She could feel her body building towards a slow climax that built up rapidly as he moved inside her, massaging her clit between his gentle fingers in perfect unison. She had never felt so swept away before in her life. It felt like she was high, completely drunk, but she knew she was sober. He carried her away in his quickening rhythm.
He opened his eyes suddenly, staring deeply into hers. In a perfect moment of climax they looked at one another, taking in each other’s faces, their essence in that exact second of release. He would never forget how she looked in that moment. His elation would always be imprinted in her mind.
She didn’t know how loudly she screamed but she knew she screamed the moment he came inside her, at the exact moment that her body erupted in ecstasy! The perfect build-up to the perfect release.
He fell down in a beautiful exhaustion next to her on the mattress. They were both panting.
Adam held her tight as their sweaty bodies heaved up and down together, just enjoying the moment, the afterglow.
She’d never had a cigarette in her life. But she suddenly felt like she could enjoy one.
Chapter Eight
It took a few seconds for the knocking in her dream to become a real sound as Jacky slowly awoke in the early morning sun. She moaned and turned around on her side, wrapping her naked body further into the warmth of Adam’s figure that still lay slowly breathing in heavy sleep pressed against her. She never wanted to leave the comfort of the mattress. For an instant her world was okay. But only for a moment. The knocking on the door grew more insistent.
Adam groaned, rolling over as he slowly woke from his slumber. His entire body was in pain. The whiplash from his drunken excursion had finally sunken in.
The knocking carried on, almost violently.
“Jesus,” Adam moaned, forcing his body up from the floor. He sleepily picking up the towel from the floor, only noticing it because he stumbled over it. He wrapped it around his naked waist as he walked to the door.
Jacky sleepily rolled over, slowly waking up, trying to piece her surroundings into a story. All it took was Adam’s smell on the bedsheets to remind her of where she was. She smiled, despite herself. It smelled like soap and passion spent.
She was shaken out of her sleep instantly when she heard the familiar voices shouting downstairs.
It was Nick. Fuck.
She jumped up, pulling her dried green dress over her head and zipping it up as best she could.
Jacky ran downstairs as fast as she could. But by the time she got to the two men, they already had one another by the chest. Rather Adam had Nick by the shirt, seeing as Adam wasn’t exactly wearing a shirt, or anything else except the towel that was still somehow tied around his waist.
“Stop it!” she shouted at them but neither paid much attention to her desperate cries. It was like they didn’t even notice her there, despite her being the object they were fighting over.
“What the fuck, Nick? What are you doing here?” Adam shouted, pushing Nick. He stumbled backward, the door hitting him between his shoulder blades.
“You’re such an asshole!” was Nick’s only response as he ran towards Adam again, trying to punch him in the face. Adam ducked. They knew each other too well. Too many years of play fighting together; they knew the other one’s next move. Still, they tried.
“I’m the asshole? You’re the one who can’t help but stick your dick into anything that moves,” Adam retorted, this time actually landing a punch on Nick’s jaw, albeit a sloppy shot that didn’t do much damage. His body was still in slow motion after the chaotic day before.
Nick wasn’t in much better shape either. He’d been up since Jacky sped away from him in the taxi. He knew where she was going but there was nothing he could do. He pretended that he didn’t care. She was just another hookup. He went to the strip clubs. He saw his usual women. But nothing could get his mind off Jacky and the time they shared in Prague. Nothing had ever felt so real before. No other woman could erase that feeling, or at least the memory of that feeling, from his mind. It was the first time in his entire life that it all finally made sense. He felt comfortable in his world, content. The only feeling better than fleeting happiness.
But she was gone. She’d run away to Adam. The only woman who’d ever mattered and she chose his best friend instead. Serves him right, he thought. All those years of treating women like amusements…
Still, he couldn’t get the feeling of Jacky on his skin out of his mind, no matter how much he drank, no matter how much he stared at naked has-been-goddesses parading their worn-out naked bodies around the scarcely lit poles.
By the time the sun came up and the barman ushered his drunk, exhausted ass outside, he was near mad with confused rage. Or at least it felt like rage but he had no idea what it was. He had never felt this feeling before. But all he knew was that he had to have Jacky; his life would be meaningless without her.
He knew he’d find her there. Part of him had hoped he wouldn’t. But he knew enough to go to Adam’s house before even checking hers. He still wasn’t sure when he used his remote to get onto the property. But when he saw Adam open the door in that towel, deep claw marks running down his naked chest, that’s when he knew.
But it wasn’t the scratches that gave Jacky’s presence away. It was the look on Adam’s face; rather the aura radiating from him. He’d never seen his friend look so relaxed, so at peace, happily spent. He recognized the look instantly.
He was never normally a violent man but something inside him snapped and he flung himself at his friend and business partner. He felt betrayed.
“Guys!” Jacky shouted again. They took no notice of her.
Luckily there was no real furniture in Adam’s house so there was nothing to trip over as they pushed each other around semi-violently.
