And we’re back to that. How the hell does he know? I slap his finger out of my face. ‘You need me to replace drink and screwing.’ I want to cry. All he needs me for is to remove himself from a lifestyle that would kill him if he kept it up for much longer. I’m his escape from a certain premature death by alcohol poisoning. I think I might throw up again. He really is scared of me leaving, but it has nothing to do with how much he loves me. It is because he is scared of returning to a hollow life. ‘You manipulate me.’
‘I don’t manipulate you!’ He actually looks offended.
‘Yes, you do! With sex! Sense fucking, reminder fucking. It’s all manipulation. I need you and you use it against me!’
‘No!’ he roars, and then swipes his arms straight across the top of the drinks cabinet, sending dozens of liquor bottles and glasses crashing to the floor, the sound of broken glass thundering around us.
I jump, stepping back, but he stalks forward and grabs the tops of my arms. ‘I need you to need me, Ava. It doesn’t get any simpler than that. How many times have I got to tell you? As long as you need me, I look after myself…simple.’
‘How is having yourself whipped looking after yourself?’ I scream in his face.
He drops me and grabs at his hair, virtually pulling it out. ‘I don’t fucking know!’
I look to the heavens above. This is hopeless. ‘I do need you, but not like this.’
He takes my hands. ‘Look at me.’ he demands harshly. I drop my head back down so we’re at eye level again. ‘Tell me, how do I make you feel? I know how you make me feel. Yes, I’ve had a lot of women, but it was all just sex. Mindless sex. No feelings. Ava, I need you.’
I look at my handsome, troubled, neurotic rogue, looking me straight in the eyes and I want to scream at him, bang his head against a wall and knock some sense into him the conventional way. We make each other crazy. That’s the truth of it. We’re no good for each other, and he does manipulate me. The problem is, I enjoy it. The sex kitten in me comes racing to the surface every time. I need him, just as much as he needs me, but for different reasons. He’s made himself a part of me. He’s embedded himself into my mind and soul. Without him, I feel like nothing. I am nothing.
‘How can you need me if I make you do this to yourself?’ I ask tiredly. ‘You’re more self-destructible now than you were before me. I’ve made you need alcohol, not want it. I’ve made you into an unreasonable, crazy man, and I’m certainly not stable anymore. Don’t you see what we’re doing to each other?’
‘Ava,’ His tone is warning. He knows where I’m heading.
‘And for the record, I hate the fact that you’ve put it about?’ I need him to know this, but then the most horrific thought slams into my head.
I gasp.
‘When you disappeared for four days…’ I can’t even finish. My heart has just jumped into my throat and exploded.
His eyes widen at my obvious conclusion, his mouth tightening, the muscles in his jaw ticking. ‘They.meant.nothing. I love you. I need you.’
‘Oh God!’ I fall to my knees. He hasn’t denied it. ‘You were fucking other women.’ My palms find my face as the tears start again, a massive hole punched straight through my stomach.
He joins me on the floor, clenching my arms, shaking me. ‘Ava, listen to me. They meant nothing. I was falling in love with you. I knew I would hurt you. I didn’t want to hurt you.’
‘You said you couldn’t do it to me. You forgot to add again. You should have said you couldn’t do it to me again.’
‘I didn’t want to hurt you.’ he whispers.
My defeated face comes up. ‘So to remedy that, you fucked other women?’ My stomach is turning. I can’t breathe. ‘How many?’
‘Ava, please don’t. I hate myself.’
‘I hate you too!’ I cry, my shoulders jerking as I sob relentlessly. ‘How could you?’
‘Ava, why are you not listening to me?’
‘I am, and I don’t like what I’m hearing!’ I scramble to my feet, but he grabs my waist to prevent me from walking away.
He rests his forehead on my stomach, and I watch through my hazy vision as his own shoulders start jerking. ‘I’m sorry. I love you. Please, I beg you, don’t leave me. Marry me.’
‘What?’ I cry. We’ve not even spoken about the subject at hand yet, and I’m already balancing on the edge of complete breakdown. This is information overload. This is the death blow. ‘I can’t marry someone who I don’t understand.’ I utter the words quietly through my heaves and feel him sag before me on a sharp intake on breath. I can see the angry welts and beads of blood across his back. ‘I thought I was working you out.’ My voice is trembling. ‘You’ve destroyed me again, Jesse.’
‘Ava, please. I was a mess. I lost control. I thought I could fight you out of my head.’
‘By getting pissed and fucking other women?’
‘I didn’t know what to do.’ he says quietly.
‘You could have talked to me.’
‘Ava, you would have run away from me again.’
‘All of the apologies you’ve been giving me were because your conscience was eating away at you. It wasn’t because you were drunk, or because of The Manor. It’s because you screwed around on me. You said you hadn’t dabbled since way before me. You’ve lied to me. Every time I think we’ve made progress, more bombshells. I can’t cope with this anymore. I don’t know who you are, Jesse.’
‘Ava, you do know me.’ He looks up at me with pleading eyes. ‘I’ve fucked up. I’ve really fucked up, but no one knows me better than you, no one.’
‘Sarah might do. She seems to know you very well.’ I say with zero emotion. ‘Why?’
He collapses onto his heels and drops his head. ‘I’ve let you down. I wanted a drink, but I promised you I wouldn’t, and I know what’s likely to happen if I do.’
I wince at his admission. ‘So you had yourself whipped?’
‘Yes.’
My stomach joins my heart in my throat. ‘I don’t understand.’
His head remains dropped. ‘Ava, you know I’ve led a colourful life.’ His voice is quiet. He’s ashamed. ‘I’ve broken marriages, treated women like objects and taken what’s not mine. I’ve damaged people, and I feel like all of this is my penance. I’ve found my little piece of heaven and I feel like everyone is going out of their way to take it away from me.’
The lump in my throat grows further. ‘YOU are the only one who’s going to fuck this up. Just you. You drinking, you being a control freak, you fucking other women. YOU!’
‘I could have stopped it all. I can’t believe I’ve got you. I’m terrified you’re going to be taken away from me.’
‘So you ask a woman I despise, a woman who wants to take you away from me, to whip you?’
He frowns as he looks up to me. ‘Sarah doesn’t want to take me away from you.’
I shake my head in frustration. ‘Yes, Jesse, she does! You doing this to yourself is agony for me. You are punishing me, not you.’ I’m desperate for him to see this. ‘I love you, despite all of the shit you keep landing on me, but I can’t watch you do this to yourself.’
‘Don’t leave me.’ He grinds the words out, reaching up and grabbing at my hands. ‘I’ll die before I’m without you, Ava.’
‘Don’t say that!’ I shout at him. ‘That’s crazy talk.’
He yanks me back down to my knees. ‘It’s not crazy. That nightmare I had when you were gone. Just like that – gone. It gave me a clue of what it would be like without you.’ He’s in such a state. ‘Ava, it killed me.’
His repeated apologies in his sleep make sense now. I left him in his dream because I found out about the other women. ‘If I left, it would be because I can’t watch you hurt yourself – I can’t watch you torture yourself anymore.’
‘You could never understand how much I love you.’ He reaches for my face, and I pull away. That statement just makes me fuming mad. ‘Let me touch you.’ he demands, trying to grab at me. He’s becoming frantic and panicked and it’s ripping my insides out.