Wicked Game

by Michelle Betham

  He doesn’t …

  Sliding down from the counter I slip Joe’s shirt on and go out onto the terrace, the sound of the ocean filling the air, and I think about Noah. About what we had. What he did. What we all did … Some days I still struggle to put it all behind me, but I put that down to too much time on my own with just a baby for company. Too much time to overthink and analyse.

  “Hey.”

  His voice makes me spin around, and I lean back against the barrier, smiling as he comes closer. He smells of lime shower gel and that same cologne that always reminds me of that night.

  “Do you want to talk?” he asks, his eyes fixed on mine, and I think he knows there’s something on my mind. Something other than babies and feeding schedules. Something other than his behaviour tonight, and his dogged persistence regarding marriage. He knows. I couldn’t hide it. But I don’t know if I can tell him, if I should tell him. I don’t want to tell him; do I need to?

  “Maybe later.”

  He raises an eyebrow. “That’s supposed to make me feel okay, is it?”

  I pull him against me, his naked chest still warm against me. “It’s nothing. I’m fine, really.”

  “You sure? Because, you know, those persistent genes of mine …”

  I laugh, he’s already making me feel like I’m worrying over nothing. Whatever made Noah call me tonight, I’m choosing to ignore it.

  I’m choosing to ignore a lot, tonight.

  “I love you, Joe.”

  I can say those words so easily now. They fall from my lips like they were always meant to be said, so much so that sometimes I wonder who my soul mate really is. Noah cheated on me. He chose to lie to me. Joe lied too, but he hasn’t cheated on me. Hasn’t thrown what we have away in a moment of selfish weakness, and I know I can’t compare a few months of being together to five years of marriage, but how much of that marriage was really a lie?

  “Love you back.” He cups my cheek, stares deep into my eyes, so deep I feel my stomach somersault over and over, like a million tiny butterflies are flying around in there. “More than you’ll ever know,” he whispers, pulling me into his arms, and I cling onto him. I hold him, and I remember everything we’ve been through. Every second I wanted him out of my life. Every moment he touched me, and I didn’t know it at the time, I was too busy hating him, but every time he touched me he was slowly drawing me closer and closer to him. And I never stopped him. I didn’t stop him, even when I knew we weren’t being careful. We had sex, back then, and we weren’t being careful, and I didn’t even see that as a problem. Never once thought about the consequences.

  “Our daughter was conceived in the most public of places,” I whisper, trailing my fingers lightly up and down his spine.

  “You see that as a problem?”

  I smile slightly. “No. It’s just that – people watched, we weren’t alone. We definitely weren’t careful.” I pull back from him, and I look at him, his deep blue eyes staring right into mine. “But, if we’d been careful, Hollie wouldn’t be here. Would she?”

  He shakes his head, tucks a strand of hair behind my ear. “Fate, Kari.”

  I’m overthinking things again, starting to doubt myself. Doubt Joe.

  Because of what happened tonight?

  Because Noah called me?

  No. I’m just overthinking things …

  He puts it all down to fate, but we both knew that we weren’t using protection that night – the night at the cabin by the lake, when we had sex in the middle of a crowded room, before we had sex again, outside. With Inger. Another threesome I don’t regret.

  I didn’t regret the first one.

  Until I found out the reason behind it.

  We knew we weren’t being careful …

  “The past doesn’t matter now, Kari. What matters is the future. And we have got an amazing one ahead of us.”

  I smile. I reach out and touch his rough jaw line, run my fingers across his heavy stubble; I kiss him. Maybe he’s right. Maybe we do have an amazing future ahead of us, and there’s a part of me that resents Noah calling me tonight; for putting doubt in my mind that hadn’t been there for a long time.

  There’d been doubt?

  Once …

  “An even better one, if you marry me.”

  I look up at him. “Stop doing that, Joe. Please.”

  I let go of him and sit down on one of the three cream couches out here on the terrace, curling my legs up underneath myself. He sits down opposite me, leans forward and clasps his hands between his knees.

