Fallen Angel (The List #3) (28 page)

My
confused and treacherous voice crackles and breaks. He shakes his head and
stands up but doesn’t look me in the eye.

“No.”
It’s a shameful whisper.

“
What
—why?
What did I do wrong?”

“Nothing,
absolutely nothing. It’s not you—”

“Don’t
you
dare
finish that fucking sentence.”

My
shakiness transforms from sexual shivers to quakes of confusion and anger. I
use my arms to cover my nakedness and make a dash for my hanging robe. He walks
over to me and it’s as though his loving aura has been vacuumed from him,
leaving an empty shell. It doesn’t even feel like I’m in the room with the same
person. How can he change so spontaneously, so drastically?

“Jax,
you’d better start speaking before I start walking, I swear to God.”

“You
deserve so much more than who I am. I can’t make you happy.”

“That’s
bullshit and you know it. Don’t you think I deserve to make that decision for
myself?”

“Yes.
But I already know I’m going to hurt you.”

“Like
you’re hurting me now?”

“It’s
nothing compared to how I’ll make you feel if we carry on.”

Jax
sits on the edge of the bed and I take refuge by the door, seething. Fight or
flight?

“I’m
not a good person, Beth—you think I am—but I’m not. I hurt people. I’ll hurt
you.”

“I
don’t give a flying fuck what you
think
you are. Do you think your
tattoos or your muscles or your bad boy persona scare me? Because they don’t. You
hide behind yourself Jaxson—but I see right through it all. I always have. I
see you. All of you.”

Jax
rubs his head in his hands. His silence only serves to fuel my anger.

“So
after everything, you’re going to end it—like this? For Christ’s sake, your
dick was still inside me—you’ve just come inside me. What kind of twisted way
is that to treat me?” No answer. “You must know how I feel about you. Never
mind fucking my brains out, you’ve just fucked my heart out and—you know what,
forget it.”

I
yank open the door with an unsteady hand and a heavy heart. My blood feels black
running through my cold veins. I’ll save my tears for now, Miss Fierce is too
livid to let Miss Vulnerable have a front row seat to this nightmare.

I
stop in the doorway and dare to look back at him for a split second. The
wistful look on his face is crucifying.

“I’m
so sorry, Angel.”

“Don’t,
don’t call me that.” I swallow the lump in my throat and blink back my tears once
more. Why is he doing this? “You’re a pussy Jaxson Carter, or whatever the fuck
you wanna call yourself!”

I
run down the hallway with no awareness of my feet ever touching the ground. I
pack my things like a frantic fugitive hearing sirens approaching from the
distance. It’s the complete opposite to how I left Mike. I reacted badly but
I’m still in shock. I should’ve stayed calm. Now I’m leaving with a head full
of questions and a heart full of ache.

My
anger starts to subside as the hurt creeps in. My throat is dry, my stomach is
churning, my brain’s replaying the few lame words he bothered to mutter. We’ve
just had the most amazing sex I ever thought possible. There I was, thinking
our connection was stronger than ever, when in reality it was about to be
severed by a guillotine at the hands of a hooded Jax.

I
search the room for a paper bag that’ll help me co-ordinate my breathing.
Knowing he’s just down the hallway panics me more. I want to click my fingers
and disappear away from here, to be anywhere but here.

My
vision becomes blurry but I’m not crying, not yet. I’m still riding on the adrenalin
but my body feels weak. Everything has been drained away from me. That fierce,
strong love that protected me has absolutely shattered and crumbled into a heap
of nothingness, leaving in its place a harrowing pain.

Wednesday 29
^th
April 2015

10:57pm

Jax

H
ave I done the right thing?

The house feels empty even though it’s full of
memories of her, of us. Everywhere I go, she’s there and the fact that she
isn’t actually here makes reliving those memories even more agonising. But I do
it anyway. I torture myself with her beauty and all of the things we’ve shared
together.

Why should I stop myself, why should I make it
easy on myself by drowning out reality?

I walk around the house replaying our times
together over and over. I leave one room, enter another and start all over
again.

Dragging Beth into my life is the most selfish
thing I've ever done. Letting her believe that there's a glimmer of hope at the
end of this ride… I knew and I pretended to believe her denial. I'm a selfish
bastard with a knack for making fucked up decisions and hurting good people.

When she left yesterday I had to force myself
to look her in the eye. As painful as it was to see what I’d done to her, I had
to embed that into my heart as a constant reminder of why I’ve ended it. It
didn’t work though. I still have a head full of voices telling me to call her,
to text her, to turn up at her suite.

