Feels Like Love (Feels Like Falling Book 3) Page 2

  “I have a feeling this isn’t going to end well.”

  “Yeah, you have the right feeling.” I sighed. “So I laid the trap.”

  “What was it?”

  “I feel too embarrassed to even admit it. I’m so mad with myself. It’s the biggest mistake I ever made in my life.”

  “What did you do, Rosie? You can tell me.”

  “So, we had a big family reunion planned. Everyone was coming to stay. And I slipped a note into my dad’s pocket and another one into her purse. And they basically said, meet me in one of the spare rooms at midnight. They both would have thought the letter was from the other. And I planned at 10 minutes past 12 to casually take my brother to the room. I wanted him to see that she couldn’t be trusted. That she was a cheat.”

  “Oh, Rosie. So what happened?”

  “So sure enough, I see both of them sneaking upstairs a few minutes to midnight. And I tell my brother I want to show him something. I was doing it for him, you know? Because I didn’t want her to break his heart. I didn’t want him to end up with someone like that.”

  “What happened, Rosie?”

  “We walked into the room. And there they were on the bed, fucking, doggy style. My dad was pulling her hair and fucking her. And John and I, we just stood there. It was dark, and I think he didn’t realize at first that it was her, you know? But then she cried out that she was coming and she …” I started crying, remembering everything.

  “Oh, Rosie.” Jackson slid his chair closer to mine and pulled me into his arms. “You can cry on my shoulder if you want.” I put my head on his shoulder and I sobbed. I sobbed in remembrance.

  “She cried out, Put a fucking baby in me. Come in me. And I guess John recognized her voice because he just froze. And we just stood there. It was like he was in shock, paralyzed. And I was happy because I thought, now he’ll see she’s not loyal to him, that she doesn’t care. But it all went wrong. It all went so wrong.”

  “What do you mean? How did it go wrong?”

  “We left the room, and I guess the door slammed shut, because my dad and Louisa, they came to the door. And they saw us at the end of the hallway. And that Louisa was a good actress. She started screaming. Screaming and crying.”

  “What do you mean, she screamed?”

  “She saw John, and then she looked at my dad and she said, oh my god, I thought you were John. How could you do that to me? And she pretended that she thought John was the one who’d been fucking her. She figured out it was me. She said that I’d written the note and signed John’s name. And of course my dad—my dad didn’t say anything. John asked me if I’d written the notes. And I told him the truth. I told him I wanted to prove to her that she was a cheat, but he didn’t believe me. And of course, the notes were nowhere to be seen after that.” I rubbed my forehead. “And then came the biggest shock because we found out she was pregnant.”

  I took a deep breath. “And we didn’t know if the baby was John’s or my dad’s. And I told John, you can’t marry her. You can’t marry her because of this. And he said, ‘This is your fault, Rosie. You didn’t do this because you love me, you did this because you loved yourself more.’ He said I was so jealous and wanted him in my life so badly that I betrayed him.”

  I could remember his angry words as he’d screamed at me. “And then my dad gave him five million dollars, and they left, and they moved to California. John hasn’t spoken to me since. Sometimes I’ll call because I want to talk to him, but she always answers the phone.”

  “Do you ask to speak to him?”

  “In the beginning, I did, but she would always say he wasn’t available. One time, I even flew to California, but I didn’t get to see him. He hates me, and I understand why. I just wish he’d understand why I did it.”

  “So did you ever find out about the kid, whose baby it was?”

  I shook my head. “No. I don’t know if John ever wanted to find out. I mean, would you want to know if you were raising your brother, not your son?”

  Jackson shook his head and sighed. “I’m sorry, Rosie. I know you thought you were doing what was best.”

  “I was, and I know I fucked up, but I didn’t think I’d lose my brother. He was my best friend, the only person who ever really loved me.”

  “I know. I know it’s hard. I’m sorry. It’s not your fault.”

  “But tell me, how did he contact you, and what was his end goal? What did he want to happen?”

  “I don’t know if I should tell you, Rosie. I don’t want to break your heart any further.”

  “Please, Jackson. If you care about me at all, at all, I need you to be 100% honest with me right now. I need you to tell me exactly what John wanted to happen to me.”

  “He wanted you to bring disgrace to your family. On a national level.” Jackson spoke slowly, as if the words were being pulled out of him. “He wanted your downfall.”

  “So that’s why you came to the train station that night? And that’s why you wanted to sleep with me, to ensure my downfall?”

  “That’s why I went to the train station that night, yes. But when you stood up and you kissed me—” his eyes bore into mine with an intensity that made me shiver, “I knew all bets were off at that moment. I’ve never met anyone like you before. Never.”

  “I don’t believe you.” I shook my head. “I don’t believe you, Jackson. Why should I believe you?”

  “You see my scar?” He began undoing the buttons of his shirt.

  I gazed at him in confusion. “What does that have to do with anything?”

  He stood up and took his jacket off and then took his unbuttoned shirt off. “Stand up,” he ordered, and I did. He grabbed my hand and he placed it on his scar, the same scar that he’d told me to never touch. “You see this scar?”

