Chapter 19
Chapter nineteen
Emily
My phone pings with a new message and I grab for it a lot quicker than I’ll ever admit, thinking—hoping—it will be another message from Jack.
We haven’t seen each other since the board room last weekend.
He left for London as soon as the game finished and there were too many people around for us to be able to say goodbye.
Not that the goodbye we ended up having is anything to complain about.
My toes curl in my socks thinking about it.
He called me on the way to the train and we have been messaging each other every day whilst he has been away.
He is extremely busy with meetings, photo shoots and everything else that comes with being a famous man in London, but he has still made the time to call me every night.
Even if it is for five minutes before he has to get ready for an event, he makes the time.
Smiling to myself I read my screen to see it’s not Jack after all, but Jess.
Jessie: IS HE FUCKING KIDDING!?
My smile falls off my face.
Jessie: Attachment
I click the attached link and my heart stops. It’s an article from one of those trashy celebrity magazines I love to read when I am at the airport.
Rekindled: Jack Cartwright and ex Samantha Jones spotted in public PDA outside London Hotel.
Oh.
Under the headline there is a grainy picture of Jack and a woman I recognise from a very popular perfume advert. They’re locked in an embrace and from the angle it looks like Jack is leaning down to kiss her.
I’ve seen enough.
I throw my phone to the other side of the couch as if it has scolded me. I can hear my blood pumping in my ears. My eyes start to sting, and I lift a now shaking hand to dab away the wetness that has escaped them and take a deep, shaking breath.
Am I crying? Shit. Why am I upset?
This could be nothing.
They looked like they were hugging, right?
It’s probably just a hug between two Ex’s…
One of which is an extremely gorgeous model, the other a breathtaking former premier league footballer.
Outside a hotel where they may or may not have been in a room together… Fuck, their babies would be beautiful.
I’m spiralling.
I stand and walk around making circles in my living room trying to physically shake off some of the adrenaline that is coursing through my body. An empty pit of something has opened in my stomach making bile run up my throat. I’m going to vomit.
I sigh and run a hand through my hair. Why am I so bothered by this?
It’s just a picture, it doesn’t mean anything and even if it did it’s not like we agreed to be anything.
We are just getting to know each other. We’ve been for one drink.
But he has been making such an effort. Why would he call every night?
Why tell me he was interested and literally pursue me for weeks if he was seeing someone else? It doesn’t make sense.
Do I call him and ask, or does that make me seem needy and desperate? Ha. I am needy and desperate, but he doesn’t need to know that.
My phone rings, making me jump and stop my pacing. I have to stop myself from diving to answer it, hoping it’s Jack and he can talk me out of my spiral.
Jess’s picture lights up my screen. “Hey,” I answer, my voice sounding small.
“We’re going out tonight.”
“Why?” I ask, rubbing a hand over my face.
“If he’s getting off with other people, better believe you are. I’ll pick you up when I finish work.”
***
It’s eleven thirty p.m. and there are three missed calls on my phone and seven unread messages, each preview on my home screen seeming to be getting more and more panicked.
I should probably text him back to let him know I’m okay, but I’m seven cocktails and who knows how many shots down and I’m fucking piiiiissed at him.
Besides, I’m being kept company by a lovely brunette gentleman that I am thirty-five percent sure is called Alex, sixty-two percent sure works for some kind of finance or marketing company and one hundred percent sure looks nothing like Jack.
He’s tall, like Jack—eugh—but that’s where the resemblance stops, tanned skin, dark eyes and hair and not a tattoo in sight. Perfect.
Jess called him over about an hour ago when she noticed my peeking in my bag to maybe answer one of Jacks calls and since then he has been talking at me about a podcast he wants to start about achieving your goals through mindset or whatever bullshit people listen to now-a-days.
I haven’t really been listening, which doesn’t bode well for his podcast. “So yeah, anyway, what do you do?” Maybe-Alex asks.
“I’m a nurse,” I smile.
“Oh wow, so you can look after me when I’m sick?” I internally cringe at the statement. Grown men always want to be babied.
I smile and nod, “Apparently so. Should we go and dance?” I ask before he says anything else that gives me the ick.
“Sure.” He jumps up and grabs my hand leading us to the dance floor.
He’s actually not a bad dancer. His hands roam my hips and waist but never go further down as he pulls me closer and we sway to the beat.
I lock my arms around his neck and press my body into his.
His chest against my breasts, his hips against mine as we all but grind against each other.
Being this close to him makes me think of the last time I was this close to someone, in a conference room of a football ground, and the fact that the person I was close to then was up close and personal with someone else not twelve hours ago.
Anger spikes through my veins and that mixed with the alcohol has me pulling Alex’s (?) face towards mine.
Our lips meet and his mouth immediately opens, his tongue invading mine.
It’s sloppy, washing machine style kissing and it’s doing absolutely nothing for me.
That doesn’t stop me from pulling him closer and trying to take the lead.
His hands roam down to cup my ass. It feels dirty and not in a good way.
I push against his chest and he releases my mouth in favour of my neck, kissing down to my shoulder. I let him. Holding his shoulders as his mouth roams.
His hands firmly grip my ass, squeezing it almost painfully.
This isn’t right. What am I doing?
“No,” I say as I push against his shoulders hard. He fully backs off, raising his hands in surrender.
“Sorry, I thought you were into it,” he says taking a step back.
I shake my head, “No, it’s not you,” I say, even though it absolutely is.
I don’t want to be kissing this random stranger in a bar at gone midnight on a Saturday night. I want to be kissing someone else. Except he wants to kiss other people, outside hotels where he probably fucked them. This is so messed up.