My initial doubts crept up on Sunday night. She
said she wanted to know what it felt like to make love.

I made love to her and it was incredible. Not
only did I feel the love pouring out of her body but I saw it. I saw it in her
eyes when she bared her soul to me. It was so intense, so surreal, that
afterwards I just kept thinking that if I felt it, she must’ve too. Beth said
it was role play but I know now irrefutably that she loves me, she actually
truly loves me.

Beth loves me, and I love her. I fucking love
her and I always have.

I can finally admit it to myself.

So instead of being a man and sitting her down
to share my shit, like I’d always intended, I took the pussy’s way out and
ended it. I rejected her before she rejected me, because this way the damage
for her is reversible. She can walk away from this now before things get
complicated.

Tantric sex should come with a warning. I never
wanted to get involved in it but I did it for her. Never did I think it’d
affect me in that way. Never did I think I’d be capable of feeling that type of
mutual incredible connection with somebody. It freaked me the fuck out and I
took it as a sign that Beth means too much for me to risk hurting her beyond
repair.

I realised that not only does my love for her
control my dick but since the other night it’s got a tight grip on my balls
too, threatening to castrate me at the first sign of causing her irreparable pain.

Beth suffered an anxiety attack last night. I
did that to her. It’d only get worse if we’d stayed together. I did the right
thing.

After she’d calmed down enough to talk
properly, she told me not to call Willow. Understandably, she didn’t want to
stay in the guest room either, but there was no way I could let her leave here alone.
I suggested she stayed for a couple of nights, just until the weekend. I
promised to stay out of her way but the answer was a definite no. She couldn’t
wait to get the hell away from me—who can blame her?

I booked her into a hotel and arranged for Jack
to drive her over, the only person I can fully trust to look after her properly.

When they left, he looked at me with pity and
she whispered ‘goodbye’ with teary eyes full of sadness and confusion. She
didn’t want to say it. It would’ve been easier for her to walk out the door and
not look back. But I knew she said that because she made the promise to me that
she’d never leave without saying goodbye again.

Have I done the right thing?

Beth

“I can’t do this anymore.”
That’s what he said to
me. Those vile words stung like throwing gravel in my face or sand in my eyes.

Why?
I’ve repeated that word so many times inside
my head—even aloud—to no avail. I don’t have the answer.

Jax… I can’t even think his name without my
stomach turning over. He cut me off to throw away our relationship. I know in
my heart that he thinks he’s doing it for the right reasons but doesn’t he
realise that whatever he’s trying to save me from can’t be much worse than
this? He’s left me with a heart full of unanswered questions that will eat away
at me for eternity.

A fucking anxiety attack! I had to ruin my
walking-out-with-my-head-held-high
routine by having a stupid panic attack. So for one last time, he came to my
rescue and held my hand. I let him. I damn near faked another attack in a bid
to keep him near me for longer—I’m weak.

He stroked my hair, telling me everything’s
going to be okay. I know he has secrets but we’ve never lied to each
other—until then. He lied to me in that moment, even if he was just trying to
calm me down. Everything is not going to be okay because he has left me worst
off than the way he found me. I’m empty and more lost than ever before.

When Jack and I left, the weak, fragile girl
inside of me, grabbed onto my naive heart and tried to claw her way up my
throat to confess my unmistakable love for Jax.

Miss Sensible swiftly blocked the words and managed
to whisper ‘goodbye’ instead. It would have been too little too late. Just like
writing the words in the sand and waiting for the tide to wash them away again
as though they never existed.

When I managed to bring myself to look at him,
the shutters were down and his eyes were cold. No—his mind was made up. I
didn’t walk out with my head held high, I practically crawled.

After driving in silence, Jack checked me into a
ridiculous guilt-ridden suite Jax had arranged for me.

Once settled, Jack left but gave me a big hug
before leaving. He squeezed my hand and said
“True strength is measured not
when you’re at your strongest, but when you’re at your weakest. You’re stronger
than you know and he’s not as strong as you may think.”

Jack offered to stay with me but I just wanted
to be alone. Even so, his car remained parked outside all night, which was
weirdly comforting.

I had the entire floor of the hotel to myself
with my own private elevator. Enough rooms for me to fill with each of my
emotions without feeling claustrophobic. I eventually cried myself to sleep in
the office in the early hours of the morning. Yeah Jack—I’m weaker than you
think!

Jack’s car was gone when I dragged myself up from
the desk a few hours later. I’d fallen to sleep with my face pressed against
the keyboard.