  “Are you going to tell me what’s up?”

  I briefly raise my eyes to the sky, taking a long, deep breath before I look back at him.

  “Noah called me, tonight. Just before we left the house.”

  His expression changes immediately, he looks confused at first, but that soon turns into something I can only describe as mild anger.

  “Why’s he calling you now? You haven’t been in contact for almost a year. Have you?”

  The way he says that, it makes my hackles rise slightly, is he going to repeat what happened earlier? “Are you accusing me of something here, Joe? I haven’t seen or spoken to Noah for a long time …”

  “But Jenna fills you in, right? She tells you how he is, how he’s doing, what’s going on in his life, I mean, why should that matter to you anymore? Huh? Why should that matter?”

  His eyes are blazing, and I sit back against the couch cushions, I look at him, I’m not responding to him when he’s in this mood. This, combined with what happened at the party earlier tonight, it’s almost like a flashback, to the Joe I once thought he was, the one who scared me. The one I couldn’t understand.

  “It doesn’t matter.” I say quietly, keeping my eyes on his, he needs to know he can’t be this way around me. I won’t let him. “But if you continue to be like this every time his name is mentioned – if you continue to be this way, full stop, for any reason, I will walk away. Do you hear me?”

  He stares at me, but he remains silent.

  “I’m serious, Joe. I love you, I do, but I’m not living with this shit, I’m not doing that.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Again. Do you know how many times you’ve said that tonight?”

  “I don’t know what else I can say.”

  I look away, focus on the pots and palm trees that decorate this wide, white-tiled terrace.

  “What did he want?”

  I turn back to face Joe. “He wanted to know how I was. If I was okay.”

  “Why now?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Did you ask him?”

  “No. Would you like me to call him back and interrogate him? It’s almost breakfast time over there, he’s probably awake.”

  He just looks at me.

  I drop my head and take a deep breath. “Okay. I’m the one who’s sorry now.” I raise my gaze. “It just threw me, that’s all. Hearing from him, out of the blue.”

  “You think there’s a reason behind that call?”

  “I don’t know. He just sounded tired … said his head was a bit of a mess. Jenna had shown him a photo of me and Hollie, apparently, I guess he was just having a hard time dealing with the fact I really have moved on.”

  “Has he? Moved on?”

  “Jenna says he’s trying to.”

  “Maybe he needs to try harder.”

  Maybe he does.

  “You should’ve told me, that he’d called.”

  “Why? It didn’t seem all that important, it didn’t mean anything.”

  Didn’t it?

  “We all need to let go of the past, Kari.”

  “Yeah. Yeah, we do.”

  He’s right. Dwelling on the past will only drag our future down, and I don’t want that to happen. We have Hollie now, and she is all that really matters.

  Joe gets up and sits next to me, and I look down as his fingers wrap around mine, engulfing my hand in his. I forget how tall he is. How big he is. How str
ong and imposing he can be. “Whatever’s going on with him, Kari, forget it. Forget him. That part of your life is over.”

  I look into his eyes and they’re calmer now. He’s lost the anger. He’s back to the Joe I fell in love with, the man who sings his daughter to sleep and makes me breakfast in bed at weekends. Noah calling tonight threw me, but I think I may be reading more into it than there was. Maybe he was just tired. Maybe seeing a photograph of me and Hollie really did mess with his head, I don’t know. But I can’t dwell on it.

  “I’m sorry. I should never have answered the phone …”

  “Hey, it’s okay.” He cups my cheek, turns my head to face him, and he smiles. “Baby, it’s okay. You, me and Hollie, we’re a family now, and he needs to be able to deal with that.”

  “It’s hard, to stop caring about him, Joe. Really hard. I loved him so much, once.”

  “He doesn’t need you anymore, Kari. We do. Me and Hollie, we need you.”

  “I know.”

  “I love you, so much. And all I want is for us to be so fucking happy it makes people sick.”

