Beautiful Perfection (Beautifully Unbroken Book 2) (12 page)

“You will let me know about the sentencing won’t you? If I can be there or not and when it will be?” Jo asked as she stood from her seat.

“I will give you a call in a couple of days when you have processed everything that we have discussed this evening. However, you may feel differently when you read the journal Jo.” Theo smiled as he headed to the door; I followed quickly behind while Jo stood looking down at the papers that he had presented to her.

“Thank you for coming over at such short notice Theo.” I shook Theo’s hand before opening the door, “and if Jo asks you again about the sentencing, could you please try and talk her out of it? It won’t be good for her.”

“I can’t tell her not to go Blake, but I will do what I can. I’ll be in touch.”

“Bye Theo.” I headed back into the dining room to find Jo staring blankly at the pages in front of her, I sat next to her as she placed herself back in the seat while I waited for her to speak, but she remained silent while her eyes stayed focused on the evidence.

“Do you want me to read it for you?” I offered.

“I’m not sure that I even want to know what he wrote in there.” Jo pushed the papers towards me but our eyes never made contact. I cleared my throat and turned to the first page. I wasn’t so sure that I wanted to see what he had written about my wife either, but we needed to know what had made Sara change her pleas to guilty.

I scanned through the first couple of pages quickly before finding the first part that had been highlighted by Theo for Jo to read.

Case number 15896.

Cooper Henderson diary entry for prosecution.

Evidence log number 23.

“There is nothing I enjoy more than rewarding myself with a night at my favorite strip club getting entertained by my two favorite hot ass chicks and tonight has been no exception. Having them both grind their barely dressed bodies against me worked every single time, I then enjoyed unwinding with a few good friends as we played poker and snorted a couple of wraps of coke. Okay so I take drugs occasionally, but I am nothing like my mother; I have full control over everything that I do. I am not addicted, and neither will I ever become addicted. Cocaine has the ability to calm me when I need that feeling of calm. Usually after a night like this I would come home happy, relieved and back to the life I have become accustomed to; single and without ties. Yeah, that was exactly how I liked it, until now. Why the fuck can’t I get the taste of Jo Summers’ lips from my mind? Why do I suddenly feel as though I am cheating on her every time I get laid? Which by the way is becoming more and more frequent as the days since our kiss have passed by.

We shared one kiss that was all, just one short innocent kiss. But it seemed that just that one kiss was all it would take for me to get tied up in all kind of knots over her. Her kiss hadn’t even been meant for me, she had wanted to wrap her tongue around Blake’s, but it was me who was sat next to her outside her apartment the night that she changed my feelings for her forever.

I have spent the past seven days ignoring her. She has called on numerous occasions and sent a lot of texts, but I can’t bring myself to reply, how can I act normal around her now that my feelings towards her have completely changed? I have turned into a complete jerk. A complete and utter selfish waste of space jerk; I even yelled at Jo in the car telling her not to use me, I mean what the fuck was that all about?

Only weeks ago I gave Jo the help and friendship that she desperately needed; on the night she got the call from her mother, it was me that was there for her, no one else, just me but now? Now I am avoiding her like the plague, and that is simply because I don’t like the way I have started to feel about her, I don’t like the way my stomach knots with the weirdest yet most delicious feeling every time I imagine our kiss. I may not have been in love before but I am no fucking fool. I am in love with Jo Summers and I hate myself so much for allowing it to happen. I have one rule in my life, just one - and not only have I broken that rule; I have taken it, chewed on it and spat it out like it tasted of shit.

I need to make everything better, I need to see Jo and make myself fall out of love with her. She has told me time and time again that we are friends and only ever will be friends. She couldn’t have been clearer when she told me that nothing could ever happen between us. Of course she would tell me that, she knows what a male whore I actually am. So regardless of how I feel now, nothing is ever going to happen between us except for the fact that I am about to lose one of the only genuine friends that I have here in New York. I can’t allow that to happen, ever.”

