Phoenix (The Bellator Saga Book 4)

by Cecilia London

  “What happened?”

  “I had this moment when I knew I could take advantage of her. And I exploited her feelings for me.” He clenched his fists. “I feel terrible about it.”

  Natalie pressed on. “Jack, what happened?”

  “Nothing happened,” he said. “But it could have. I wanted to be with her so badly and I could tell she wanted me to act on it. I knew she was vulnerable so I stopped. But not before I screwed with her head a little.”

  “So nothing actually happened?”

  He wasn’t going to give her details. Not when he felt so fucking guilty about it. “No. But it could have. And it happened again last night.” He sighed. “I thought we opened a door yesterday. We were talking, she was opening up, and I blew it. I don’t know how to read her sometimes. I’ve been trying to project myself as this pillar of strength, this tower of confidence, but it’s an illusion. No doubt she’s figured that out.”

  “I highly doubt that, Jack.”

  Caroline had been so tired the day before. Tired and scared and completely susceptible to his manipulations. “I’m taking advantage of her.”

  “But you haven’t. You said you haven’t.”

  “I stopped both times. Last night I almost didn’t. She had to tell me to stop more than once.”

  “Why didn’t you listen the first time?”

  “She responded to me the way she used to, even though she was saying something different.” He hung his head. “She’s never said no to me before and I thought I could talk her into it.”

  “Never?” Natalie asked.

  He couldn’t blame her for being skeptical. “Never.”

  “Really?”

  Of course she wouldn’t believe him. “We were both, uh, very demonstrative when we were alone with each other. It was amazing,” Jack said, lowering his voice.

  “Well.” Natalie blushed. “I guess it’s a good thing you were that compatible.”

  “Doesn’t feel that way anymore.”

  She twirled her pen in her fingers, refocusing. “You stopped last night. It took you a little longer than you think it should have, right?”

  Why had he even done it in the first place? He knew better. “I did. But what if I fucked her up even more?”

  “I doubt that very much. You’re learning her boundaries. And she’s letting you know what they are.”

  Pretty words didn’t make him feel any less awful about it. “I’m an asshole.”

  “Don’t you think your remorse is a sign that you aren’t the man you were all those years ago? What would you have done twenty years ago in the same situation?”

  Goddammit. He’d told Dr. Haddad far too much about his past. “I would have toyed with her until I had my way.” He swallowed hard. “But there’s more to it than that. Things have been happening to me.”

  “Like what?”

  “I’ve been having dreams.”

  “What kind of dreams?”

  “Inappropriate dreams.”

  Natalie sighed. “Could you be a smidge more specific?”

  Jack pursed his lips. “They started once Caroline arrived on the base. They haven’t happened all that often but when they have – they’ve been very graphic.”

  She tried not to smile. “You mean sex dreams?”

  He didn’t return her grin. “Yes. And in all of them she looks like she did before.”

  “Like what?”

  “A healthy weight. A smiling face. No scars or broken bones.” He closed his eyes, envisioning her as he did in his sleep. “And with that gorgeous hair.”

  “What’s the problem? Do you think that means something about how you feel about her appearance now?”

  “She’s beautiful,” Jack said instantly. “She’s always been beautiful.”

  “What else bothers you about them?”

  “They’re not healthy. They sometimes become disturbing. Harmful.” He ran his hands through his hair. “Some of them have been terrible.”

  Natalie tented her fingers on her desk. “Tell me about them.”

  He finally had her attention. Maybe she thought he’d been messing around before. “The first one started out safe enough, like those dreams I told you about before. When she would come to me at night. But by the end of it I was hurting her.” Jack took another deep breath. “I thought maybe it was because I was angry with her because she’d just arrived and had acted so terribly toward me. But I’ve had more dreams, worse than that one. Most of them have been harmless, but a few of them-” He wrung his hands.

  “They bother you,” Natalie said.

  Jack took another shaky breath, trapped within the kind of embarrassment and agony he didn’t care to show to anyone. “I can’t control them. I do things to her, Natalie. Appalling, unscrupulous things. Treating her like some plaything. Like a piece of trash, really.” He rubbed his palm back and forth on the armrest to try to calm himself. “In at least one of them I have very clearly damaged her emotionally and forced her to do things she didn’t want to do. Punished her. And last night-”

  “What happened last night?”

  “I had a dream that I coerced her in her apartment.” Jack leaned back in his chair. “It was almost like I – it came very close to sexual assault. She let it be known that she didn’t want to do it. And what she thought of me after the fact.”

  His therapist was silent. Excruciatingly silent. Jesus Christ, she’d finally figured out how fucked up he really was.

  “I’m an awful person,” he whispered. “What’s wrong with me?”

  She fiddled with her pen and looked at Jack. “Commander, I don’t want to get too personal, but did any of this mirror anything the two of you have done before?”

  That was way too personal. “We had an adventurous sex life.”

  “Any fantasies involving dubious consent or rape?”

  “Not really. I mean, we-” He had to be careful with this one. “We did some kinky stuff. But it always involved enthusiastic consent.”