  “Yes,” I said softly.

  “You want to know how I got it?”

  I shrugged nonchalantly, though of course I wanted to know. “Sure.”

  “I got it trying to protect my mother.” His hand squeezed mine as he pressed it against his chest. “I got it on the night that she died.”

  “What happened?” I said, breathlessly. I hadn’t known that his mother was dead.

  “I’m not sure you want to know that story, Rosie.” He shook his head. “Because we’re connected in one more way.”

  A chill ran down my spine. “Tell me, Jackson, please.”

  “I want to tell you, but I’m scared if you know the truth, you’ll think that my feelings for you aren’t real. They weren’t meant to be, Rosie. They weren’t meant to be at all.”

  “Jackson, you’re making me nervous. What is going on here?”

  “My mom was one of your father’s women, Rosie. She was in love with your father.” His voice was bitter. “And yes, I have vowed for half my life to take him down, so you can understand why, when your brother approached me, I thought that every gift had been handed to me on a silver platter. But then I met you, Rosie. I met you, and everything changed.”

  “What changed? You mean you longer wanted revenge because of one good fuck?”

  “Oh, no, I still wanted revenge,” he growled. “But I don’t want it in the same way.”

  “Oh?”

  “I wanted to take your father down for many years, Rosie. I wanted to make him hurt. But then I realized that that ultimate revenge would come from stealing the heart of his daughter.” He stepped back for me now. “So, Rosie, have I succeeded? Am I in your heart?”

  I stared at him for a long moment, trying to make sense of everything that was going on around me.

  Then I ran.

  I ran out of the room. I ran out of the house. And I ran down the street for what felt like hours until I eventually called a cab and went home. I wasn’t sure that I could take anything else. Everyone in my life had betrayed me and I felt completely broken.

  Chapter 3

  When you’re younger, you never think that the person that you trust and love the most will ever betray you. You ju
st can’t fathom such a thing. At least I couldn’t. If you’ve ever had a close relationship with someone, you’ll know what I mean when I say that I felt like my very insides had been hollowed out.

  I needed to speak to John. I needed to understand. I wanted to see if he wanted to deliberately hurt me in this way. Why? Maybe it was a stupid question, but aren’t all questions stupid when it comes to love?

  He thought I had betrayed him, but I hadn’t made Louisa sleep with Dad. She had known it had been my dad. I knew it. But, of course, when you have a pretty face and a sweet smile, you can fake anything and get away with it.

  Sometimes, I wish I could go back in time and change everything. I wish I could go back to the night where my brother had met her. I wish I could have told him, “Let’s not go out. Let’s just watch a movie,” anything to stop everything that had happened.

  Do you ever have those moments where you wish you could go back to a certain time and date and change the course of history? It’s weird, right, because if I would have done that, I never would have met Jackson. If John had never met Louisa, then he and I wouldn’t have fallen out, and he’d still be here close to me and maybe, I never would have ended up dating someone like Joey and getting my heart broken, and maybe I never would have had him beaten him up.

  There are so many what-ifs in life. What if this? What if that? How different would my life be now, and who would I be if I’d never met Jackson? Had he changed my life for the better?

  In some ways, yes. In some ways, I was learning to understand and figure myself out. It’s weird being 30 years old and realizing that you’ve never really, truly lived for yourself. Sit back and think for a minute. Think about your life. What have you actually done just for yourself? Not to please your friends, not to please your family, not to do what society expects of you? What have you done for you?

  For most of us, not much. Almost everything we do is to please someone other than ourselves.

  I’d always lived this role, and I was sick and tired of it. I wasn’t living for me. I wasn’t happy. Even if Joey hadn’t been cheating on me and I’d ended up with him, I wouldn’t have been happy. That’s hard to admit, even to myself.

  Not that I was loving my life now. I mean, you don’t get to be in a fucked up situation like I was in and love everything about it.

  The best part of my life right now was the sex with Jackson. I mean, good sex can make up for a lot of shit, trust me. But once the sex is done, you’re just left feeling hollow, wondering who you really are.

  I picked up my phone and called Jackson because I just wanted to hear his voice before I called John. I needed to speak to John, and I was nervous.

  The phone rang two times before Jackson picked up.

  “Hello.” The deep timbre of his voice made me shiver slightly. I didn’t say anything.

  “Hello,” he said again, “Rosie? That’s you, right?” I still couldn’t talk. “Rosie, is everything okay? You just ran away.”

  “Yes, I’m fine.” I finally forced the words out. “Sorry, I …” My throat felt like it was constricting.

  “Hey, it’s okay. I understand.”

  And while he may not have understood everything I was going through, I knew he had demons of his own, maybe even worse than mine. It saddened me that I didn’t know much about him. I wanted to. I wanted to know what had happened to him, why he was the way he was, but it was almost too much to take on right now. I needed to figure out my own shit first.

  “So, is everything okay?” he asked.

  “I’m fine. I was just thinking about what you said.”

  “You like to do that a lot, huh?” There was a teasing note in this voice, and I half-smiled into the phone.

  “Well, you know, sometimes I like to think.”

  “That’s good.”