Nausea courses through me suddenly. I put one hand over my mouth and push my way through the crowd and off the dance floor. On my knees in the bathroom stall I puke up the alcohol I have consumed and the taste of Alex—if that is even his name.
What the fuck am I doing?
***
Jack
A taxi parks up, and I see her step out, heels in hand.
“So, you are alive?” I say from where I am leaned against my rental car on her driveway. I’m both relieved and furious to see her.
After my game today I saw the article posted about me and Sam.
It didn’t take a genius to put two and two together as to why she was ignoring my calls and messages.
So, I decided to rent a car and drive back from London early to explain.
I tried calling her a few more times on the way but there was no answer.
I arrived around nine thirty p.m. expecting to catch Emily before she went to bed.
I don’t expect her to not have a social life and be home all the time, but she had complained to me earlier in the week that she finally had a full weekend off and all her friends were working so what was the point.
So yes, I was a little worried to get here and her be out.
So, I tried to call her again, she didn’t answer. So, I decided to wait.
I wasn’t expecting it to get past one a.m. and for her to be getting out of a taxi, hammered. Come to think of it, I didn’t think a lot about what I would do if she hadn’t come home at all tonight. I just hoped that she would.
“Oh look, if it isn’t Casanova himself,” Emily says waving her shoes at me as she walks up the drive.
“Good night?” I ask, looking her up and down. She is in a tight red dress cut so it just covers her tight ass with a neckline that leaves little to the imagination. Her hair is straight down her back and sways on her hips as she takes each step. Fucking stunning.
“Fruitful,” she slurs as she struggles to put her key in the door, missing the lock by millimetres each try.
“Pesky.” She waggles her finger at the offending door.
I take her keys off her and put them in the lock first try.
“Show off,” she says and faces me. Her mascara has run under her eyes, and her lipstick is smudged as if she has been kissed tonight.
Fire floods my system at the intrusive thought, and I have to take a deep breath to steady my skyrocketing pulse.
She stands there staring at me for a minute, taking in my face. “Why are you here, Jack?”
“I needed to talk to you, and you weren’t answering your phone.”
“So, you came to my house?” she yells hissing her S’s. A waft of vomit stenched breath hits me in the face but I do my best to ignore it.
“Are you going to yell at me on your doorstep about it or can you yell at me inside?”
She puts a hand over her mouth, “I can’t control the temperature of my voice right now,” she says behind her fingers.
“Well, I happen to like your voice hot, but the neighbours might complain,” I tease. She furrows her brow seemingly confused at me continuing her temperature for volume slip up.
She nods and I help her step over the threshold of her home and she ‘walks’—pinballs from wall to wall—up the stairs. I ready her a glass of water and sit on the couch and wait.
I hear the distinct noise of reaching coming from the bathroom and go upstairs to investigate. The bathroom door at the top of the stairs is open and I can see her small body curled up on the floor. “You okay?” I ask. She lifts her left arm and almost makes a thumbs up.
“Here,” I say as I sit next to her on the hard tile.
I pull her upright, so she leans against me and lift the glass of water to her lips.
She moans as the cool water enters her mouth and she greedily gulps it down.
I’d be lying if I said my cock didn’t respond to that noise out of her mouth.
“Just sips,” I say as I take the glass away. “Or you’ll be sick again.”
She leans her head against my shoulder and sighs. We sit there in silence the cold from the tile seeping through my sweatpants into my bones. I run my hand up and down her arm in a soothing motion.
“Why are you here, Jack?” she asks again.
I sigh, “Because I saw the article and I couldn’t cope with you thinking there was anyone else.” She shakes her head as it falls it into her hands.
“No,” she groans. “You were with that model and that’s okay,” she says into her hands. “You’re a rebound. We’re not together. It just sucks.”
I am too shocked at her thinking that I am with Sam for me to even register that she has called me a rebound.
I pull her hands away from her face to make eye contact with her so she can see that I am sincere as I say, “No, I wasn’t.
I haven’t been for a very long time. It was a hug and a kiss on the cheek for one of my closest and oldest friends.
I’m probably better explaining this tomorrow when you have a chance of remembering what I’m saying.
” I take her chin in my hands, so she has no choice but to look me in the eyes, “But I didn’t want you—”
“I kissed someone tonight,” Emily blurts, cutting me off.
I blink confused. My already cold body turns to ice at the confession. “What?”
Tears start to pool in Emily's eyes, I automatically wipe them away with my thumb as they fall, “I thought you were fucking that model in your hotel room.” A sob escapes her mouth and it’s the most heartbreaking sound I have ever heard.
“I thought you’d got what you wanted out of me, and I was so mad.
I don’t even know why I did it. I think I just wanted to prove that I could if you were.
It was really bad.” She sniffles, “I’m sorry. ”
“Okay.” I take a deep breath and stand, burying my feelings for the time being. Emily doesn’t look up at me. I wave my hand in front of her face and she looks at me confused. “Let me help you get into bed,” I say to her as she reaches out to me and places her small palm in mine.
“You’re not mad?” she asks as I help her up.
I pull her body into mine as I say, “Oh Emily, I am beyond mad. I’m fucking furious.
I’m jealous and I think this feeling in my stomach that I’ve never felt before could be heartbreak.
But we’re not going to be able to have an actual conversation about this until you sleep off the alcohol.
” I turn her to the sink, bracketing her in with my arms on either side and meet her eyes in the mirror.
“Now, do I need to brush your teeth, or do you think you’ll manage? ”