Obsession (Forbidden #2)

by Michelle Betham

  He leans back against the wall beside me and takes a packet of cigarettes from his shirt pocket, pulling one out with his teeth and lighting up, blowing smoke into the dark night sky.

  ‘Joey followed you here, then.’

  ‘Leave Joey out of this.’

  ‘Still doesn’t know, huh?’ He turns his head to look at me. ‘He still doesn’t know a thing about me. Which means I’m still your sordid little secret.’

  ‘Nothing we did was sordid, Jon.’

  ‘No. No, it wasn’t.’ He sighs, and takes a long drag on his cigarette. ‘Sometimes it just felt that way.’

  I still can’t get my head around the fact he’s here. It’s too surreal, given everything else that’s happened over the course of this day. Maybe I’m just having some kind of weird dream and I’ll wake up in a minute and everything will be back to how it was before. Back to the kind of normal I can handle. Because I’m not sure I can handle this.

  ‘Does anyone else…?

  Why did I even ask that? I don’t fucking care, I’m not interested in what any of them think, not anymore. They never cared about me, so why the hell should I give them a second thought?

  Jon shakes his head and turns away to take another drag on his cigarette. ‘I told you, I cut all ties with everyone back there the second you told me what he did to you.’

  ‘So you haven’t…?’

  He looks at me, and shakes his head again, his expression softening as our eyes lock. ‘No. I haven’t seen or spoken to him in years, Kira. I haven’t seen or spoken to any of them, you know that. Nothing’s changed on that score.’ He breaks the stare and drops his gaze, flicking ash on to the pavement before taking another drag. ‘What he did to you… that was out of order.’

  ‘He raped me, Jon. That wasn’t out of fucking order, it was barbaric.’

  He raises his gaze and our eyes meet again. ‘I wanted to kill him for what he did to you. I wanted to kill him, for killing us.’

  It’s my turn to look away now as another wave of memories rush forward; memories I still try to keep locked away because re-living them tears me apart. Telling Neal, that was cathartic, it was good, at the time, to tell someone else what had happened. But this – this just feels wrong. Because I’m now being forced to face up to what happened with this man too; something nobody else knows about. Nobody. And it’s not something I was ever proud of, it really isn’t. But it happened. And I let it. We both did. And I’m now realising that the things we do; the things we did… everything that happened – there are consequences.

  ‘But I didn’t.’ He throws his head back and sighs. ‘I walked away. I just walked away.’

  ‘And nobody questioned that? Why you suddenly just upped and left?’

  His eyes meet mine again, and the way he’s looking at me… I don’t know if I can take it.

  ‘You want to talk now, huh? Now? After all this time? All those years we continued to see each other, even after… all those years, and you never wanted to know a fucking thing, and now…’

  He stops talking and takes another drag on his cigarette, and I stay silent for a couple of beats, just listening to the sound of a busy New York night going on all around us, while my world stops turning, just for a second. And then I remember just how dangerous this man can be; how addictive he once was, and a small part of me panics. But I know he won’t hurt me. He never hurt me. He was just a stupid, mindless mistake… No. No, I keep saying that, I keep thinking that, but he was never that. It was just something I kept telling myself, after I left him behind. Because I thought, if I kept telling myself that, then I’d finally start to believe it. But I never did. I couldn’t. Because it isn’t true. It’ll never be true. And that’s why I’m angry he’s come here; angry that he’s found me, that he’s come back to haunt me. But that’s my fault. Nobody else’s.

  ‘Do you ever see him? Out and about, I mean?’

  Again, I don’t even know why I asked that. I don’t like talking about him, the monster who took so much from me without my permission; the man who made me hard and bitter and cold. The man I ran from; the man who made me run from everything. I don’t even like alluding to him, it makes me sick to my stomach. Even when Jon was back in my life, taking me to dinner and paying me for sex we never spoke about him. But now I feel as though I have no choice. I need to know if he knows anything.

  Jon shakes his head and tosses his cigarette on to the ground, grinding it into the concrete with the heel of his boot. ‘No. I don’t live around there anymore. I moved away, after everything… After you and me…’ He rakes a hand through his hair but leaves the sentence unfinished and I don’t push for him to complete it. And then he turns to look at me, and I feel another wave of panic hit me. ‘I moved away, and you’d know that, if you’d let me talk… All those years… Jesus, Kira, all those years and the only thing you wanted to know…’

  Again he leaves a sentence unfinished, and again I don’t push for him to carry on.

  ‘I didn’t want to connect you with anything to do with him or them or that time in our lives, Jon. That’s why I didn’t want to talk. I needed you to be detached from it all, to be that faceless man you needed to be if we were going to continue doing...’

  ‘I needed to talk. Did you ever get that? How much I needed to talk, to you? About so much more than just… Yours wasn’t the only life to be messed up, Kira. Mine was turned on it’s fucking head, too, darlin’.’

