Kim scowled. “How do you work that out? This is Jake. And more to the point, this is me. It’s a catastrophe of gargantuan proportions waiting to happen.”
“Maybe you’re wrong. Maybe you can both fall in love and have babies and live happily ever after.”
Kim bared her teeth. She really wished Jess hadn’t mentioned babies. It was still too early to do a test, but the worry nagged at her mind. “I don’t want to fall in love.”
She could see no good end to this.
They hadn’t left the party last night until the early hours of the morning. Kim had been exhausted after not sleeping well for the last week, and that, combined with all the night shifts she’d worked, had knocked her out. In the end, not asking Jake for sex hadn’t been an issue. When they’d gotten home, he’d kissed her almost chastely on the forehead and told her to go to sleep. He’d been gone by the time she’d awakened.
“Why don’t you want to fall in love?” Jess asked.
“Because he’ll want to dominate me, tell me what to do. I swore I would never let that happen again.”
“Jake isn’t your ex-husband.”
“No, in some ways he’s worse.” Michael had had power over her because she’d been young and scared and naive and still suffering from her mother’s death. Once she grew up, battled her personal demons, she’d have left him with no regrets. Jake had just hurried the process along by helping her. Given her a job, a future, and a chance for independence. But unlike Michael, Jake could have real power over her because she cared about him.
“How?” Jess asked.
“When I was with Michael, it was as though what I wanted didn’t matter because I didn’t matter. And that I deserved whatever he did to me because he was right and I was nothing. I felt so helpless and so angry. If I’d had confidence in myself, I would have left him the first time he—”
Jess rested a hand on her arm. “You’re not nothing! You were a kid, and your bastard ex took advantage of that.”
“I know Jake’s not like Michael. But he likes his own way, too. What if I give in and get to the point where I can’t say no anymore, and I turn into a doormat and—”
“You’re not the same person you were back then. You’re certainly no doormat—you’re a strong, independent woman.”
Kim gave her a weak smile. “And you’re my friend. You have to say that.”
“I wouldn’t be your friend if you were a doormat. I hate doormats!”
She wanted to explain how she’d felt during that time, make Jess understand, but she couldn’t without mentioning her mother. And she’d never talked about her mother with anyone, as though speaking her fears out loud would make them true. But maybe there was one way she could explain. She took a deep breath. “I thought about killing myself when I was with Michael.”
“What?”
“I felt like I had no way out and no way to fight back. One night I stole his precious car and I kept thinking about how pissed he would be if I crashed it or drove it into the Thames. And how it would solve all my problems. And—”
“Aw, honey, come here.” Jess pulled her into a hug across the table. For a minute, she held her tight, then leaned back and stared into her face. “The important thing is you didn’t.”
“No. In the end I wanted to live. But I came so close. And now I can’t help wondering if things go wrong, I’ll end up feeling that way again—so dark, like I can’t find my way out. Maybe it’s part of me. Some sort of weakness.”
“You’re not weak.”
“I won’t risk it. I’ll never put my life in anyone else’s hands again.”
Jess patted her arm. “So no wedding bells for you and Jake. But what do you want?”
“For Jake and me to be friends again.”
“Why don’t you tell him that?”
The memory of his lips on hers flashed in her mind. How could she go through the rest of her life and never feel that again? “Because I can’t stop thinking about sex with him.”
Jessica grinned. “You could move away from the temptation and find another job,” she said. “I’ve got contacts. I could get you in somewhere.”
“I might take you up on that. But I’ll worry about a job once the Nadia situation is sorted. In the meantime, I just want to go back to the way things were with Jake.”
“Well, here’s my view on the subject,” Jess said. “Sex never lasts. It’s exciting for a while, and then it burns out. So all you have to do is advance the process and burn it out quicker.”
“How do I do that?”
“When I was a teenager, I used to drink cider with my friends. One weekend, I drank so much of the stuff that I couldn’t face any more. Ugh! Just the sight of a bottle of cider is still enough to make me want to throw up.”
“So you’re saying if I have enough sex, then I’ll get to the point where I’ll never want to see another penis again?”