Feels Like Falling, page 3
“So what’s the problem?”
“The problem is, how do you know my name?”
“How would I not know your name, Rosie? Your dad is the freaking senator of the state and you’re his only daughter, and you’re …” He paused.
“What?”
“Nothing. Nothing.” He shook his head. “So, you want my name?”
“Oh, you’re going to tell me your name, are you?”
“Oh, Rosie, maybe I liked you better when you didn’t talk so much.”
“Maybe I liked you better when you didn’t talk much as well.”
“Do you want to know my name or not?”
“Yes. I want to know your name.”
“Jackson.”
“Your name is Jackson?”
“Yes. It’s Jackson.”
I looked at him, his dark hair, his dark eyes, his handsome face, his olive skin tone, his built body. He didn’t look like a Jackson, but who was I to question him?
“Do you have a last name, Jackson?”
“I do.”
“Are you going to tell me?”
“No.” He shook his head. “I don’t think you need to know that information.”
“But you know who I am.”
“Yeah, but you’re the daughter of a famous person.” He shrugged. “It’s not my fault I’ve seen you in the newspaper and on the news and—”
“Okay, okay.” I bit down on my lower lip. “When did you know? Right away?”
“No … Maybe.”
“No or maybe?”
“I’m not going to answer that question.”
“But you just did answer that question and you kind of changed your mind. How could it be no if it was a maybe? You either did or you didn’t.”
“Rosie …”
“Yes?”
“Your cheeks go a lovely shade of pink when you’re angry. Did you know that?”
“No, I did not know that.”
“You also have the most beautiful breasts I’ve ever seen.”
“Well … thank you.” I blushed. “And you have the largest cock I’ve ever seen.”
“Thank you. I’m proud of that, I guess.” He laughed. “I hope it satisfies you.”
“You know it satisfies me.”
“Good.”
“So what happens now then?” We stared at each other.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, what happens now? You know my name, I know your name. It just seems really complicated. Maybe we shouldn’t do this anymore …”
“We can continue. I don’t see why it should stop.”
“But if someone’s following me ...” I chewed on my lower lip.
Maybe it was one of my dad’s men? No, if my dad knew I was coming to meet some guy in a hotel room, he’d have already killed me. Maybe it was someone who knew Joey. Maybe Joey was trying to get back at me for what happened to him. But this wasn’t really his style. Maybe it was related to someone else, but I didn’t dare think about that. I couldn’t even process it, and there was no way I could let Jackson know everything else about my life. Not yet, not now. I didn’t want him judging me. Not any more than I’d already judged myself.
“I should be going.” I jumped off of the bed and grabbed my clothes. “I’m going to go now, okay?”
“Okay. If that’s what you want.”
“It’s what I want.”
“Monday?” He looked at me.
“I don’t know.” It was the first time I’d suggested that I wouldn’t just show up again.
“Monday.” He stood up and grabbed my wrists.
“Ow, that hurts,” I said as he pulled them up above my head.
“I want you here on Monday, Rosie.” He kissed me, sinking his teeth into my lower lip.
I cried out as his teeth bit into me. “Jackson.” I struggled against him and moaned as he deepened the kiss.
“Monday.”
“Okay. I’ll be here,” I conceded, and he gave me a warm smile.
It was the first time he’d ever looked at me quite like that and it made my stomach quiver with a sensation I couldn’t quite identify. I grabbed my handbag and ran out of the hotel room to my car.
I sped home, and that’s when I noticed that I was being followed. Someone had left the hotel after me and now they were following me back, and I had no idea who. I grabbed my phone and called Joey. I didn’t want to talk to him, but I needed to know if it was him. Of course, he didn’t pick up. Why would he? He hated me just as much as I hated him.
But there were a bunch of text messages. James had been messaging me.
Where are you? I’d like to see you. Can we talk?
Shit. I didn’t want to talk to James. I didn’t want to see him, but I knew that I had to. I pulled up the driveway and parked outside the house, and then tried to figure out what to send back. What did you say to the guy that you’re about to marry? “Hey, sorry I missed your text. I was just fucking a strange man”?
No, I couldn’t say that. Even though James and I hadn’t actually met yet, let alone slept together, we were still engaged, and he wouldn't accept that.
This was just all spinning out of control. I knew that my whole life was going to come crashing around me, and I had no idea what to do. I was in over my head. Absolutely, terrifyingly in over my head. And I had no idea how to stop it.
Chapter 5
“Where have you been?” My mom was sitting at the kitchen table as I entered the house.
“Nowhere.”
“Nowhere? Really, Rosie? It’s midnight.”
“I went for a drive, okay?”
“You know you can’t just keep going for drives by yourself.”
“Why not, Mom?” I gave her a look. “I’m not a prisoner here, right?”
“When you came back home, Rosie, we decided that—”
“Mom, I know you’re not going to hold that over me. You know I only came back for one reason.”
“I know.” Her lips tightened. “You came back to help your dad.”
“Yeah, I came back to help Dad.” That was a bit of a lie and we both knew it.
“But he also helped you. You remember that, Rosie?”