  I can’t look at him. This is crazy. Fucked-up and crazy, and I don’t really want to be doing it, any of it. But I don’t think I have a choice now.

  ‘Do you know how hard it was for me? To be with you, and not talk? How fucking hard it was to do that? Because we should have talked, kid. What happened, when we… when you…’ I glance up to see him drop his gaze, and I feel a rush of guilt and a fresh wave of panic swamp me. I need him to stop talking now, because I know what he’s about to say, and I don’t want him to open up those old wounds and make me – make us hurt all over again, I can’t go through that. I can’t. ‘We should’ve talked, Kira. We pushed too much aside. Pretended too many things hadn’t happened. And some things – some things can’t be forgotten.’

  ‘Those were the rules, Jon. There had to be rules. Had to be boundaries.’

  ‘And now?’

  I still can’t look at him, even though I can feel his eyes almost burning into me. ‘I don’t know.’

  He sighs, and I feel my heart start to beat faster, a mixture of panic and fear and regret flooding my tired and confused head. Jon Ryan is my biggest secret. A risk I should never have taken – a man I allowed into my life when I should have turned him away. But I didn’t. And the mess that caused still has repercussions now, all these years later. His turning up here proves that.

  ‘I’ve heard he’s married now.’

  His voice drags me back from the brink but I keep my eyes on the ground. Just hearing him talk about Simon makes me feel sick.

  ‘To Gail Trenton-Barclay, remember her?’

  I try not to remember too much about my old life. But sometimes circumstances mean I have no other option.

  ‘Her family still runs the brewery in the next-door village. Our parents all used to hang out together…’

  ‘Yes, Jon, I remember her.’

  His eyes meet mine, and he gets the message. I don’t want a reminiscing session. I don’t care what that bastard’s doing now. I don’t care whether he’s alive or dead, although, I’ve wished the latter on him many a time. I can only hope that, somewhere along the line, he became a better man because the thought of someone else having to go through what he did to me…

  ‘You had no right coming here, Jon.’

  ‘I had to see you, Kira.’

  I shake my head and drop my gaze, another shiver wracking my body as a blast of cold air hits us and he reaches out to pull his jacket further around me, but I jerk my shoulder away from him. I really don’t want him touching me. That could light a touch paper way more dangerou
s than either of us could imagine.

  ‘You need to go.’

  ‘Not now I’ve found you, darlin’. I’m going nowhere.’

  ‘I don’t want you here.’

  ‘You’re lying.’

  ‘I don’t want you here.’

  ‘I need to see you.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Jesus, Kira, you know why… You walked out on me, kid. Twice. You walked out on me. Twice.’

  I shake my head again, sliding his jacket off from around my shoulders and I hand it back to him. ‘I’m not doing this. This – it’s over, Jon. It was over months ago.’

  I turn to go but his voice somehow stops me in my tracks. My head is screaming at me to just keep walking, but my body’s refusing to go anywhere now.

  ‘It’s never been over for me, Kira.’

  He stops talking and laughs, and I turn around to see his head bowed, his hands once more raking through his unkempt hair.

  ‘Kira… I still can’t get used to calling you that.’ He looks up, and our eyes lock, and as much as I want to tear mine away I can’t. I can’t do it. ‘To me you’ll always be…’

  ‘Don’t, Jon. Don’t do it, don’t say that name, don’t call me that. She’s dead. Do you hear me? She is dead.’

  ‘You could have come to me.’

  I still can’t tear my eyes away from him and I want to, so fucking bad. I need to get out of here, he needs to go. He really can’t be here.

  ‘You could have come to me.’

  ‘You know why I couldn’t do that.’

  He comes closer, and I back away, but I hit the wall behind me and he’s there, right in front of me, so close. Closer than he should be.

  ‘All of that – it could have been sorted, kid.’

  ‘If I’d told you what he’d done; if I’d come straight to you that night and told you what had happened, you’d have killed him.’

  ‘Yeah, I would’ve hurt him, of course I would. I would’ve laid into that bastard so hard he would’ve been unrecognisable after I’d finished with him. And I still wanted to kill him the night you finally told me. The night I found you after months of searching. I wanted to kill him then, and I still want to kill him now. That anger, it still lives inside me, darlin’. Every day of my fucking life. Because he didn’t deserve you. He never did. He never, ever wanted you, not like I did. He never loved you, like I did.’

  ‘You should never have come looking for me, Jon.’

  Again. He should never have come looking for me, again. But the fact he did – that’s the reason why I’ve always known this was going to happen. I just chose to pretend it never would.

  ‘If I hadn’t come looking for you, back then… would you ever have found a way to let me know what he’d done to you?’ His eyes search my face, as though making sure it’s still me he’s looking at. ‘Would I ever have known why? Why you’d ran? Why you’d turned your back on me, just like that?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ And I’m being truthful now. I really don’t know if I ever would have found a way to tell him the truth. I hadn’t expected to ever see him again, so, I don’t know. ‘You really shouldn’t have come looking for me.’

