The Reclamation (The Club Trilogy Book 2) (16 page)

“Great.”

She grabs a pen out of her purse. “I need a piece of paper.” She rummages in her bag.

“You’ve met Oksana in person, I presume?”

“Oh yeah, I started this job in Vegas. I was on the first team of girls, before they branched out to other cities.”

Another kernel of information. Las Vegas is their mother ship.

“I was their top girl in Vegas—most requested.” She smiles with pride. “When they expanded operations, they gave me my pick of cities,” she says.

“And you picked Seattle?”

“I was tired of the dry heat.”

“Well, you certainly solved that problem by coming here, huh?”

She smiles. “And I’ve got family here in Seattle, so . . .”

We sit and stare at each other for a moment in awkward silence. She suddenly looks years younger to me than she did just a moment ago.

“Oksana?” I say, gently prodding her to stay on task and give me that email address.

“Oh, yeah,” she says. “Sure thing.”

“I’ll just input her email address onto my phone.” My stomach hurts. I feel like I’m betraying Sarah. And, frankly, I’m taking no pleasure in scamming Stacy the Faker. I just want to be done with this and go home to Sarah.

“Okay.” She opens her list of contacts on her phone and scrolls down.

I type the name “Oksana” into my contacts and look up, ready for her to tell me the email address. “Okay, what’s the address?”

“Jonas?”

Oh God, no.

Panic floods me like a tidal wave.

This is my worst nightmare.

And my own damned fault.

It’s Sarah.

Chapter 13

Sarah

I look at my watch. Five minutes to seven.

I shouldn’t be doing this right now—I know I shouldn’t. But I can’t help myself.

The tip of my nose is cold and turning red in the chilly night air. I hug my sweatshirt to me and keep walking briskly toward The Pine Box. My heart bangs in my chest. I shouldn’t be doing this. But I pick up my pace, anyway.

After Jonas left the house, I called Kat to make sure no dancing hitmen had paid her a visit today.

“I’m great,” she said. “I’m about to grab dinner with my
bodyguard
.” And then she belted out Whitney Houston’s famous chorus from
The Bodyguard.

“What are you talking about?” I asked, laughing.

“Jonas didn’t tell you? He hired a professional bodyguard to watch over me. Please tell him thank you, by the way—my hunky bodyguard is way cuter than Kevin Costner.”

I was stunned at Jonas’ thoughtfulness, yet again, but also anxious to think he deemed a bodyguard a necessary precaution.

“Do you and Jonas want to meet us for dinner?” Kat asked.

“Not tonight. I’ve got to study and Jonas is out.”

“What’s he up to?” she asked. “Working?”

“I don’t know. He just said he had something he had to do.”

Kat responded with a kind of wincing noise that spoke volumes about her mistrust of Jonas.

“What?” I asked.

“Nothing.”

“Jonas and I have been joined at the hip since he picked me up for Belize”—quite often
literally
joined at the hip, I thought, smirking—“and now he’s all stressed out about protecting me from the bad guys. Poor guy, I’m sure he just needed a little space.”

Kat didn’t reply.

I grunted with exasperation. “Just say whatever it is you’re thinking.”

She sighed. “The guy joined a sex club not too long ago, remember. If he were my boyfriend, I’d want to know what he was doing, that’s all.”

“You don’t know him like I do,” I assured her. “He’s not the dog you think he is.”

“I don’t think he’s a dog. But he’s not a perfect angel, either. I’m just saying, if Jonas Faraday were my boyfriend, I’d want to know where he was.”

Two minutes later, I was clutching that goddamned Club iPhone in my hand like a frickin’ grenade, having found it in only the third drawer I’d opened in the kitchen. Just holding it in my hand made me sick. Until it appeared on the kitchen table this morning, I’d assumed Jonas had gotten rid of the hideous thing after his disastrous night with Stacy the Faker, or, at the very latest, after he’d offered me exclusive membership in the Jonas Faraday Club. Why the hell did he keep it? And if he’d kept the iPhone, I couldn’t help reasoning, did that mean he’d kept the purple bracelet, too? I searched for the bracelet in the same drawer where I’d found the iPhone, but it wasn’t there, which meant he’d thrown the dastardly thing away, thank goodness—or, I suddenly thought, my heart leaping into my throat, that he was wearing it at that very moment. The latter possibility made my flesh crawl. And my heart ache. And the marrow in my
Fatal-Attraction
bone start simmering. The mere thought of Jonas wearing that frickin’ purple bracelet on his wrist, right alongside the Belizian friendship bracelet that matches mine, made me want to boil a little white bunny in a pot.

