This Man Confessed (22 page)

I
shrink back on my stool and drop his chin, and for the millionth time in one day, I can’t form any words. Nothing. Absolutely zero inspiration is coming to me. I’m more shocked now than at any other point during this long day.

He smiles mildly. “My spirited girl is speechless.”

I am. Well and truly floored, in fact. You would think I’d be used to shock and surprise from this man, but no, he gets me every bloody time.

Reaching up, he strokes my cheek gently and slides his hand onto my neck, circling his thumb on my throat softly. “Have a bath with me,” he says quietly, rising from the stool and pulling me up. “I need to be with you.”

I’m lifted up to his body, my arms sliding around his shoulders and my legs finding their favorite place as he walks us upstairs. It takes no thought or any mental encouragement for my lips to find his neck and kiss him. Just kiss him and smell him and feel him, all of his minty freshness and all of his hard edges comforting me deeply. I’m not going to press him for information. He could’ve easily used our recent news as the reason for his shock and I would have believed him, but he didn’t. He’s shared something, a part of himself. He’s confessed that he
was
a twin, not that he
is
a twin. And now his wife is pregnant with twins, and it has clearly unearthed something from deep within him.

He places me on the vanity unit in the bathroom and sets about his usual bath-time routine of testing the temperature, pouring in the bath soak, and swishing to instigate some bubbles. Then he returns to me once he’s done and the bath is full. He reaches to pull my tank top up, resting his lips on mine as he does, and we fall straight into a slow massaging of each other’s tongues as he works my clothing, only pulling away briefly to get my top past my face before we find ourselves again and continue with our sweet, lingering kiss. It’s a special kiss. A really special one, and I delay pulling off his T-shirt, just so I don’t have to leave his lips. This kiss is not leading to an intense lovemaking session. This kiss is leading to him sharing something painful. Right now, when he’s pouring his love into me through our kiss, is his way of finding the strength to tell me his story. It’s his way of ensuring that I’m real before he offloads a past of pain.

My hands find their way under his T-shirt and to the hard, rippling waves of his stomach. “Take it off,” he says between our mouths. “Please, take away everything between us.”

His request makes me falter slightly, but when his lips press a little harder, I find my flow again. That wasn’t just a plea to remove his clothes. I work fast. The urgency to get his bare skin on mine is very quickly my top priority, so I drop his mouth and pull his T-shirt up, then start on his jeans, pushing them down his legs so he can kick them off. I’m pulled down from the unit, my Thai pants are removed and my lace knickers are drawn down my thighs. I don’t miss the quick check for blood. There is none. Our babies are okay. I’m lifted to him, my hands sliding straight into his hair and my lips falling straight to his mouth as he steps into the bath with me wrapped around him and lowers to his knees.

“Is the water okay?” he mumbles as I settle on his thighs.

“Fine.” I press my body into his, my breasts flattening against his chest, my elbows resting on his shoulders while my hands roam all over his head and my lips work relentlessly but softly.

“Always fine,” he whispers.

“Always perfect if I have you.”

“You have me.” His fingers thread through my hair and grip before he pulls me back. “You do know that, don’t you?”

“You married me. Of course I know.”

He shakes his head and grabs my hand, pulling off my wedding ring and holding it up. “Do you think
this
signifies my love for you?”

“Yes,” I admit quietly.

He smiles a little, as if I just don’t get it. I don’t. “Then we should get these diamonds removed and have it reencrusted with my heart.” He slowly slides it back onto my finger, and I dissolve in his lap, reaching forward and resting my palm on his chest.

 “I like your heart exactly where it is.” Leaning down, I place my lips on his skin. “I like how it swells when you look at me.”

“Just for you, baby.” He pushes our mouths together and spends a few moments reinforcing exactly that. “Let me bathe you,” he mumbles, working his lips down to my throat. “Turn around for me.”

I begrudgingly let him shift me from his lap so he can come off his knees and sit back before he arranges me between his thighs and starts with his bathing routine. I sigh contentedly but say nothing. And I don’t plan on instigating tub-talk, either. Not this time. This is for him to lead. Of course, my curious mind has gone into overdrive, but I won’t be the first one to break the comfortable silence. My Lord’s past holds no significance to our future. He has said that before and now, more than ever, I know just what he meant.