  “I believe you. Go on.”

  He didn’t really want to, but whatever. Maybe expressing things out loud would help cleanse his soul. “There were parallels. But I would never – we never did anything close to what I did in the dreams. I can tell the difference between passion and pain. I’m not that heartless. Neither one of us was into sadism or masochism.”

  “Why is this really bothering you?”

  He’d made so many mistakes. Done so many horrible things. Over the course of his entire life, not just in the past few years. “I treated her like I treated the women before her,” Jack said. “Like she meant nothing. Except it was worse. Much worse.”

  “Have you ever forced yourself on a woman before?”

  “No.” He thought for a moment. “Maybe. I don’t know anymore.”

  “How many of these dreams have you had?”

  “A few,” Jack said. “I’ve told you about the two that were the worst.”

  “Any other dreams beyond that?”

  He wasn’t going to elaborate. A simple one word answer would do, for the most part. “Yes,” he said. “But those have been normal, relatively speaking.”

  “So it hasn’t been that often.”

  “No,” he said. “Often enough, though.”

  “They make you feel bad, right?”

  Couldn’t she tell? “Just a little.”

  “May I ask you another personal question, sir?”

  Jack let a tiny smile slip free. “You don’t have to keep calling me sir, Natalie.”

  “I like to occasionally remind myself that I’m treating someone who’s more important than me.”

  “That’s not how I’d describe it.”

  Natalie waved her hand at him. “Whatever. May I ask it?”

  “Sure.”

  “Why didn’t you treat Caroline like the other women? What made her different?”

  “At first I wasn’t sure,” he said. “I’ve tried to figure it out. I talked to her that first night and thought s
he was the most amazing person I’d ever met. Good and kind and thoughtful. And funny too. She was still dealing with her husband’s death. I probably could have exploited that.”

  “But you didn’t.”

  Dear God, he’d considered it. So many times. Those first few months when he’d jerked himself off, imagining he was inside her. Wondering how he could get her into bed sooner. “I didn’t. I wanted her to like me. To want to be with me someday.” Jack chuckled at himself. “I sound like some gangly adolescent boy mooning over his dream girl, don’t I?”

  “I think it’s quite charming,” Natalie said.

  Her words didn’t stop him from feeling silly about it. Or guilty. He wasn’t sure anymore. “I wanted her to spend time with me because of who I was. Not because of money or power or anything else. I never felt like those other women were with me because they genuinely liked me. But Caroline did. I didn’t want to take advantage of that. It seemed cruel. I did want her, very badly. But I knew if I pushed too fast I’d wreck my chances.”

  “So you changed for her.”

  The puzzle pieces shifted into place. “I guess I did.”

  Natalie’s smile was just a bit too self-satisfied. “About time you finally figured it out.”

  Goddammit. She was right. “When I was around Caroline, I felt good about myself. I tried not to lie to her about who I was, I swear I didn’t. But it was hard. I knew she’d never been with a man like me before.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Like Dr. Haddad didn’t know. “Shallow, ruthless, cruel.”

  “Perhaps you should try to be a little less negative for the sake of this conversation.”

  Natalie might have tried to hide her eye roll, but Jack caught it. “Why should I?” he asked. “It’s the truth. She knew how I’d made my money, how I’d used people. Her first husband was nothing like that. He was a decent person.”

  “And you weren’t?”

  “Not until I met her,” he said quietly. “She saw beyond my past. But now when she looks at me, she knows it was all a façade. I really am the horrible person I tried to convince her I wasn’t. She knows the truth.”

  “Jack, you’re not a bad person.”

  He swallowed the bitterness in his throat. “That’s what Caroline said when we were first getting to know each other.”

  “She’s right.”

  “I disagree.”

  Natalie shoved the pen in her desk. That was a new move. “Why are you here?”

  “What?”

  “At this base. Leading this rebellion, insurgence, underground movement, whatever you want to call it. Why are you here?”

  “Because of her,” Jack whispered. “I had an obligation to her. I felt-”

  “Oh, bullshit,” she snapped. “I’m willing to grant you a little leeway but this isn’t just about Caroline. Why are you here? Why did you get involved?”

  “My wife forced my hand when she showed me all the classified documents she’d obtained.”

  She sniffed loudly. “Again with the Caroline kick. Get off that for a minute. Would you be here if she hadn’t prodded you?”

  “I don’t know,” Jack said. “Probably not.”

  She pressed on. “Do you consider yourself patriotic?”

  “Of course.”

  “Why’d you run for office?”

  “I wanted to give back to the country that gave me so much.”

  “In what sense?”

  “I benefited tremendously from our economic system. Financially, personally. I wanted to make sure others had the same opportunities.”

  “You answered that question without hesitation.”

  “Campaign programming,” Jack mumbled.

  “You don’t think Santos shares your values?”

  Was that meant to be rhetorical? “What do you think?”

  “I think he’s a megalomaniac hell bent on totalitarian rule.”

  A quite succinct and accurate description. “Not very free market or capitalist, is it?” he asked.

  “Probably not.” Natalie stared at him. “You really think this is all about Caroline?”