A thickening silence filled the room just as I finished reading the first page of Cooper’s journal. I looked up at Jo slowly just as a tear fell from her face and landed on the table. I had just sat and read to my wife a page from a dead man’s journal; that dead man had been in love with my wife before he had died. “I’m sorry Jo,” I said quietly as I choked back my emotion, “I can’t do this; I can’t sit here and read about someone who was in love with my wife, the same person who I saw trying to rape you after he had drugged you. I just…. I can’t.” I pushed away from the table and grabbed my coat and keys before heading for the door.

“Blake!” Jo called to me as she pushed away from the table and followed me to the door, “where are you going?” She asked as she reached me, I forced a smile onto my face and turned back to Jo.

“I just…. we need to eat, we have nothing in the apartment, and it’s getting late.” I lied.

“Are you leaving because of what you just read?” I hated lying to Jo but what I had just read had almost killed me. Cooper loved my wife, and at some point in that journal he was going to be writing about how he was her knight and shining armor the day that Sara tried to run Jo down, I don’t think I would ever be prepared to hear it in his own words.

“I won’t be long, I promise.” I took Jo’s face in my hands and brushed her cheek gently with my thumb before kissing her cheek.

“It doesn’t matter what the diary says Blake, I only ever saw Cooper as a friend, he said it himself in there, and no matter what he wrote; he will always be the man who would have raped me if you hadn’t have shown up. You don’t rape the person you love Blake, no matter what drugs you have taken or how out of your mind you are. He drugged me and he would have raped me, if
you
hadn’t have been there to stop him, I can never forgive him for that, no matter what we read in there and no matter what he says, just remember that, and remember that I love you, more than anything in the world Blake; I love you and what was it that you said before we left London? No matter what; we stick together Blake; I need you to stick with me through this, please, I can’t do this by myself.” Jo’s lip began to quiver, she knew exactly why I was leaving and I was a jerk for even considering walking away because of what Cooper had written. I threw my keys onto the table and removed my coat.

“Let’s phone out for the food huh?” Jo nodded as she placed her arms around me and buried her face into my neck.

“I don’t want to read the evidence either Blake, but we need to know, we need to see what happened and no matter what he wrote in there, no matter what he says happened, it changes absolutely nothing between the two of us, it’s always been you Blake, you know that.”

“I hate that he was in love with you, those feelings that he described on that first page? That’s how I felt about you too, how I still feel about you in fact.”

“We can’t let him come between us Blake; I need you to be strong for me now more than ever.” Jo lifted her head and placed her lips to mine softly.

”I’m sorry I almost ran,” I replied.

“I have run from you enough times in the past to know why you almost walked out of that door

Blake, I have spent the past five years fighting the fear that you are feeling now.”

Her hands reached up and gripped my hair as lips crashed together once more, our kiss deepened with every touch, she needed me, my wife needed me more now than ever and even though she had found this new strength from somewhere over the past few months, she was still vulnerable, she still hurt deeply and yet I had been about two seconds away from walking out of here because of a dead man’s journal. I needed to remember that no matter what Cooper had wrote in there, he was dead, he could no longer hurt us, but I was still capable of hurting Jo if I didn’t do the right thing by her. Placing my hands under Jo’s legs I lifted my wife from the floor and carried her through the apartment and into our bedroom where all thoughts of the trial, Cooper and everything else that had happened that day were pushed firmly to the back of our minds, for now.

Jo

For the first time since the day Blake and I had met I had seen something in his eyes that he had never shown me before; fear. He had been about to walk out of the apartment because of what he had read in Cooper’s journal, the one person who taught me not to run anymore and to face my fears head on was stood at our door about to run himself. I had always known that Cooper harbored feelings for me, he had flirted one too many times for me to think that it could have been just a friendship, but to see it written in black and white in Cooper’s writing was gut wrenching. The night that I had touched my lips to his had sealed our fate forever; had I have just stayed away and not lost myself in a moment of madness I couldn’t help wonder if he would still be alive today.