  I feel my heart racing inside of me, thumping hard and heavy behind my ribs and he places a hand on my chest, his eyes meeting mine as my heart beats against his palm. ‘Then, or now?’ he whispers, and I’m aware of his mouth moving further towards mine, I’m just trying to figure out a way to stop this from happening. ‘I should never have come looking for you then, or now?’

  ‘Both,’ I breathe, and I really am trying to dig some strength up from somewhere deep inside but this man, he’s pulling me backwards, back to a time when Kira Blu didn’t exist, and I’m terrified and excited and so fucking scared.

  ‘I wanted you for so long. So fucking long, and I had you, Kira. I almost had you. And he ruined that.’

  I swallow hard, and I try once more to push the past right away, even though he’s all I can see now – him, and who we used to be. What we used to have. The secrets we kept. The ones we still keep now. ‘Jon, please…’

  ‘I need you, Kira. I let you walk away and I tried to pretend it was for the best, but I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t lie to myself any longer.’

  ‘What about Sara? Does she even know you’re here?’

  ‘Sara’s history. We divorced not long after you and me…’ He briefly looks down, and I take the opportunity to breathe in deep again before his head’s back up, his eyes burning into mine. ‘We’re divorced.’ He shrugs. ‘She’s moved to Jersey, to be with her parents. It’s over.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘For tossing me aside? Or the fact my marriage broke up?’

  I don’t answer him. I’m not playing his games.

  ‘You broke my heart, darlin’.’

  ‘What we did… it was wrong.’

  He shakes his head and I’m determined now, to end this. Right here. He needs to leave, and I need to find Neal. I need to get back to my twisted reality and this, it needs to end.

  ‘It wasn’t wrong, Kira. What we did.’ He reaches out and touches my face and I flinch slightly, and he frowns. But he has no idea how that tiny touch made me feel; what it stirred up inside of me. He has no idea. ‘Nothing we did was wrong, sweetheart.’

  ‘You were married.’

  ‘Not when we were at school I wasn’t. And I loved you even then, you just didn’t know it. I’ve loved you for as long as I can remember, Kira, and yet you went to him.’

  ‘You know why I had to do that, Jon, please… don’t make me do this.’

  I’m angry at myself because I’m crying; hot, stupid tears are streaming down my face and I’m so fucking angry that this is happening. He has no right to do this, to be here, he has no fucking right.

  ‘You should have come to me.’

  ‘No,’ I whisper, but it’s pointless, because I can’t stop the kiss. I can’t. And I want to, don’t think I don’t, I do. But his mouth’s on mine and he’s kissing me and a million memories are racing to the front of my mind at a breathtaking speed, and I’m not sure I can handle this. He’s brought a terrifying reality here with him, and it’s going to take every ounce of strength I have to fight this now.

  ‘You know it was always you and me, Kira…’

  He suddenly pulls away, backs off, and once again he starts raking a hand backwards and forwards through his hair in an agitated manner, but it’s something so familiar to me. I’d forgotten all about it, forgotten all about him; I’d forced myself to. It was the only way. I’d forgotten all about him, until a few minutes ago, when he walked back into my life, and now my world’s been turned on its head all over again and I can’t handle this. I don’t want to remember the habits he used to have, or the way he spoke; the way he’d make me laugh so much when we were together. I don’t want to remember any of it but I’ve got no choice now. I’m remembering it all. And suddenly Kandi-Ann being here in New York, that means shit. That’s so fucking irrelevant now it’s almost laughable.

  ‘I can’t keep calling you Kira. I can’t do it, kid.’

  ‘You did it for almost ten years, Jon. You had no problems calling me Kira when you were handing over money and fucking me hard…’

  ‘Kira Blu isn’t you, she’s a front. A barrier you put up to…’

  ‘She’s who I am now.’

  ‘No.’ He shakes his head and takes a step back towards me. ‘That’s who you were when you were riding me cowgirl; when I was spending countless incredible afternoons with my head buried between your beautiful thighs, paying to be close to you because that was the only way you’d let me near you again. Jesus, you played hardball, kid. You made me work so fucking hard… after everything we were…’

  ‘That’s who I am, now.’

  ‘No, it isn’t. That isn’t you. That was an act, a game, it was all pretend…’

  ‘This isn’t fair, Jon…’

  ‘What isn’t fair is that we never got our chance. Kate.’r />
  That word – that name – it rips into me like a missile, shattering my soul, and I hate him for doing that. For bringing her back. For reminding me of everything I didn’t want to remember. For reminding me of everything I don’t ever want to be again.

  ‘And I’m tired, kid. I’m tired of fighting this now. All the shit we went through, all the pain and the fucking heartbreak and…’ He bows his head and runs a hand along the back of his neck and I’m glad, that he decided not to finish that sentence. I don’t want him to finish that sentence. He looks back up at me, and his eyes are carrying a sadness that’s all too familiar to me. ‘I want that chance now. I think we deserve it, don’t you?’