“Are you fine?” he asks, working the sponge around the base of my neck.

I smile down into the water. “I’m okay.”

I watch the water ripple, the little waves lapping around me as he moves in closer and rests his mouth at my ear. “I’m a little worried about my defiant temptress,” he whispers.

I don’t want to come over all hot and tingly, but it’s something I’ll never prevent when he’s near, let alone breathing in my ear. I push my cheek into him. “Why?”

“Because she’s too quiet when there’s information to be had.” He kisses my temple and lays back, taking me with him.

“If you want to tell me, then you will.”

His chest jolts beneath me on a silent laugh. “I’m not sure I like what pregnancy is doing to my girl.” His hands rest on my stomach. “First of all, she’s developed a phobia of my cock in her mouth.” He lifts his hips into my lower back, as if demonstrating what I’m missing. I know exactly what I’m missing, and I’m not liking it. “And second, she’s not blessing me with her forceful demands for intelligence.”

I shrug nonchalantly. “My Lord isn’t blessing me with his wide range of expert fuckings, so we’re even, aren’t we?”

He laughs, and I’m a little annoyed that I’m not facing him because if I was, I know I’d see the sparkle in his eyes and the light fans at the corners. “But she’s still blessing me with her filthy mouth.” He gives me a tweak above my hipbone, and I perform a jerk and a yelp before he lets me settle again. The silence settles, too.

He eventually sighs and starts circling tiny rings with his fingertips on each side of my bellybutton. “His name was Jake.” He doesn’t say any more than that, so I lie quietly on him, waiting for him to elaborate. “He idolized me. He wanted to be me. I’ll never understand it.” He sounds angry, and I’m suddenly moving, being turned around to face him. I’m now on my stomach, spread all over him and looking up into green grief. “I can’t do this on my own, baby. Help me.”

My instincts kick in and I push myself up his body, settling higher so I can get my face in the crook of his neck. “Were you not alike?”

“We were the furthest away from alike you could get. In looks
and
personality.”

“He wasn’t a god?”

His hands caress my back gently. “He was a genius.”

“How is that far away from you?” I ask.

“Jake had his brain to get him by; I had my looks and I used them, as you well know. Jake didn’t use his brain. If he did, he wouldn’t be dead.”

Questions are popping into my mind left, right, and center, and I can’t hold them back. “How did he die?”

“He got hit by a car.”

“How would that be not using his brain?”

“Because he was pissed when he staggered into the road.”

Realization is dawning, and it’s dawning very fast. “Carmichael isn’t the only reason you don’t talk to your parents, is he?”

“No, the fact that I’m responsible for my brother’s death is a major contributing factor.” He says it with no emotion at all, almost sarcastically. “Carmichael and The Manor came after and kind of put the nail in the coffin.”

“Jake was their favorite?” I hate saying that. It makes me angry to think it, but I’m slowly working this out. I don’t know Jesse’s family, and I have no desire to after he told me that they’re ashamed of him.

“Jake was everything they wanted from a son. I wasn’t. I tried to be. I studied, but it didn’t come as naturally to me as it did to Jake.”

“But he wanted to be like you?”

“He wanted the small piece of freedom I gained through being considered the one with the least potential. All of their attention was focused on Jake, the genius—the one they could be proud of. Jake would go to Oxford. Jake would make his first million before he was twenty-one. Jake would marry a well-bred English girl and breed well-spoken, polite, clever children.” He pauses. “Except Jake didn’t want any of that. He wanted to choose the direction of his own life and the tragic thing is, he would’ve chosen well on his own.”

“So what happened?”

“There was a house party. You know, full of drink, girls and…opportunities.”

Yes, I know, and I bet Jesse was a regular at these house parties.

“We were coming up to our seventeenth. Of course, it was my idea.”

“What?” I’m not sure I like where this tale is heading, but I know I’m going to find out.

“To go out and be teenagers, get away from the constant grind of studying and to stop trying to live up to our parents’ expectations. I knew I’d pay for it, but I was prepared to face my parents’ wrath. We were going to have a few drinks together, like brothers. It was just one night. I never expected to pay so severely.”

