The Billionaire’s Promise (His Submissive #8)(5)
Author: Ava Claire

“It wasn’t that,” I said, only 90% convincingly. I took a swig before I amended, “Well of course at first I thought I was a rookie playing in the big leagues. Rachel is gorgeous and successful and I…I was still trying to get Jacob to open up to me. But back then, I immediately had this feeling that what they had was more than physical. And now I’m frustrated all over again because I had to collect scraps of how he felt about me, demanding more, having him add brick after brick to the wall around his heart until he finally let me in–and someone had already gotten past his defenses.” Knowing that he’d said those three words to her–it was more than infuriating.

It hurt.

I’d said the word before, generally out of obligation, because I figured that was the next step in the relationship. You meet someone, they end up being cool, then special, and then someone you don’t wanna be without. So when ‘I love you’ was exchanged, it was just the natural progression of things.

But my relationship with Jacob was different. There was no courtship–it was just seduction, angst, and a desire I’d never experienced before. Before him, love had always been an afterthought, a checkbox to tick on a lackluster journey to nowhere. But with him, love possessed me and wouldn’t let go.

It was dangerous because for the first time, I fell hard and worried I was the only one–that I’d say it and be met with hollowing silence. I was terrified because now that I knew what true love was, the idea of losing it was unbearable.

And Jacob, this stony faced man that I’d fought to let me see beyond the mask hadn’t always been that way, like I’d been led to believe. He’d been capable of letting someone in. He’d been capable of love.

Meg came over and dropped onto the futon beside me, snapping her fingers to shake me from my trance. “I can tell you’re jumping to unhealthy conclusions.”

“Oh there’s no jumping required. The conclusion is within stepping distance. Jacob loved Rachel.”

“So what?” she said, throwing up her hands. “That was then, Lay. He’s with you now. He loves you. You’re the one he wants to marry.”

I heard what she was saying and it made sense, but there was a cacophony of questions that kept rearing their ugly head. If his feelings for her were in the past and irrelevant, why wasn’t he honest? Why did he lie about their relationship and make it seem like it was just a fling? You don’t tell flings you love them.

I turned to her, biting my lip when I felt the tears rise in my throat. “I’m not trying to be combative, I swear. I want to believe that this is all in my head. That it doesn’t matter. That it was just an oversight and not proof of something sketchy. But this feels like something more. Why didn’t he tell me that they were serious?”

Meg’s eyes shifted downward for a moment before she raised them back to mine. “I wish I had an answer for you, but I think I’m the last person you should be talking to right now.”

“I should be talking to Jacob?” I snorted. “That’s clearly genius since he’s been so forthcoming.”

“I love you Leila, but you are in no position to be casting stones in the tight lipped category.” She arched a red brow pointedly. “It wasn’t that long ago that you were keeping things from Jacob for his own good.”

“But that was…” I trailed off, the ‘different’ unsaid and a pathetic excuse. It really wasn’t all that different. I’d delivered him on a silver platter to the Devil Herself because I thought I was saving him from public embarrassment. And I tried to keep the meeting with Cade hush hush because I knew how the very mention of his name made Jacob feel. Both times I was trying to spare him any undue hurt. Both times were betrayals and we worked through it. So why couldn’t I power on my phone and let him explain?

Megan gave me a small nod, her indication that she’d said her piece and would let me make up my own mind. “So you met his mom?”

Out of the frying pan and into the fire. “Yep.”

“Your ‘psycho woman’ bit on the phone told me that maybe things didn’t go so well?”

I picked at the label on the water bottle. “Things started off great–she was in the neighborhood and wanted to stop by and say hello, meet me and all that jazz.”

“Uh huh.”

“Jacob and I were about to have breakfast, so we made it a table for three.” I left out the allusions about the contract and me and Jacob’s sex life. “She ate a grape or two and got right down to business.”

Megan raked a hand through her hair, giving me an expectant look. “Which was?”

“Giving me a blank check if I left Jacob.”

“Huh.”

I peered over at her. Now I was the one that was sure I’d misheard. “Huh?”

“I’m not surprised.” I opened my mouth to rebut that but she added, “Let me finish. I was surprised when I found out that less than twenty-four hours into your promotion you were going to Italy. I was surprised when I read on TMZ that you were Jacob Whitmore’s girlfriend instead of hearing it from you first. I was surprised that marriage rumblings were happening and I hadn’t even met the guy. But an uber rich woman using her buckets of money to make a problem go away? That’s not shocking to me.”

“So I’m a ‘problem’?” I said, nostrils flaring.

She narrowed her eyes and for a moment, her glare reminded me of Rachel’s. “I know you and Jacob have been on Love Island, where chubby babies flit about and what not, but in the real world, billionaires don’t marry their personal assistants.”

“A problem and a personal assistant,” I seethed. “You think that’s all I am to him?”

“No, I think he loves you,” she clarified. “But his mother doesn’t know that. She probably just sees the help trying to marry above their station.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Was she really defending Alicia? “Jacob said that she was happy, that she wanted to meet me before someone started feeding her information about me.”

“And that’s another thing that doesn’t surprise me,” Megan said with a shrug. “A crazy woman acting crazy. Rachel didn’t do you any favors, but if you thought his mother was gonna throw a luncheon in your honor, you were being a little naive.”

“So you’re saying I should have what? Thanked her for playing her role so well? Told her that I totally understand why she insulted me because I’m ‘marrying above my station’?” I snapped upright, not really wanting to be anywhere near her. “This isn’t an episode of Downton Abbey, Megan. This is real life. This woman will be my mother-in-law someday. Grandmother to my children. Sure, it’s not surprising when in-laws are at each other’s throats, but she wanted to make me disappear. She thought so little of me, of my relationship, that she thought I could be bought.”