  I grip his hand tighter, and I smile. I bring his hand to my mouth and I kiss it, before I kiss him. “I am definitely going to marry you, one day, Joseph Millar.”

  “Yeah, you are.”

  He pushes me back onto the couch, and I arch my back and open my legs, I want him back inside me, because I feel safe, when he’s inside me. And as his body bears down on mine, I close my eyes and I forget Noah even called me. It didn’t happen. I never heard his voice, he wasn’t there.

  I’m in love with Joe Millar.

  Our crazy connection can’t be severed now.

  It can’t.

  It won’t ever be.

  Ever …

  Twenty-Nine

  “It’s a shame Leo couldn’t make the trip,” I say to Jenna as we walk along the beach.

  “He couldn’t get the time off, which he’s gutted about, because he’s always wanted to come to L.A. But he’s waited so long for this promotion, he can’t just up and leave on holiday so soon after taking charge.”

  “Couldn’t you have waited, until he could get the time off? You didn’t have to come on your own.”

  “I haven’t seen you in almost eight months, Kari. And in that time you’ve upped sticks and moved to California with a multi-millionaire, had a baby, and now you spend your days fending off marriage proposals from said multi-millionaire while living in a house the likes of which I’ve only ever seen on reality TV shows about A-List celebrities. Someone had to come over and give you a reality check.”

  I look at her, and I smile as she takes Hollie from me. “It’s not perfect, Jen.”

  “It isn’t?” She raises an eyebrow, and I cross my arms against myself as we walk back towards the house. “Anything you want to talk about?”

  I glance out at the ocean and smile again. “No. I’m just saying …” I look back at Jenna, “nothing’s perfect. I’ve been finding it tough sometimes, with Joe being out at work so much and me alone with Hollie a lot of the time. I guess I missed my best friend more than I thought I would.”

  She nudges me gently. “Good job I came over then, isn’t it?” She kisses Hollie’s forehead, snuggling her closer against her. “Aren’t Joe’s parents around a lot? You said they’d moved closer to you both after finding out this little one was on the way.”

  “They have. And they are a godsend, Jen, I’m so grateful to have them. I don’t know what I’d have done without them.”

  “Hired a nanny? I mean, it’s not like you can’t afford one.”

  “I don’t want a nanny. And stop talking about money, you know it makes me uncomfortable.”

  She gives a snort of derision and looks at Hollie. “Your mum’s weird. Your dad’s loaded, and she wants to ignore that fact. Yeah, I know. Weird.”

  I smile again, it’s so good to have her here. But this is an unexpected visit, she never warned me she was coming until she was at the airport waiting to fly over here, which was a little odd, but I didn’t question it. I’m too glad to see her to question it. “Come on. Let’s go grab some lunch back at the house.”

  We chat about everything from how the business is going since I left, to Leo’s new work promotion, but the one subject neither of us bring up is Noah. Jenna never really mentions him to me, she always waits until I ask about him before she tells me anything, but right now, I don’t want to talk about him. I’ve pushed last week’s phone call from him to the back of my mind, and I’m getting on with my life. One that doesn’t need any reminders of the past.

  “So, Joe’s still asking you to marry him, then?” Jenna leans back in her chair as we eat a lunch of shrimp and crab salad outside on the kitchen terrace overlooking the Pacific Ocean.

  “On a daily basis. Or that’s what it feels like, anyway.”

  “And you’re still saying no?”

  “Do you see any sign of a ring on my finger?”

  “Is there a reason for that?”

  “For what?”

  “Why you keep saying no?”

  “I’m not saying no. I’m saying not yet.”

  “So, you are going to marry him one day, then?”

  “Maybe … Jenna, I don’t know, okay? We’ve been together less than eight months, it’s too soon to be talking weddings.”

  She takes a sip of her sparkling water and looks out at the ocean, and I frown slightly.

  “Is something wrong?”

