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But of course, I went home that day and instead of realizing the happy moment I’d fantasized about for a weekend, I discovered that the charmed life I had loved so deeply, so fiercely had been nothing more than a sick and twisted lie.
Chapter Two
I fought a teenage girl.
I, a twenty-six-year-old woman with a thirty-three-year-old fiancé, scratched and clawed and screeched with a nineteen-year-old college student. What would the wives say if they saw me? I was their favorite new thing – the fascination of their social circle. I’d landed Jackson Kinsley, the tallest, sexiest, hardest-to-tame prize in the elite boys club their husbands and fiancés all ran in – a boys club that essentially ran the city. I could’ve been easy to hate but instead, they loved me for being wide-eyed but savvy – fascinated by their lives of luxury yet surprisingly adept at adjusting to society. I had the “natural grace and small-town charm” that Sofie Winter, silver-haired queen of the charity ball circuit, found just adorable.
Jackson told me never to lose that, as it was the only thing keeping the other wives from ripping my throat out. “Their husbands all jerk off to you every morning in the shower,” he liked to tell me with smug pride. “But if Sofie loves you, they have to love you too.”
So they did. But how Sofie would hate me if she knew what I’d done to her daughter.
After watching Gabrielle’s breathy sex tapes with my fiancé, I had decided to confront her in person. I knew Lyle and Sofie had bought her an apartment in Gramercy Park last year. I didn’t know exactly where it was but after a short search through Jackson’s phone, I found the address shamelessly saved with the rest of her contact information. I texted it to myself. Then, as Jackson was toweling off, I left.
“She’s here, Jax! It’s Lara – she’s pounding on my door and she – Jax!”
Gabrielle, in a white silk robe, was on the phone with Jackson by the time I pushed my way into her apartment. Wild, unhinged. On repeat were a million profanity-laced versions of “how dare you” as I charged at her like an angry bull. It was an idiot move but I was blinded by rage. This girl knew me. She linked arms with me when I came to her house for dinner, traipsing me into her bedroom to show me videos of her dance recitals. She and her friends pouted at me during the charity balls, pleading for me to join them since I was “too young” to sit at their parents’ table. This was a girl who treated me like her favorite cousin – all the while filming herself in the throes with my fiancé. That was quite possibly the definition of audacity.
Either that or the fact that she tried to break a wine glass on my face.
When I knocked her phone out of her hands that night, Gabrielle had shrieked “bitch,” grabbed her empty glass of white and then swung it at my left eye. I don’t remember exactly what happened next. I’m not sure if the dots in my vision were from sheer rage or impact with glass. It was at that point that I began to claw back. I swung and swiped, landing one solid punch before feeling Gabrielle tackle me to the ground.
We then rolled on the glass-covered floor, two idiots who had never fought once before in our
privileged lives. It wasn’t long before we were both crying, tired and defeated. Her blood on my shirt, my hair in her nails, we crawled onto our hands and knees, coughing and sobbing like fools.
“He said you guys were just for show,” she defended herself between tearful hiccups. “I didn’t think you actually loved him. He said you didn’t.”
What the fuck? “We couldn’t have loved each other more.” The words tore with hatred from my throat. But at that point, the hatred was for Jackson. I put an emphasis on the word “loved.” It wasn’t quite past tense for me yet considering our long history together, but I was well on my way down that path. Jackson had cheated on me with a foolish young girl he’d essentially tricked. My body still loved him out of instinct but soon enough, my mind would convince it to stop. I knew it.
So with that, I left the apartment that night – a scraped, tousled, bloody mess.
Back at the duplex, Jackson demanded to know what had happened. He was angry, ashamed and shocked all at once. Raking his fingers through his wet blonde hair, he followed me into the bedroom, where I immediately shed my clothes. His voice was normally low, velvety. Now, it was gravel. “Is that your blood?”
“Hers,” I answered through my teeth.
“What the fuck, Lara? What happened? What did you do?” He pulled on my bare arm as I tried to ignore him for the bathroom, my crawling skin desperate for a shower. “Baby. Babe. Jesus Christ, talk to me. I know I fucked the hell up, I know I did. But you know she meant nothing – she was just a stupid, needy little girl who went after me. I had a moment of weakness. I’m sorry. But I love you more than anything in this fucking world and I can explain it all to you if you just to talk to me first! We can’t figure this out if you don’t tell me what the hell happened between you and Gabby tonight!”
Jerking out of his grip, I headed for the shower. “We’ll talk in the morning,” I said definitively, an eerie calm to my voice. It was just that I knew it at that point. I was going to end it. Us. Jackson and Lara, the perfect couple that no one could get enough of. I just didn’t have the energy to deal with his desperate pleading before I slept. I was exhausted. I needed rest to deal with a breakup that would no doubt be followed by Jackson at my feet, begging me not to go.
But that wasn’t how it wound up happening. Just as I began my breakup speech the next day, we got a call. Gabrielle Winter was reported missing. Blood had been found in her apartment and from the way Jackson looked at me, it was clear that he had drawn a conclusion.
“What is it that you think I did, Jackson?” I asked, the words dripping from my lips with revulsion.
“I don’t want to know, Lara,” Jackson replied, his jaw tight, his words measured. “I don’t ever want to talk about this again because all I know is you went to find her and now she’s fucking gone.”
“Jackson, do you hear what you’re accusing me of?” I hissed, in shock that he’d even believe me capable of such a thing. We had been together four years. He knew every part of me. He knew that I’d cried for three hours after he killed a cute albeit horrifying mouse that tormented his old TriBeCa loft. I hated the thing but still sobbed like a child when I saw it finally defeated, its tiny body limp and lifeless after Jackson brought a broom down upon it. After cleaning up, he had cupped my cheeks and kissed me, telling me we should go see a movie then get dessert to distract me and sooth my nerves. That was the Jackson I knew. But in the last few days, I’d become acquainted with a different Jackson – one who slept with other women and accused me of killing them. “Jesus fucking Christ, Jackson, I had absolutely nothing to do with this!” I protested, fighting angry tears as he closed the gap between us.
“Well what do you think her blood on your shirt would look like to investigators, Lara?” he asked, his curled lips an inch from mine. “What do you think they would say about the voicemail Gabby left on my phone? When she was screaming that you were after her?”
The blood drained from my face once I realized what it all looked like. It was a perfect picture of what didn’t actually happen. I had gone to find Gabrielle Winter and I had forced my way into the apartment. I’d screamed at her, called her every name under the sun. I remembered digging my nails into her skin and drawing blood.
Still, I hadn’t killed her.
But Jackson looked at me as if I did.
“Now like I said.” He kept his blue eyes fixed on me as he whipped his shirt up over his head. “I don’t want to talk about this again, so get dressed while I shower. I have a lunch with the other investors at noon and they expect to see you there,” he said, ignoring what I’d said about moving out that afternoon. Leaning into me, he touched my waist, trailing his hand up until he cupped the swell of my breast. “And make sure you pick out something nice and tight.” His last demand came with a squeeze. “You know I like to give them something to look at.”
Chapter Three
