Jake Undone(70)

I had suspected that maybe Jake was in some kind of trouble with the law or that he had a girlfriend in Boston. But I never expected this.

I looked down at the printout again and felt like my head was on fire.

Jake Alan Green

Ivy Marie Macomber

No. Jake didn’t have a girlfriend. He had a wife.

He was married.





PART 2:


JAKE





CHAPTER 21





“Mr. Green, your wife has been transported to McLean Hospital. We think she tried to take her life last night.”



It wasn’t the first time I had received a call like that, and it probably wouldn’t be the last. Talk about going from heaven to hell in a matter of hours.

Before Nina, that was all my life amounted to…a living hell. Maybe escaping to New York for work during the week was my purgatory. But there was certainly no heaven, no respite, never any peace or true happiness…until she came along. Nina had become my only solace from the nightmare I had been living over the past five years.

The beverage cart stopped in front of my seat, and I asked for the strongest thing they had. It didn’t even matter what it was. I needed to take the edge off because I never knew what I was going be to walking into, especially this time. Thank God, at least from what they told me, Ivy was stable in the safety of a hospital.

The flight attendant nudged me. “Excuse me? Your drink, sir.”

I had been deep in thought staring out the window and hadn’t noticed her handing it to me. “Thanks,” I said, taking the hard liquor, whatever it was, and downing it.

I let out a long breath and closed my eyes. My focus should have been on Ivy, but I couldn’t bear to let my mind drift to the reality that was about to slap me in the face when this plane touched down. There would be no way to escape it then.

These minutes, miles up in the sky, were going to be my last moments of peace for a while. So, I chose to close my eyes and focus on the only thing that took the pain away.

I never should have let things get as far as they did with Nina. But what should have happened and what I wanted to happen with every fiber of my being were two very different things.

I became addicted to her from the moment I first shook her hand, and it trembled in mine. Women have always had strong reactions to me but never like that. I had never met someone so beautiful and sexy, yet humble and innocent at the same time. I wanted to lift her over my shoulder, carry her right then and there back to my room and make her mine, which was a crazy thought to have seconds into meeting someone. That was just the physical pull. Within a few minutes though, when I really looked into her eyes and she was talking about her phobias, there was this darkness there. She looked the same way I imagined I appeared to anyone that could see through my façade. Here was a girl I had just met, and I was sure our life stories couldn’t have been more different. Yet, somehow, I knew we had both been living the same kind of life, just going through the motions, trying to find something to make it worth living. For some unexplained reason, there was a connection with her that I hadn’t even known I was searching desperately for. But it was too late. My life was already laid out for me. So, I had to figure out a way to ignore what I was feeling.

What a mind fuck.

Any sane man in my situation would have just gotten the hell out of there that first day, taken a long walk and sorted out my head…maybe moved out of the apartment even.

Instead, you know how I handled it? I went straight to my room and made her a fucking paper bird. Because, after meeting her, the only thing I could think about was that I just wanted to make her smile, take some of the darkness out of those beautiful blue eyes.

What a pansy.

It only got worse from there. I’d keep looking for excuses to be around her. I knew she had these fears, and I really did want to help her through them. But I also really wanted to get my fix, be near her, smell her vanilla scent and touch her in subtle ways every chance I got, even if it was just her hand or her back.

She made me feel alive after years of being emotionally dead. I lived for every moment spent with her and dreaded the weekends when I had to leave. I thought I could handle being close friends with her, as long as I paced myself without letting it go too far.

Which is why I came up with the brilliant idea of tutoring her and of course, our bet. Everybody won. She’d get good grades, overcome her fears, and I got my angel fix. She got what she needed, and I needed…her.

Things started to get complicated because each day I fell harder, and I craved more. The fact that I sensed that she was attracted to me too didn’t help; it only turned me on, and there was no goddamn shut off switch. I tried my best to curtail the physical need. I really did. Let’s just say, I jerked off so much that I was able to prove once and for all that the myth my grandmother told me about was false, because I never did go blind.