bubbles up from somewhere raw and wounded inside me because, of course. Of. Fucking. Course. It wasn’t his money. It was the university’s money. Ultimately my father’s money.
But worst of all? The stark, wrenching realization that no matter how badly Jacob might want to stand by me through this, eventually even he won’t be immune to the disease. Eventually the stain will seep too far in and make him just like everyone else.
I brush angry tears off my cheeks and finally rasp out. “I was happy when no one knew who I was. Happy because no one could use me, because when it comes down to it, that’s all I’ll get. It always comes down to money. Money and betrayal. Money taints. Money ruins. Well, now you know everything. I’ll pay you back, Jacob. The last thing I want is for you to be tainted with my father’s money. Daniel already has enough leverage over us.”
“Don’t say it.” Jacob cuts me off with a hoarse, vehement rasp, gripping my upper arms and giving me a slight shake as if he can rattle the truth into me through sheer force of will. “Don’t you dare say or even think that I could ever look at you and see nothing but who you really are. You are so, so much more than that to me.”
“You already do.” My mouth twists in a semblance of a smile. I shake my head and pull from his grip. My throat closes. I swallow hard, then force the words out. “All we can do is control the damage but we can’t give him any more ammunition. It’s over, Jacob. You and me and everything we have...had. It’s over.”