  “So this was all about revenge?”

  “Rosie …”

  “Did my brother want me to fall in love with you or something? And then have you break my heart because that’s what happened to him?”

  “I don’t know what’s in your brother’s head or heart.”

  “What did he want you to do to me?”

  “I told you, he wanted you to bring disgrace on the family at a national level.”

  “How?”

  “I told you, he—”

  “Wait.” I paused. “Didn’t you say you also wanted revenge on me and my family because of your mom?”

  “Maybe …”

  “How did my brother know that?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Isn’t it a bit of a coincidence that my brother knew to contact the one person that also wanted revenge on the family?”

  “I’m hardly the only person who despises your father.”

  “Maybe.” My head was racing. Stuff still wasn’t adding up. “I’m going to call my brother in a little bit. I was going to ask him—”

  He cut me off quickly. “I don’t think that’s a good idea, Rosie.”

  “Why not?” I said. “I need to speak to him. I need to know why.”

  “Rosie, do you really think he’s going to tell you the truth? Do you think he’ll even talk to you?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe not, but I need to try, unless …” I paused.

  “Unless what?”

  “Unless you call him and don’t tell him I’m on the phone and—”

  “No, Rosie.”

  “Why not? You know he’ll speak to you. He’ll—”

  “No, Rosie. We’re not going to get answers that we need that way.”

  “What do you mean, the answers we need? What do you care?”

  “I care about you, Rosie.”

  “Do you really, Jackson? Honestly?”

  “Why do you find it so hard to believe that I have feelings for you?”

  “Because you don’t even really know me. All we have is a sex thing, and—”

  “We have more than a sex thing.”

  “No, we don’t. We’ve never been on a real date. I don’t know jack shit about you. Almost everything you’ve told me is a lie. We don’t have more than sex.”

  “We have a lot more than sex!” he almost shouted down the phone. “Why do you refuse to believe that?”

  “Because we don’t, okay?” I shouted back. “You wouldn’t have lied to me. You wouldn’t have—” My voice broke.

  “I know you don’t understand why or how, and there is no excuse other than to say that I didn’t know you when I accepted the job. I didn’t know who you were.”

  “And you don’t know me now.”

  “I do know you.”

  “No, you don’t. You just think—”

  “Rosie, I know you think all we have is a sex thing. Do you know how much your eyes express? Do you know all the things your lips tell me? Sometimes, you can figure out a lot more about a person from the things they don’t say.”

  “That sounds like a load of baloney.”

  “It’s still true.”

  “Well, how come I don’t know anything about you, then?”

  “Really?”

  “What? I know that your name is Jackson, but really, it’s Alexei. Or you’re from Russia, but you’re actually from Ukraine. Your cousin is fucking James, like the crazy—”

  He started laughing. “Oh, Rosie.”

  “Don’t ‘oh, Rosie’ me anything. Like, how are you even related to James?”

  “His stepmother is my aunt, my mother’s sister,” he explained “James’s father went to Russia, and he met my aunt. They fell in love, and they got married.”

  “What? This still sounds like too much of a coincidence.”

  “Obviously, there’s a bit more to the story than that, but—”

  “But you and James are not actually related? Not by blood, anyway.”

  “No, we’re not blood-related.”

  “Oh, okay. Well, I guess that’s good.”

  “Why is that good?”

  “Because I’d hate to have to fuck two peop
le who actually shared the same blood.”

  “You’re not going to fuck him, Rosie. You and I both know that.”

  “Oh, yeah? Do you think he’s going to marry me and not want to fuck?”

  “Do you think I’m going to let you marry him?”

  “You can’t stop me from marrying him.”

  “Do you want to marry him?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “Don’t lie, Rosie. That’s the last thing that you want.”

  “You don’t know.”

  “Do you really want to marry a man who’s fucking your mother?”

  There was silence. How could I answer that? Obviously not. Obviously, I’d just been trying to aggravate him. Obviously, I was out of my fucking mind.

  “I just don’t want to be in this situation anymore. I just want to run away. I just want a new life. How do I sign up for a new life?”

  “It’s very easy to have a new life, Rosie, if that’s what you truly want. But I don’t think it is.”

  I snorted. “And how would you know what I want?”

  “Well, I know you don’t want to say goodbye to me.”

  “Why would I have to say goodbye to you?”

  “How could you have a new life with me in it?” he said softly.

  That gave me pause. He was right. If I started a brand new life, I’d have to say goodbye to everyone who was currently in my life, and that would include him. I went cold just thinking about it. How could I walk away from him? How could I walk away from what we had?

  A voice whispered in my head, Very easily. You should be running, Rosie. You should be running as fast as you can.

  He was the thread that tied everything together. He hadn’t been truthful to me, and all I could do was hope and pray that he was being upfront now. But I didn’t know.

  It suddenly struck me that I didn’t even know if John really had hired him. What if that was a lie? What if that was just a way to make me hate my brother even more? I mean, all I had was his word to go on. There was no proof.

  Goosebumps rose along my arms. What if Jackson was lying to me about everything? He’d lied to me about so many other things; there was no guarantee that he was telling me the truth now.