  She turns back to face me. “No, nothing’s wrong. I just can’t believe this is where you are now. That you’re here, with Joe. That you and Joe Millar have a daughter together, I mean, after everything that happened …” She trails off, and I’m thankful for that. I really don’t want to start raking up the past. “Are you okay here, Kari?”

  My frown deepens. “Of course I’m okay here. What kind of question’s that?”

  “The kind of question a caring best friend would ask.”

  “Do I look okay?”

  “You look incredible! But what you look like, and what you’re feeling, they’re two different things. Right?”

  I eye her warily, something doesn’t feel right here. “Is there something you want to tell me, Jenna? Like, why you’re really here? Why you didn’t tell me you were coming until you were an hour or so from boarding the plane?”

  “I told you. It was a great late deal on a flight to Los Angeles, as simple as that.”

  “Liar.”

  She briefly drops her gaze, and now I know something isn’t right.

  “Jenna?”

  “Noah’s here, Kari. In L.A.”

  I don’t say anything, I just look at her, I’m waiting for an explanation. Waiting for her to tell me why all this is happening, now. Why she lied to me.

  “We flew over together.”

  “You planned this?”

  “I wouldn’t say planned … Kari, that man still loves you. And he’s worried about you.”

  “Then he’s wasting his time. I’m fine.”

  She looks at me, and the expression on her face makes me feel nervous. Angry. Frustrated. What the hell is going on?

  “Why is he here, Jenna?”

  She doesn’t answer that. She just drops her gaze again, and I feel my stomach dip.

  “Jenna?”

  She looks up, and her eyes meet mine, but I still feel uneasy. “You seem happy, Kari …”

  “Seem happy?”

  “But, you know? After everything that’s happened – how much can you really trust Joe?”

  I turn my head away, I laugh out loud. “If we’re going to sit here and talk about trust, I trusted Noah for all those years and look how that turned out … Jesus … What is this? Some kind of intervention? A field trip to try and make Kari see sense?”

  “No, that isn’t what we’re here for …”

  I turn back to face her, my eyes blazing. I’m fucking angry now. “What are you here for, exactly?”

  “To make sure you know
what you’re doing.”

  “Because I’m, what? Twelve? Unable to make an informed decision? We have a baby together, Jenna. Joe is Hollie’s father …”

  “That doesn’t mean you have to stay with him. And if that’s what you’ve …”

  She stops talking and I lean forward; raise my eyebrows. “If that’s what I’ve, what, Jenna? If that’s what I’ve done? Because I just walked blindly into this, right? Do you remember, when I found out I was pregnant, and I told you I didn’t know if I wanted Joe back in my life. I wasn’t sure I wanted him to know, and it was you – it was you who told me I should tell him.”

  “He deserved to know you were having his baby, Kari. But that doesn’t mean you had to do all of this.”

  “I did ‘all of this’ because I wanted to. Because I owed it to Hollie to see if me and Joe could make it work. If there was any way possible her parents could be together, I wanted that to happen.”

  “Staying with someone just for the sake of the baby …”

  “You know, if this is really why you came here, then I’d rather you left.”

  “Kari, come on …”

  “No, Jenna, you don’t get to come here and do this. Noah doesn’t get to come here, and do this.”

  “We just want you to be happy.”

  “I am happy.”

  “Are you? Look, this isn’t some kind of conspiracy, Kari, I promise you.”

  “It’s beginning to feel like one.” I get up, go over to Hollie and lift her out of her pram. “Why can’t you just be happy for me? I’m not denying that what it took to get here – it was heartbreaking and confusing, and yes, there were times when I hated Joe for what I thought he was doing. I didn’t trust him, not back then, I was as wary as you quite obviously still are now. But who’s the one who’s been with him, Jenna? Who’s the one who’s watched him change, seen the kind of man he really is? Me. And I trust him, now. I love him. Now. And nobody is going to make me doubt him again. So, you tell Noah that whatever he’s come here to do, he really is wasting his time.”

  “Noah thinks Joe’s playing some kind of game.”

  “He needs to stop worrying about Joe and get on with his own life.”