IMPULSE: Companion to The PULSE Series (6 page)

"You went to Axel." She nods as she says the words. "Sasha told me you were there."

She had a warning. She knew I'd be waiting for her with a mind filled with questions. "I was looking for you." I work hard to keep my voice even.

Her eyes scan my face. "I didn't feel well today."

"Are you sick?" That question is meant to be asked with compassion. It doesn’t contain any of that when it leaves my lips. If it sounds as accusatory to her as it does to me, she's going to shut down.

She doesn’t speak. Her head just drifts thoughtlessly from side-to-side.

I feel like I'm talking to my niece or nephew about a bad mark they got on a spelling test. There's no offer of assistance. She's not even trying to assuage my worry or concern.  "What's going on?" I blurt the question out.

"Nathan." She takes a step towards me. "I'm sorry."

The words hit me with the same force as the first time she slapped me across my face when she thought I was cheating on my ex-girlfriend, Cassandra, with her.
I'm sorry.
The phrase is meant to placate and please. It's meant to chase away the bad deed and replace it all with feelings of hope and promise. All I can hear is the veiled confession of a woman who I love desperately. All I can see is her falling into the bed of a man who isn't me. All I know is that this is my future standing in front of me telling me that she's sorry.

"For what?" I know my voice is trembling. I can't control it. I don't want to hear her response but I know that I have to. This is the very reason why I avoided relationships most of my life. This is why I wouldn't allow my heart to feel too deeply.

"I've done things." Her breath hitches as she says the words. "I've been missing work."

I don't give a fuck about her work. I don't give a shit about anything other than the things that she's doing with the other guy who waltzed into Axel in a suit. The guy she kissed.

"Why?" I ask, trying desperately to not reach out and pull her into me. One part of me feels repulsed by the idea of her with anyone else. The other part of me is watching her tremble. She needs me to anchor her emotions. She needs to hold tight to me so she can find the strength within herself to confess. I fist my hands at my side, trying to ward off the almost compulsive need I feel to embrace her.

Her gaze drops to my hands and I see her tense. "I'm scared to tell you."

I've never harmed Jessica. I can't. It's not within the fabric of my body or soul to cause her any discomfort, other than the fleeting bite of it when I'm buried completely inside of her. "I won't hurt you, Jessica," I say the words to appease her. I need her to know that she's safe with me. Regardless of what she's about to confess, I'm not going to lash out. I can't either verbally or physically.

"I would never hurt you." Her tone is unyielding. "I would cut off my leg before I'd hurt you, Nathan."

I charge forward, pulling her small body into my chest. I rest my chin against the top of her head. I wrap my arms around her back. She's sobbing now. "Just tell me."

"I can't." Her hands skim across the front of my shirt. "I don't know how to."

I reach up to cup her cheeks in my hands. I graze my lips softly across her forehead. "You can tell me anything. I can tell you anything. This is us."

She nods as tears stream steadily from her eyes. "I love you more than anything, Nathan."

I see the promise of those words in her eyes. She means it. She's not just saying it to quiet something that is roaring within me. She's saying it because it's her truth. It's what she feels. I see it.

"Sasha said another man came to see you at Axel," I say the words gently. "Is it about him?"

Before I can react she pushes back, her face loses all of its color, her hands fly in the air and she's on her heel headed for the door.

"No, no, no…" she repeats over and over. "She had no right to tell you."

I don't move. I can't. Her reaction is screaming at me. "Don't walk out of here, Jessica."

She turns back, her face a cloudy mess of tears and anger. "You were checking up on me."

It's immature and thoughtless. She's retreating back to the same girl she was when I met her at the club. She's the girl who bolted at the first sign of trouble. "I was looking for you because I missed you." I don't mince the words. There's no reason to. It's the truth, plain and simple.

"You've been different since we got back from my sister's wedding."

I take a moment to process the statement. It's accusatory even if it's not meant to be. Is she seriously pushing this back on me? Is she going to blame me for what she's been doing? "What?" I bark the word out as I take a heavy step towards her. "Are you fucking kidding me, Jessica?"

She pushes her back into the door. Her hand leaps to the doorknob. It's instinctive. She's searching for her escape route if this gets too heavy. I have to admit, I'm impressed that she hasn't left the building in a mad dash yet. "No. I'm not fucking kidding you, Nathan," she hisses. "Something has been up your ass since then and you refuse to talk about it."

"You're right." My hand flies into the air and past her to settle on the door. I move forward again, trapping her where she's standing. "There is something up my ass."

"What?" She pulls her chin up in an act of defiance. She's not backing down. She's not going to retreat on this. "What the fuck happened there?"

I lean down, my lips hovering close to hers. I look her directly in the eyes as I very softly and clearly whisper. "The senator, Jessica. You fucked a senator."

Time doesn't move for what feels like endless moments as her tear filled gaze jumps from my lips to my eyes. I watch as a veil of confusion overtakes her. Her knees buckle, her hands reach for the wood plank that is the door as she slowly slides down it.

"Jessica." I scoop my arm around her waist, catching her mid fall. "Jessica, please."

She doesn't speak. I don't know if it's because she's unwilling or if the weight of the air between us is holding her back.  She raises her hand to shield her face. Her sobs overtake her. I hold her close, wishing I hadn't thrown that at her the way I did. She's fragile. She's always been too fragile for her own good.

"You should sit down." I scoop her up in my arms in one easy movement and carry her into the room. Her arms hang limp at her sides. Her eyes are staring a path straight through me. I place her down carefully on the couch.