“I do remember that and I’m thankful to him, but I’m a 30-year-old woman who is living back at home with her parents. This isn’t really the life I thought I was going to have.”
She shrugged. “But soon, you’ll be in your own house and you can do whatever you want.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Rosie.” There was a poignant tone in her voice as she spoke. She knew I didn’t want to get married. She knew that this arranged marriage was the last thing I wanted. She knew how much Joey had hurt me, but it didn’t matter. I’d screwed up, and because I’d screwed up, I owed my dad a favor, and because I owed my dad a favor, I had to marry a man I didn’t love, that I didn’t even know. I’d never even met him.
“You’ve got to stop going out at night.”
“What do you mean?”
“I know you’ve been sneaking out. One, two, three times a week.” Mom shook her head. “You’ve got to stop. The wedding is coming up soon.”
“I just go for a drive, Mom. I need to clear my head. Being here all the time, being around you, being around Dad, it’s just too much. All the—”
“Stop.” She held her hand up. “Your dad loves you and this is his dream.”
“I know that, but what about me? What about my dream, Mom? This isn’t what I wanted, this isn’t what I signed up for.”
“You didn’t sign up for anything, Rosie.”
“Exactly. All I wanted was love and all—”
“You chose a guy, you thought you had love, and look what happened. I’ve told you time and time again, true love, love like you thought you had with Joey, it doesn’t exist. It’s in movies, it’s in books. You need to grow up, Rosie. You’re 30 years old now. You want to have kids, right?”
“You know I want to have a family, Mom.”
“Well, then listen to me, because the way you’ve been going about it, it’s never going to happen.”
“You don’t know that,” I scoffed, thinking about my time in the hotel room. Yeah, I was on the pill, but anything could happen. A part of me wanted to get pregnant so I could look at my dad and my mom and say, “Look, now James won’t marry me.”
But I knew I couldn’t. I knew that would be the worst thing that I could do. So while a sick part of me wanted to get pregnant by Jackson, another part of me was so thankful that I hadn’t. I might be a screwup, but at least I wasn’t that big of a screw up. “I’m going to bed now, Mom.”
“Didn’t you want to get something out of the fridge first?”
“What?”
“You came into the kitchen, so I assumed you wanted to get something from the fridge. Maybe a drink, maybe something to eat, I don’t know.” She stood up and walked over to me, put her hands on my shoulders, and looked me dead in the eyes. “You’re my only daughter. I love you. I want the best for you. And you know, maybe this wouldn’t have been the path that I would’ve chosen for you, but after everything, after Joey ...” She paused. “This is the best that we can do right now, Rosie. You have to listen to me.”
“Is everything okay, Mom?” There was something in her tone, something in the way she was looking at me that made me pause. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” she said softly and stepped away, looking down. “I’m going to go to bed now, but I need you to promise me one thing.”
“What, Mom?”
“You need to stop seeing him, whoever he is. I don’t care if you think it’s a love affair or what, you need to stop seeing him.”
“I’m not see—”
“Don’t lie to me, Rosie,” she shook her head. “Just don’t, okay?”
She walked out of the room and I stood there, looking around the magnificent kitchen, the marble countertops, the stainless steel appliances, the huge skylights in the ceiling. Everything about this kitchen was pristine, perfect, it could’ve been in a magazine and yet, no one really cooked in there. No cakes were made, no cookies, there was no laughing family around the kitchen table. It felt cold and sterile. As beautiful as it was, I felt caged in. I was locked into a life I didn’t want, and there was nothing I could do about it.
I wondered if it was my mom who was having me followed. Maybe that’s how she knew. That was wishful thinking, though. If it was her, whoever had been following me would’ve come in and stopped everything right away. She would’ve given them permission to do that. She wasn’t the sort of person who needed to be reported back to first. There were any number of people that could have someone following me.
I opened the fridge and took out a small bottle of orange juice and then began rummaging in the cupboard for some cookies. I was hungry. Good sex did that to you.
I’d gotten myself into a complicated mess and the next day I had to go shopping. Shopping for a dress that I didn’t even want. Shopping for a dress to meet the man who was going to become my husband. I was scared, and I was nervous—and I was angry. Why did he even want to marry me? I bet he was ugly or short or covered with acne or had a small dick. There had to be something wrong with him. Why would he want an arranged marriage with someone like me?
I knew what I’d done to deserve this … but what had he done?
Chapter 6
I listened to the Lizzo song that was blasting from my earphones as I lay on my bed staring at the ceiling. What had my life come to?
When I was a little girl, I’d always imagined I’d get married to a wonderful Prince Charming who’d ride me off to a castle, and we’d have three beautiful children, and I’d spend my days cooking cakes and making gourmet dinners while waiting for my husband to come home. And when he’d come home, he’d sweep in the door and he’d kiss me on the lips and he’d tell me how much he’d missed me as our kids would go running up to him and grab his legs. And we’d all hug before going into the kitchen. And then in the night, once the kids were in bed, he would take me into his arms and he would kiss and hold me like he didn’t want to let go, and he would tell me how much he loved and adored me.