  Anything else seemed disloyal. “I don’t know.”

  “You can have more than one reason for being here. You dragged yourself across an entire continent for her but you’re allowed to acknowledge that what you’re doing is bigger than your relationship with your wife. Much of what you’ve done and will continue to do has been incredibly noble.”

  Jack snorted. “I’m not noble. Not when it comes to this, not when it comes to her.”

  “What do you mean?”

  May as well damn all the torpedoes at once. Maximize the hour. “I misled Caroline about my past. About how I treated all the women I’d slept with.”

  “In what sense?”

  It was much easier to tell Natalie than to share the truth with Caroline. “I glossed over some of the rotten things I’ve done. She unwittingly lied for me during the campaign for governor. Someone – I don’t know who, but it was probably my opponent – found this woman I’d dated for a couple of months, long before I met Caroline. Got her to hold a press conference where she accused me of some pretty ungallant things. I convinced my wife that none of it was true.”

  “And it was?”

  “Almost all of it.” He shook his head. How had he ever deserved her trust? “She went to bat for me so many times during that gubernatorial race. She would stand in front of the media repeatedly proclaiming my innocence and defending my honor and never once did I correct her. How could I do that to her integrity? To her sense of decency?”

  “She believed you without question.”

  “She did,” Jack said. “She practically killed herself running back and forth across the state that summer, all while serving full time in Congress. She’s the reason I won; I’m convinced of it.”

  “Why didn’t you tell her the truth?”

  Hadn’t Natalie noticed that he preferred to hide his flaws instead of revealing them? “I can’t tell her things that might make her think less of me.”

  “She married you without any indecision. Don’t you think that tells you something about what she thinks of you? Don’t you think she knows you’re not perfect?”

  “She has no idea how badly I treated some of those women. I made it sound like we were using each other when in reality I was a manipulative cad.”

  Natalie tapped one finger against her cheek. “You stopped last night before anything happened.”

  “Yes.”

  “You’ve never done anything she didn’t want you to do.”

  “No.”

  “Yet you’ve had these inexplicable dreams.”

  “Yes.”

  “Would you ever act on them?”

  “No,” Jack said. “The bad ones sicken me.”

  “Then don’t worry about them.”

  After everything he’d told her, that was her response? “Are you sure it’s that easy?”

  “We all have dark thoughts. As long as we don’t act on them, we’re fine.”

  Dark thoughts, dark behaviors, dark desires. Did any of it matter when his past would forever haunt him? “I am a sexual predator, aren’t I? Christine was right.”

  “If that’s what you’ve been worried about, you need to get it out of your head.”

  “How else do you explain the dreams?”

  “If you were a predator you would have acted on it a long time ago, and it would have caught up with you. Christine said that to hurt you and you’re insecure enough to internalize it and give it a life of its own. So let that go. I want you to think for a minute. What’s really upsetting you about your relationship with Caroline?”

  How could he pick just one thing? “She won’t talk to me. Not for any length of time and not about anything substantive.”

  “Why do you think she doesn’t want to talk to you?”

  He’d never told Natalie the whole truth about that night in the forest. But she knew enough. “Caroline blame
s me for what happened when we got separated.”

  “You don’t know that. Why haven’t you talked to her about it?”

  I fucking tried and she won’t let me. “I’m so ashamed of myself. I can’t even say it out loud.”

  “Have you talked to her about it in the dreams you’ve been having?”

  “I’ve never gotten the chance. She implies that I must not truly love her, then she’s gone and I wake up before I get the chance to explain.”

  “She’s never said anything like that to you in reality, has she?”

  Not yet. “No.”

  “What else does she talk about in the dreams?”

  This was easily the most embarrassing conversation they’d ever had. “Most of the time we aren’t talking that much.”

  Natalie stifled a grin. “I see. Maybe you are some gangly adolescent boy.”

  He ignored her comment. “I can’t talk about it in the dreams. What does that say about me when I can’t even have a healthy emotional bond with her inside my head?”

  “It says you’re working through a lot of painful issues. What else does she say to you in these dreams?”

  Jack rubbed his eyes. “She’s asking why I hurt her. Asking why I’m treating her so badly. But the worst part is when she says she loves me. I’d give anything for her to tell me that in real life.”

  “You think that won’t happen again?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “How do you feel about the way the two of you were separated?”

  Natalie was trying to trick him into giving her something else. “I feel like it’s my fault.”

  She stared him down. “I’ve seen you working the bag at the gym when we’re there at the same time. Pounding the hell out of it. You’re taking a lot of energy out on that inanimate object. I’m surprised you haven’t knocked it off its chain.”

  Aside from going on long runs, destroying the heavy bag was his favorite activity. “I’m building stamina.”

  “Bullshit. What are you thinking about when you’re hitting it?”

  “Nothing.”

  Natalie sighed. “You and your wife are infuriating. You internalize just about every goddamn thing you hear, no matter how meaningless.”

  Did she lecture Caroline the way she lectured him? It seemed that way. “You can imagine what our relationship was like.”