My heart is breaking for him. I pull myself from my snug place in his neck and sit up. I need to see his face. “You got carried away?”

His eyebrows shoot up. “Me? No! I’d had a few, but Jake was throwing back shots like he’d never drink again. I virtually carried him out of that house, and then it all came out. How much he hated the suffocation, how he didn’t want to go to Oxford. We made a pact.” He smiles fondly. “We agreed to tell our parents together that we didn’t want to do it anymore. We wanted to make our own decisions based on our dreams, not based on what would impress the snotty fuckers our parents socialized with.” Now he really smiles. “He wanted to race motorbikes, but that was considered uncouth and common. Reckless.” His eyes clench shut and reopen, and he loses his beam. “I’d never seen him so happy at the thought of rebelling with me, doing what we wanted for once, not what we were told to do. And then he walked out into the road.” He keeps his eyes on mine, gauging my reaction. He wants to know if I think it’s his fault.

“You can’t be held responsible.” I’m feeling a bit mad.

He smiles and brushes my hair from my face. “I’m held responsible because I
am
responsible. I shouldn’t have dragged Jake off the perfect path. The stupid idiot shouldn’t have listened to me.”

“It doesn’t sound like you dragged him anywhere.”

“He wouldn’t be dead, Ava. What if—”

“No, Jesse. Don’t think like that. Life is full of what-ifs. What if your parents hadn’t suffocated you? What if you stood up sooner and said ‘enough’?”

“What if I had played ball?” His face is straight. This is a question he has asked himself repeatedly and never found the answer to.

I’m about to give it to him.

“You would never have found me.” I can feel my emotions squeezing at my vocal cords. “And I would never have found you,” I whisper, the very thought finishing me. Tears start streaming down my face. It’s unthinkable. Unbearable. Everything happens for a reason and if Jake was still alive, then I’ve no doubt that Jesse’s life would have taken a different direction, and then we would never have found each other.

His head rests back, and he looks at my tummy. “Everything that’s happened in my life has led me to you, Ava. It’s taken forever, but I’ve finally found where I belong.”

I grab his hand and hold it against my stomach. “With me and these two little people.”

His eyes drift up my body and his other hand grabs my waist, pulling me down. “With you and those two little people,” he confirms. “Our little people.”

Jesse’s reaction to our news is understandable now, and the more he speaks of his parents, the more I dislike them. The unreasonable need to keep up appearances tore their family apart. “What about Amalie?” I ask.

“Amalie would marry well and be a good wife and mother, and I believe she might have fulfilled her obligation. It said
Doctor
David, didn’t it?”

“It did.”

“There you are, then.” His tone carries an air of bitterness, which I can’t help but feel, too.

He really did go all out after Jake died, like he was on a defiance mission to make up for Jake’s absence; like, in a weird kind of way, he was avenging his brother’s death. He was doubling up on the delinquencies, ensuring he didn’t break the pact. “You started spending more time with Carmichael after Jake’s death?”

“I did. Carmichael knew the score. He’d been through it himself with my granddad.” His hands slip all over my back. “Are you comfy?”

“Yes, I’m fine.” I brush off his concern quickly, wanting him to continue.

“It was a relief. I escaped the daily reminder that Jake wasn’t with me anymore, and I distracted myself with jobs that my uncle gave me around The Manor.” He shifts a little. “Are you sure you’re comfy?”

“I’m bloody comfy!” I tweak his nipple, and he laughs. This is good. He’s at ease sharing this with me.

“She’s comfy,” he muses.

“She is. What jobs did you do?”

“Everything. I’d collect the glasses in the bar, mow the lawns. Dad went through the roof, but I didn’t let him stop me. Then they announced that we were moving to Spain.”

“And you refused to go.”

“Yes. I hadn’t ventured into the rooms of The Manor at that point. I was still a Manor virgin.” He’s grinning. I know he is. “But on my eighteenth birthday, Carmichael let me loose in the bar. Worst thing he could’ve done. I slipped right in. It came naturally. Too naturally.” I look up at him. The grin has gone. “If simply being at The Manor took my mind away from all of my troubles, then being drunk and having sex at The Manor eliminated them completely.”