“Like you didn’t stick yours right up there too, you cunt!” Nick shouted, pushing Adam into the wall right next to Jacky on the stairs.
“It wasn’t like that, don’t cheapen it!” Adam retorted angrily.
“Oh so when I do it, it’s cheap, but when you do it, then it’s suddenly all deep and meaningful? Fuck that!”
They were so busy with their petty, childish fighting that they didn’t notice Jacky storm out the door in tears. They didn’t even notice the door slam behind her as she ran away from the house, sobbing.
“Why do you always want every damn girl I like? Like it’s some competition? You always get whatever you want. But not this time. She’s mine!” Adam shouted.
“Well, what does she want? Let’s see who she picks. I can bet my half of the company that it’s not going to be you!”
This was the exact moment that they noticed that Jacky was no longer there.
It broke the spell. Adam sighed and sat down on the stairs, dropping his head into his hands. “This isn’t getting us anywhere,” he said.
“What are we going to do, dude?” Nick asked, his anger subsided. Neither were ever very good at acting tough. They’d grown up too cushioned and nerdy for that. He sat down on the singular couch in the room, not too far from the stairs. Somehow, neither had fallen over it during their struggle. But then again, none of that was very coordinated.
“This is silly,” Adam said. “We’re completely fucking this up. This isn’t going to make anyone happy. Poor Jacky. She must feel even more confused right now.” He was always too empathetic for his own good. He was genuinely concerned about Jacky.
“What happened to your face, by the way? You look like shit,” Nick said, getting up and grabbing two beers from the fridge. He handed one to Adam on the stairs.
“Thanks. You don’t exactly look too hot yourself. You smell like smoke and cheap whores.” He opened the beer and took a deep swig.
“Yeah, that about sums it up.” Nick sat back down on the couch, opening his own beer. “Christ, we’re both useless at being billionaires, aren’t we?”
“It’s gone right to our heads,” Adam admitted.
“We need
to fix this,” Nick said.
“Yeah, but can we please get something to eat first. I’m famished. Neither of us is in any state to do anything about this now.”
“Fair enough. But I’m driving. Your car is fucked up, man. You could’ve just told me you didn’t like the color.”
“I did, you never listened.”
“Sounds like me. Guess breakfast is on me then.”
Chapter Nine
Jacky went back to her apartment for the first time in what felt like lifetimes. But she couldn’t stand being around her things now. It all seemed so foreign to her. She was driving herself crazy thinking about the previous few days, replaying the events through her mind over and over again.
Each experience was so magical in its own way, how could she ever decide which one she preferred? She’d always thought that she would know when she found the one, it would feel right. But both Adam and Nick had made her feel so alive. Each in their own way.
Thinking about it just made her feel like a whore. That’s what it looked like after all. The country girl runs away from her boyfriend at home to go stay with the billionaires. Just so she could fuck one in a fancy hotel in Prague, and then the other one the very next day in his mansion. Just a gold-digging whore. What a life.
But she knew it wasn’t like that. She didn’t know what to do with herself at present. She didn’t feel like eating. She couldn’t sleep. She didn’t even want to read.
So she did the only thing she could think of. She packed her bags and got on the first bus home. Back to her parents’ house. It was about a six hour bus ride. But she enjoyed the passing of scenery and time. It gave her time to think, sorting through the puzzle pieces.
Her mother didn’t need much warning to prepare for her arrival. Jacky phoned her in tears, saying she wanted to come home. Her mother asked no questions, just got the bed in her old room ready again. She’d been waiting for her to come home for a visit but Jacky seemed to have gotten so caught up in her new city life.
When Jacky got to the station, both parents were waiting for her with open arms. She plastered a smile on her face that her mother saw through immediately but asked no questions. Jacky got onto the back seat of her dad’s beat up Chevvy as they drove the familiar streets to their humble home. The one just down the road from Adam’s place.
It was hard to be back home. It all felt so different now. They drove past the school. Past Nick’s house. The church… Adam’s house… Finally, her dad turned into lane she’d seen so many times in her life. It was like coming home. It had been the longest she had ever been away from home before and it all still looked exactly the same. But so much had happened in her life since then.
She walked up the stairs to her old room slowly, promising to be down for lunch later. She closed the door behind her, relieved. But she couldn’t run away from her own mind. It had followed her around the country.
She didn’t go down for lunch. Her mother couldn’t get her out of her room until breakfast the next day, assertively ushering her to the kitchen to sit down behind the plate overflowing with pancakes and bacon.
Jacky knew better than to argue with her mother and listlessly shoveled the food into her mouth. It didn’t taste like anything but she realized she was famished, finishing everything on her plate and dishing some eggs on the side. Her mother looked on pleased, pouring her a cup of coffee to wash it all down.
She still hadn’t asked her why she was home. She knew Jacky would tell her all when she was ready. After the second cup of coffee Jacky finally opened up, filling her mother in with all the developments since she left home. The edited version, minus all the steamy sex scenes.