That’s all I’d ever really wanted, to be loved, to be adored, for a lifetime.
My shrink had told me many times that I had abandonment and insecurity issues because my father’s career had always come first. He cared more about politics than he did about me, and my mom cared more about him than she did about me. So essentially, I was almost an orphan, except I had parents. On paper, I had a life to be envied. I went to the best schools, made friends with kids from the best families. And even though we never really connected, I went along with those friendships and that life because that’s what I was expected to do.
When I met Joey, I thought that all my dreams were going to come true. He was going to whisk me away—and he had. He had whisked me away into a fairy tale and then I’d woken up into a nightmare. He didn’t love me. He just wanted as many women as he could get before he was married.
I had been so broken when I’d found out. When he told me he didn’t love me, I’d banged my fists into the wall and I’d cried and I’d screamed until I thought I couldn’t scream any longer. The next day I’d barely been able to talk because my voice had been hoarse, and I gained 20 pounds in two weeks from all the ice cream and cookies that I’d eaten. He’d broken me.
And then I had broken him quite literally. I had a friend—well, more like an acquaintance—who had helped me. There was this guy I used to see in my local bar. This was when I still had my own place, paid for by my dad. We never flirted, but we would talk and chat about random things.
And one night he’d asked me what was wrong. “Where’s your boyfriend? Where’s that guy, that blond hunk?” And I’d started crying, and he’d looked me in the eyes and he said, “What’s wrong? What happened?”
And I told him everything. I told him how much Joey had hurt me, how he’d used me, how I thought we were going to be together forever and how all he’d cared about was fucking me. I told him how I’d let Joey do anal more times than I’d like to admit. And I even told him about the threesome we’d had, which I’d hated. It had basically consisted of Joey fucking me and another girl because he wanted to sow his wild oats before he was married. The other girl had attempted to kiss me a few times and I’d jumped off of the bed and run to the bathroom. I just wasn’t into it, but Joey didn’t care. That should have been my first warning. At the end of the day, all he wanted was to get me into bed. And like some desperate fool, I had gone along with it. I’d even helped him get a job.
I was so angry as I told my story, so when the guy in the bar said to me, “I can take care of him for you,” I didn’t even flinch. I sipped on my glass of Merlot and asked him, “What do you mean?” I didn’t even blink when he responded with, “I can have him murdered.”
Oh no, don’t worry, I wasn’t crazy enough to put out a hit on Joey. I was too delicate for that. But when he suggested that he could have someone teach him a little lesson, I didn’t say no. What did it really mean to have someone beaten up? I’d paused for a few seconds because sometimes you really want revenge on someone and sometimes you really want them to hurt, but you don’t want to harm them.
I’m not a violent person. I’m really not. Maybe I’d had too much to drink, or maybe I was just too angry or maybe, I don’t know, my brain was in some sort of meltdown, but I’d asked him, “How much?” And he’d said, “A grand.” And before I knew it, we’d walked to the ATM and I’d taken out $500 from two different accounts and handed him the cash. He said he’d take care of it.
I didn’t think about it for a week until I found out that Joey was in the hospital with a broken arm, a black eye, and two broken ribs. I’d gasped when I heard. It had been because of me and I’d regretted it. Of course I regretted it. No sane person has their ex-boyfriend beaten up no matter what they’ve done. I swore to myself that I would be a better person. I swore to myself that I would not let myself fall in love again. I swore I’d go to therapy, and I prayed that no one would find out I had anything to do with it.
But of course, it got out.
The guy who’d beaten up Joey had given him a message right before he’d slid a knife down the side of his face. “This one’s for Rosie.” Joey was smart, though. He didn’t come to me. He went to my father. He attempted to blackmail him because he knew my father had set his sights on the White House.
My father had screamed at me and cut me off financially and told me that I was going to ruin his campaign, ruin his entire career, all for a guy who didn’t even care about me.
“You want to be in love so badly, Rosie?” he’d said. “Well, I’ll find you a husband. Then you’ll be his problem.” I regretted what I’d done to Joey, but it was too late. My father was taking no more chances.
The next thing I knew I was engaged to be married. And there was nothing I could do to stop it.
I lay there staring at the ceiling and I felt so alone. I had no one to talk to, no one to listen or to give me advice. My thoughts turned to Jackson. I wished I was back in the hotel room, holding him, touching him. I wished that it was that first night again, that I was reliving the magic, the passion we’d felt for each other. I wanted him, I needed him, and I was going to see him again come hell or high water. I didn’t care about the consequences. Nothing could be worse than my life was now.
I needed him so badly. I spread my legs and touched myself, imagining it was his fingers. I still didn’t know how he knew my name or anything about him. For all I knew, he was my father’s enemy. He could be my downfall … my father’s downfall. He could be the downfall of everything, and I didn’t even care.
All my life, I’d wanted to make my parents happy, and look where it got me. It had gotten me back in my childhood bedroom at the age of 30 lying on the bed with ear pods in my ear so that I could listen to Lizzo and sing under the duvet so that I didn’t make too much noise. This wasn’t a life.
This was a prison and I intended to get out of it any way that I could.