Now, looking back at me in the mirror was a
true reflection of how I felt; miserable, sad, weak and rejected.

Last night I’d given in to temptation after
hours of restraint but I was desperate to connect to Jax somehow. After
exhausting the battery on my phone by staring at photos and watching clips I’d
filmed of him, I put it on charge and fired up my laptop in the office.

The luxurious black leather swivel chair only
encouraged me to settle in and start stalking.

I pretty much assaulted the internet, stripping
away any minute detail I could find about Jax and his business. I couldn’t dig
up much and what I did find wasn’t very insightful. I read all about his family
business and found lots of blogs and media stories about his father and his
brother, Jonathan, but hardly anything about Jax.

The one thing that made my obsessing worthwhile
was a photograph taken a few years ago at a huge event for an alcohol and drugs
anonymous charity. With about twenty people on the photo my eyes scanned
quickly but landed immediately on Joseph Carter; ‘an imperative benefactor to
the foundation.’

I zoomed in and studied his beautiful face. He
was right when he said that he’s barely recognisable to the untrained eye now.
But my eyes are most definitely trained in detecting Jax’s stunning face and
incredible body.

Wearing a suit—an ‘
I’m-gonna-bend-you-over-this-desk-and-fuck-you-hard’
suit—my pathetic state let my imagination run away with itself. Soon I was wet
and aching for him, only him. I wanted him so badly. I needed him to touch me
so instead I touched myself. I unashamedly pressed my heels on the edge of the
desk, closed my eyes and pretended last night didn’t happen.

After years of reading and encouraging my wild
imagination, I was able to drift into a magical world with Jax. His strong
hands taking control of me. His soft lips caressing every inch of me. Within
seconds of coming, reality abruptly tapped me on the shoulder seemingly saying
“That’s
enough of that, you’ve had your fakeass fun, now get back to the miserable
truth.”
And I was crying once more.

Room service arrived shortly after I’d woken
this morning. A polite gentleman brought in a tray of breakfast, which I hadn’t
ordered. When he laid it out onto the table for me, he revealed a plate of warm
croissants with a small tub of marmite. Instead of thanking him and tipping the
poor guy, I burst into tears.

Jax would tease me about my love for marmite especially
with butter croissants, saying it was weird but it’s a childhood habit of mine.
I knew right away that he’d ordered them for me.

How inconsiderately considerate of him.

After crying over the croissant, I kept the
coffee and asked for the food to be taken away. The worst of it was, when I
asked the man for a headache tablet and he pointed to a box behind the cafetière.
I asked him sarcastically if all hotel guests got medication with their
breakfast but he just coyly said he was only following orders.

How rightfully presumptuous of Jax to assume
I’d be up all night worrying and crying and wake up with a splitting headache.
I nearly sent the box away with the croissants but my head wouldn’t let me.

Thankfully, although last night’s packing was frantic
at first, Miss Sensible had eventually taken over and packed sufficiently to
take me through until Monday, when I’ll return to collect the rest. I’ve
debated not going to Devon but the sick and twisted part of me wants to go so
that I can be near him.

Surely that’s not a healthy reaction to have
towards somebody who’s just dumped you. Society tells me that I should hate
him.

What’s even more sickening is that a huge part
of me keeps saying that it’s not over, that this isn’t the end. One minute I’m
contemplating jumping in a taxi and banging on his door, the next minute I’m
searching for apartments and shopping for a new book boyfriend online. My mood’s
been swinging like a confused pendulum and my heads too confused to try and
make sense of any of it.

The only positive thing to come out of today is
that this afternoon, functioning solely on caffeine and autopilot, I grabbed a
taxi to go and view a property that came on the market today.

It was exactly what I wanted and more—just like
Jax.
Ssshh.

It’s slap bang in between Next Chapter and
Willows, the only two places that matter to me in Birmingham at the moment. It’s
on the third floor of a cute little private apartment block with off road
parking. There’s a lovely large bedroom with a balcony, an office, an open plan
kitchen and lounge area. More than enough for me.

It was more expensive than I’d considered but I
didn’t second-guess or overthink or sit on the fence, I simply said ‘Fuck It’
and told the letting agent, “I’ll take it.” As of Monday afternoon, I’ll be
handing Jax his keys back and going to collect the keys to my new place.

My new place. It feels good, but it should feel
great. Something else I can add to my mental list of reasons to dislike Jaxson
Carter. I may even create a list on my app, it could be therapeutic—or
psychotic, or possibly both.