Jacky was still no closer to finding the answer to her problem. Which one did she want? The charming Nick with the hidden vulnerable side who made her feel so alive with his impulsive nature? Or the compassionate Adam who swept her away in more emotion than she’d ever felt?
All she knew was that she missed them both.
They knew they wouldn’t find her at her flat, but they looked anyway.
After grabbing some pizzas that they devoured in minutes, they’d finally set out to find the only thing that mattered to them. Jax. They still had no idea what they’d do when they found her but they’d agreed that they’d let her make up her own mind. They’d let her choose. Neither wanted to think about the possibility of what would happen if she chose the other one, but even if she chose them—things would never be the same ever again. But what was the alternative? Everyone loses?
Nick used his spare key to open Jacky’s door after getting no response to minutes of insistent knocking.
The place was as neat as Jacky always kept it but there were clear signs of packing. It wasn’t hard to figure out where she had gone, her world really wasn’t very big. Nick remembered that he could easily track her phone. The phone that she had been refusing to answer despite their endless calls since she left not too long ago. She’d gone home. Or at least to what used to be their home.
The city felt empty without her. For them, home had really become wherever Jacky was, they realized.
They both kept phoning, sending her messages, reaching out. But there was nobody on the other side.
“We can’t exactly just rock up at her mom’s house and be like hey, let us in,” Adam said as they sat down in Jacky’s lounge. The place felt incredibly void without her but there was nowhere else they wanted to be.
“Well, what else are we going to do?” Nick replied, typing out another pleading message that wouldn’t get read.
“You want to drive or fly?”
“What do you think?” Nick smiled.
“Obviously fly. I mean what’s the point of having money if you’re not going to spend it flippantly?”
“That sounds like something I would say.”
“I’ve been hanging around you for too long.”
“Yeah, I can tell. Look at you fighting for a girl. That’s new.”
“It’s not just any girl. Fuck man, what are we going to do?” Adam asked as they closed the door behind them.
It was a question they pondered over the hours that lapsed like a slow foreign movie with no subtitles but they were forced to watch anyway. The taxi drive to the airstrip. The two hours on the small plane. It was bizarre what money could buy you at any inconvenient time. They should probably have been more responsible with their money but it was just one of those things other people told you to do. They invested some of it in well advised ventures. It was a financial app they’d developed, and they did know a few tips and tricks to expand their wealth.
It wasn’t the same plane they’d taken to Prague a few days prior. Nick felt somewhat relieved about it. But he didn’t understand why. He was never the sentimental type. Nor the type to get himself in such a spin over a woman. The feeling confused him. The feeling of everything in his entire world suddenly being unimportant in comparison to his need to find Jacky.
The fact it was now a Wednesday didn’t matter to Nick. Nor the fact that he’d even thought about the office since the previous week. All that mattered was what Jacky was thinking. What if she didn’t want to see either of them again? Or if she chose Adam instead of him. But what if she chose him over Adam? He couldn’t imagine his life with either of them. ‘Mutually exclusive’ had never sounded like such a cruel a term.
Adam’s thoughts followed much the same path, just more elaborate in its twists and turns. He couldn’t find a resolve in his mind, no matter how many times he rewrote the equation. But they had to know. This uncertainty was driving him mad. Like the cruelest kind of limbo. Purgatory. He could not imagine any of the outcomes, yet he tried. None of them seemed satisfactory. But he had to know.
They made the flight in silence, each floating away in his own personal hell. It felt much longer than two hours. Still no subtitles to the movie that was their lives.
When they showed up at her doorstep finally, they were both so anxious they could hardly speak, their hearts wer
e beating in their chests. Two such different beings but feeling such similar emotion each in his own way.
“Nick, Adam,” her mother said simply like she had been expecting them. But of course, she had.
“Can we see Jacky, please?” Nick stated the obvious. He only realized now how haggard the two of them must have looked. Neither had slept in ages except for the tactical power blackout they had on the mini flight. Adam still had a scrape on the side of his face, luckily not too deep. But the sight of them was quite dramatic.
But she would’ve denied them entry even if they were immaculately dressed and polished. She’d heard enough of the story from her distraught daughter. “I’m afraid not.” She didn’t bother denying that Jacky was actually there. Where else would she be? But she couldn’t let them in.
“Please, Mrs. Ryan. We have to see her,” Adam pleaded almost desperately.
“I don’t think that will help anything right now,” she responded as she started to close the door. But Nick wouldn’t let her. He grabbed the door, stopping it in its trajectory.
“Not resolving it won’t help anything either. Please, Mrs. Ryan, let us at least talk to her. We can’t leave with things the way they are. We’ve been through too much over the years. Please,” Nick said.
She didn’t respond. She didn’t know how to. She just stood there, slowly letting the door swing open.
They pushed past her wordlessly, making their way up the stairs.
Jacky’s door was closed. Adam knocked gently.
There was no answer. He knocked again before opening the door. It was unlocked.
Jacky was sitting on her bed, staring at the door. She looked as bad as they did.
Housekeeping Page 24