I had left Blake sleeping a couple of hours ago to read the remaining evidence that Theo had brought over for me. Cooper hadn’t been vague in anything that he wrote in his diary; in fact it was the most in depth diary I think could have ever existed. He had written down full detail from every single day that would prove to be vital evidence. He had described also how a couple of weeks previous to the dreaded night at Sugar, Sara had turned up at his apartment begging for his help; Cooper being the person that I had always thought he was, had taken her in and promised to help her get her life back.

Theo had labelled each diary entry for me that he considered to be of importance; there was also, at the end of the diary entries, a typed copy of a voicemail that Cooper had left for Sara the night before his death.

Case number 15896.

Cooper Henderson diary entry for prosecution.

Evidence log number 24.

“Even if I had been in a deeper sleep than sleeping beauty last night, I would never have missed the banging at my door at 3am, someone was about to get a beating. Unless of course it was Jo; then I would have been letting her in with open arms.

The long red hair that swept past me as I opened the door definitely DID NOT belong to Jo.
  Sara had
pushed past me, headed straight into the kitchen, and poured herself a scotch downing it immediately. After the conversation that I had had only yesterday with Jo at my aunt’s restaurant, I could have easily of grabbed her by her slutty throat and threw her back out the door.
  I needed to know what the hell she was doing turning up at my apartment at 3AM.

“I need help,” she said. ‘No shit’ I had thought as I watched her pour herself another glass of scotch and down it yet again. She wasn’t the least bit impressed when I suggested to her that the help she needed was probably from the men in white coats, she had grabbed my shirt in desperation, her face immediately at mine as she ranted on and on about how Jo had ruined her life. According to Sara, Jo had taken everything from her and she was responsible for Sara’s demise. Little did Sara know was that only yesterday, I had sat with Jo while she had spilled out to me what Sara had done this weekend and from what I could make of the big mess of shit, there was only one person responsible for what Sara had become and that was Sara herself. Sara had turned up at Jo’s apartment and made a scene; she had threatened Jo’s life and then revealed her wrists that she had cut. According to Jo, as Sara had lay bleeding in her own apartment a couple of nights previous, she had called Blake who had rushed over to her to stop her from causing more harm to herself - fucking attention seeking bitch
.
When I had called her on it she was stunned, she even asked if I was fucking Jo now because I had defended her from all of Sara’s allegations. To think that I used to have fun with Sara, God she had been in my bed a lot more than I wished she had and I’ll give her - her dues, she was a decent lay but now she had turned into a psycho there was no way that anything would ever happen between us again. Cutting herself over the one night that she had spent with Blake was enough to warn me that she was far worse than damaged goods. She even tried it on with me again last night, forcing her lips to mine until I pushed her away and told her that our ship had sailed a long time ago and no way was I going to be helping her yet again but when she stood at my door ready to leave, she told me that if I didn’t help her, she would go after Jo and finish her off. I laughed believing that there was no way she meant what she was saying, but she was deadly serious, I could see the malice in her eyes, she wanted Jo dead, but for what I just don’t know. Jo had done nothing to hurt her, or to hurt anyone, she didn’t have a cruel bone in her body. Sara could actually learn a lot from her if she gave her a moment. I had even resorted to violence last night, but to be honest she had deserved it. When she told me what she intended to do to Jo, my anger boiled to a new level and I had grabbed her by the throat and pinned her to the door. I shocked myself that I had even lowered myself to that level, but the thought of anything ever happening to Jo would kill me. I knew one thing for sure and that was that if I didn’t help Sara get her life back and help her lay low for a while; I would probably be sat at Jo’s grave soon apologizing to her for not doing what I should have done to keep her safe. I did the only thing that I knew to do. I laid down the ground rules to Sara. For starters, she wasn’t to leave the apartment without me, I needed to know where she was and what she was doing at all times and secondly, my bed was a no go area; period. I refused to get caught up by a psychopath who needed a padded cell not an apartment. I then allowed the bitch to stay, promising her that I would help her back onto her feet as long as she complied with my simple rules. Only time will tell whether or not I did the right thing.”