In Too Deep by Stella Rhys Read Free Book Online Page A

this is yesterday’s news.  No need to dwell on something that happened two fuckin’ years ago.”

Chapter Nine
    Two years ago.
    I had frozen on the sidewalk and watched Dane walk away as I processed his last few words.
    The fight about Jackson’s smoking habit.  The trip to Italy with Sloane.  That was five months ago, when Jackson told me the affair first started.  I’d thought the infidelity lasted only three nights in the downtown W.  Three nights over the course of four months.  It had taken every painstaking fiber of my being to forgive him for that short but shattering period of time.  Jackson had been weak and I had been forced be strong.  Strong enough to take him back and get past those terrible four months.
    But now I knew the truth.
    He had first slept with Gabrielle long before that.  Almost two years ago.  Had she even fucking been eighteen yet? For the second time, I was horrified, blindsided and betrayed by the man I loved.
    In the dark of our bedroom, a near-empty bottle of Bordeaux on my nightstand, I stared at nothing.  I had tried to convince myself that Dane was lying but then I thought about Sawyer.  I remembered how he’d acted strangely in Ibiza, right before Jackson’s proposal.  “ I know a lot of things ,” he had said, drunk and morose.  “ Things that you’d want to know .”
    He was referring to Gabrielle – to that night with Dane two years ago.
    My heart twisted as I thought about Sawyer forcing Dane to keep his mouth shut.  It was for my sake.  I was friendly with everyone in Jackson’s boys club but Sawyer was an actual friend to me.  With both Jackson and Sloane prone to overdrinking at parties, he was my savior – my replacement date-slash-best-friend with whom to laugh and dance when everyone else was too drunk to get out of their seats anymore.
    “Lara?”
    The light flicked on and my dark gaze moved toward the door, where Jackson stood.
    “Babe?” he frowned.  “What are you doing?”
    “You slept with Gabrielle two years ago.”
    Jackson froze.  “What are you talking about?”
    “I ran into Dane McNulty on Park Ave today.”
    “Yeah?”
    “Yeah.  And he told me that he saw you at the W with Gabrielle Winter – two fucking years ago, Jackson,” I snarled, my voice reedy as I pulled the words out of my tight throat.  I swallowed hard, furious with the remorse creasing Jackson’s brow.  It was the same one as last time and I wanted something new.  I wanted him to look broken, devastated, like me.  “What the fuck , Jackson?” I ripped my body out of bed.  “What do you have to say for yourself? You said it started with Gabrielle when I was in Italy with Sloane but that was this fucking February , Jackson, and now I’m hearing that you first fucked her two years ago?” I shoved him away when he came to me, so hard that he stumbled backward.  “What the fuck was she, Jackson? Seventeen?”
    “Eighteen.”
    “ Fuck you! ” I screamed.  I was wild, unhinged.  “Don’t you fucking dare act like this is hurting you, this is hurting me .  This is humiliating me.  I believed you.  I believed everything you said.  That you’d never hurt me again, that you loved me – ”
    “I do love you, Lara, please just fucking listen to me for a second,” Jackson pleaded firmly.  Tears blurred my vision as he held me tight.  “I’m sorry.  I’m so sorry.  I didn’t want it to count like that, Lara.  That night two years ago – that was the year the fund had that fucking disastrous January, we were down three percent, I was stressed the fuck out and I didn’t want you to see me looking like a wreck at home so I booked a hotel room to just cool off for a few hours.  All I wanted was to smoke without you getting mad at me.  And before I could even get to my room, I ran into Gabrielle and her friends in the bar downstairs.  They were all drunk, they started flirting with me and I – fuck, I don’t know, I thought they were all