"I'm sorry." The words escape her lips in such a quiet tone that I have to strain to make out each word. "I'm sorry," she repeats, this time no louder than the last.

I kneel in front of her. Any resistance that she was holding onto at the door has evaporated. She's broken and weak. She's rocking back and forth on the cushion, the rhythmic movement of her body making a sliding sound on the leather. It's the only sound invading the unending silence in the room.

"I'm sorry." The words are still so soft that I have to strain to hear them.

"Jessica." I place my hands on her knees. She doesn't pull back. "Jessica. I'm sorry too."

I expect her eyes to dart to mine for confirmation of the words but that doesn't happen. Instead, she pulls her head closer to her chest.

"Please look at me," I coax. I'm scared. I've pushed her into emotional places in the past but it's never been this way. She's never shut down so completely on me before. I regret bringing him up the way I did. I regret not asking about him right after the wedding, when she was so happy, open and composed.

"No," she says through a sob. "I can't."

I want to grab her shoulders and shake her. I want her to come back to me and talk about this. I want her to hold my face in her hands and tell me that she's overreacting and that all of it is just a simple misunderstanding. "I need you to listen to me, Jessica."

Her head darts up. I watch as her eyelids slowly open. She stares at my face, her eyes sweeping across my forehead, before settling on my mouth. "Please, Nathan." Her hand dashes from her leg to my arm. "Please."

"I'm not going anywhere." I reach forward to run my lips over her cheek. "I'm staying right here." I know I mean it right now. If she tells me she's been fucking the guy who was at Axel, I can't promise her anything.

She nods. Her hand moves up my arm. "Who told you?"

I pull her hand into my own and graze it across my lips. "I was talking to a woman at the wedding. Her name was Charity. She told me you were involved with a senator."

"Charity," she repeats the name as she stares past me to the wall. "Who is Charity?"

I can't say I'm surprised that she doesn’t remember the woman. She was completely forgettable. "She looks like a librarian." I have no other point of reference so that's what pops out. "She said you went to school together."

Her brow furrows. "Does she have brown hair and glasses?"

"No glasses." I shake my head from side-to-side. "She has short brown hair."

The edge of her lip quivers slightly. "I think I remember her. What did she say to you?"

I decide that this moment calls for me to temper my unending need to tell Jessica everything. She doesn’t want to hear about how Charity wanted to ride my dick in the back seat of her Cadillac. "She mentioned that you used to be involved with a man who was in the senate." It's a foreign statement, even now when I've had time to process the information. I'm not about to tell Jessica that after she went to sleep the first night we got back to New York that I spent hours online trying to decipher what senator Charity was talking about. I came up empty handed.

Her hand leaves my arm and jumps to her face. She rubs it across her eyes. "It was so long ago."

I feel instantly relieved. "Charity said it happened right after high school."

"That's when it started." It's a subtle correction but it's open ended. "I met him after high school."

I have so many questions floating from every corner of my mind at once. They're colliding. My senses are overwhelmed. "When did it end?"

"It was over before I met Josh."

I don't need the reminder of her ex-boyfriend. Hell, I don't want to talk about any of this. I want her to go back to being the Jessica Roth I seduced at the club that night I first laid eyes on her. I was the one who seduced her, right? She wasn't preying on me, was she?

"When's the last time you saw him?" It's a selfish question. I'm not asking because I want to give her an opportunity to cleanse her soul. I'm asking because I want to know when the last time the fucking senator drove his cock into my beautiful Jessica's tender body.

"Today."

I recoil on my heels. My hands leap from her body at the same time. Fuck. She just fucking said she saw the goddamned senator today.

"Nathan?" Nothing follows my name. What the fuck kind of question is that?

"What?" I'm on my feet now. I can't breathe. I blindly reach for my tie, pulling on the knot. I throw it beside her on the couch once I get it free. I still can't get enough air in my lungs. I rip open the first two buttons of the white dress shirt I'm wearing. They tumble silently to the hardwood floor.

"I didn't do anything." It's weak. It's so goddamned weak that I don't fucking believe it.

I turn so my back is to her. I can't look at her right now. My anger is right there. It's right at the surface and if I don't temper it, I'm going to say things that I'll never be able to take back. They're the things she said to me back when she discovered a cell phone I had filled with the names of hundreds of women I'd fucked. How the hell did she get over that? I can't even think straight right now. "What the fuck does that mean?"

"I didn't sleep with him…" The pause does little to control my ever growing rage. "Not today, I didn’t sleep with him today."

"Today?" I hurl the word at her as I turn back around. My hands are on my cufflinks now, pulling thoughtlessly at them. I'm overheating. The room suddenly feels like it's the middle of summer and I'm standing in my suit on a crowded street. "You didn't fuck the senator today?"

"Thomas," she counters. "I didn’t fuck Thomas today."

Thomas. He has a fucking name. Of course he does. She didn't let that detail escape without reason. Why the hell is she making this more personal? I don't want to know his name. I don't want to know anything about him.

"He was at the wedding." She nods as if she's reminding herself of the fact. "He was at Julie's wedding."

I roll up the arms of my shirt. The act not just meant to help me cool down physically, but emotionally as well. I was so focused on keeping her away from Josh Redmond, that piece of shit ex-boyfriend of hers, that I didn't even notice that another man she fucked was in the room. "Did you talk to him?"

She nods quickly. "I did. It was only for a minute."

"Where the fuck was I?" I ask, knowing that it sounds territorial. It's who I am though. I'm not going to hide behind a veil of something I'm not to appease her right now. I can't believe she talked to him that night and today. All of this is spurring on my own desire to bolt.