Although the blanket was cozy, warm and expensive, I still felt chilled to my bones, though I restrained from shivering, because I needed Jay to finish his story.
“I killed him,” Jay said. “Duncan. The man who saved me. Who gave me somewhere to live, people to kill, who taught me everything he knew. I killed him even though he gave me all of that because I wanted to take everything from him.”
One of Jay’s hands was wrapped around his whisky tumbler, the other was fisted on top of the table. He would not look at me.
“The rest contains just as much death and crime,” he continued. “I only got worse as I got older, richer, more powerful. There is no redemption in my story. Redemption would’ve been letting you dance in Klutch and never speaking to you. But bringing you in to my life, that is my most damnable act.”
I stared at him. He truly believed that. That his biggest sin was loving me.
The silence rang proceeding his story—his hideous, heartbreaking story—rang loud and unyielding. Jay stared at me, his face inscrutable now. I figured it had cost him a lot to venture back in to his past, to dredge up memories he had spent his adult life trying to bury.
I got it, now. His business. Handling the women, the sex workers, keeping them safe, making sure they were in control of their own destinies—he was doing for them what no one had done for him. The homeless shelters, the ones that he paid for completely, the ones that were touted as some of the best in the nation—those were a safe option for people who had nowhere else to go. What he had never had. His life was packaged in sins, but twirled around inside of those sins was some kind of saint. A dark one to be sure, a flawed, dangerous and cruel one. But to me, a saint.
“Let’s go to bed,” I whispered, now brave enough to reach out and touch his hand.
Jay blinked at me, shocked. He had been expecting something different. He’d come knowing he’d have to tell this story, that he’d have to perform an autopsy on his wretched past, lay it bare for me. He’d expected it to scare me. Disgust me.
It all clicked now. The way he’d touched me, the way he’d watched me, it was not his version of a new beginning, it was him saying goodbye. It was him trying to sear me into his memory.
“Take me to bed, Jay,” I repeated.
I could’ve tried to say a lot more. Tried to find the words to comfort him, to express my horror and sorrow at what he’d been through. But nothing would measure up. Nothing was right.
I stood, our hands intertwined, pulling him slightly. He stood up, yanking me into his body as soon as he was vertical. I gasped at the impact of his body on mine. “Stella,” he murmured.
“Take me to bed,” I repeated for the third time, putting my finger to his lips to stop him from saying more.
It was then he took me to bed.
Chapter 4
We slept late. We’d exhausted ourselves with our bodies, with our confessions, with our mutual pain. In all the mornings I’d spent with Jay, I’d never seen him sleep later than precisely six thirty. He was usually up by five, and before he got out of bed, he fucked me. Or went down on me.
He did both at ten in the morning. After two orgasms and a shower—with Jay—I was still waiting for the moment when this was all stolen away. It was utterly surreal to see Jay in the daylight, in this little cottage in New Zealand.
We were naked, except for my panties and his underwear, eating breakfast. I sipped my coffee, staring at him with the ocean in the background, the sea air blowing from the open doors. The salty air mixed with Jay’s scent.
“I still want children,” I exclaimed suddenly, putting down my coffee cup. “At least one. Even though I know the risks. Of turning into my mother. Even if I don’t, I know that I may pass something on. I know it’s a risk. And maybe it’s selfish of me to want that. But I do. I want to be the mother mine wasn’t. And I want you to be able to love a child like your parents didn’t.”
I didn’t know why I’d blurted this out on what could’ve been a perfect morning. But I found I wasn’t looking for perfection. Perfection was empty, fickle. It was in the difficult, in the painful, that I was going to be most satisfied.
Jay stared at me for a long time. I felt sick for making a demand that sounded dangerously like an ultimatum. Here was the man who stalked my dreams, the one who owned my heart, who had marked my soul, coming back to me and giving me everything I wanted, yet I was demanding more.