Opening the iPhone to confirm or debunk my fears wasn’t possible—the damned thing was fingerprint- and passcode-protected—and so, in a fit of anger, I threw it with a loud clank into the big trashcan in the garage. And that’s when I saw Jonas’ car parked in the garage, the engine cold—which made me flip out even further. Either someone had picked Jonas up to take him wherever he’d gone—not a comforting thought—or, in the alternative, he’d
walked
there—also not a comforting thought, in light of a conversation Jonas and I had had in Belize.

We’d been lying in bed in our tree house after making love for the umpteenth time that day, laughing, sharing secrets, divulging our most awkward and cringe-worthy moments. No topic was off limits. We’d told each other about our respective de-virginizations. We’d talked about our past relationships. I’d told him about my two one-night stands, and how ill prepared I’d been for the inevitable brush-offs afterwards, and he’d said he wanted to beat those assholes up for me. And then Jonas had told me a few selected anecdotes from his illustrious career as a shameless man-whore.

“But how did you
find
all those willing women?” I asked, incredulous. “Did you just snap your fingers or what?”

“Well, yeah, most often, they approached me. Other times, I just walked to The Pine Box,” he said, “and it was like shooting ducks in a barrel. The bar being walking distance from my house made saying goodbye afterwards super easy—no second car to juggle.”

“Wow, you were such a pig,” I said.

“I prefer asshole-motherfucker,” he said.

“You’ll hear no argument from me.”

I laughed and kissed him and we made love yet again, the howler monkeys in the trees serenading us all the while.

I keep walking toward The Pine Box, picking up my pace yet again. I’m shivering in the cool night air. I wish I’d grabbed my North Face jacket from my apartment when Jonas and I were there this morning. Damn.

He’s not going to be in the bar,
I tell myself
. You’re wasting your time acting like a clingy, insecure lunatic when you should be studying.

I know.

He probably just went to the rock climbing gym to blow off some steam.

Then why wasn’t he wearing workout clothes when he left the house?

Maybe he had a gym bag in his car.

His car is sitting in his garage.

He probably just needed a drink.

There’s a six-pack of beer in his fridge.

Stop being paranoid. You love him, Sarah. And he loves you. Madness, remember?

Of course, I remember. It’s all I think about, day and night. Yes, I love him—so much it hurts. And he loves me—I’m sure of it.

Then why the hell are you walking to The Pine Box right now?

Why the hell did he keep that
fucking
iPhone?

I don’t know.

And if he kept the iPhone, then isn’t it logical to think he kept the purple bracelet, too?

Logical, yes. Probable, no.

Regardless, why did he keep the iPhone in the first place?

Pick up the pace.

It’s official. I’m schizophrenic.

Fifty feet away from the bar, I stop dead in my tracks. Stacy the Faker stands in front of the bar in a short black dress, feeding quarters into a parking meter. It’s definitely her. I’d know her anywhere.

I can’t breathe.

When Stacy finishes with the meter, she turns around and marches into The Pine Box, her impossibly long legs leading the way on her impossibly high stiletto heels.

I sprint to the back window of the bar and peek inside, clutching my chest. I scan the crowded bar through the window.

Maybe he’s not in there. Maybe this is just a crazy coincidence. Maybe Stacy’s here to meet some other guy from The Club. Maybe—

In an instant, all the “maybes” bouncing around in my head vanish. There he is, standing at the bar, drinking a beer.
Jonas.
My sweet Jonas. Or so I thought.

Stacy approaches him. Jonas hugs her, albeit awkwardly.

My stomach lurches.

I can’t breathe.

My head spins.

This makes no sense. Jonas loves me. I can’t wrap my brain around what I’m seeing. Tears well up in my eyes. A lump rises in my throat.

Jonas motions to the bartender. The bartender nods.

I can’t understand what I’m seeing. This makes no sense. Jonas said he fucked Stacy and the whole time imagined she was me—and this was even before he knew what I looked like. That’s what he told me, anyway. He said she faked it with him—that she repulsed him—that he literally gagged—that the whole experience disgusted him. And now he wants to fuck her again? Even though she
faked
it with him?

My eyes widen with my horrifying epiphany.

Stacy faked it with him.

Oh my God.

What did Jonas write in his application about that woman who faked it with him before—the one who unwittingly inspired his lingual quest for alleged truth and honesty in the first place? “I wanted to teach her a lesson about truth and honesty,” he wrote, “but even more than that, I wanted
redemption
.”

Oh my God. I think I’m going to barf.

I can barely see Jonas and Stacy through my tears. I wipe my eyes.

They turn away from the bar, looking for an open table. Stacy motions in the direction of “my” table—the one where Kat and I spied on Jonas and Stacy the first time—oh Lord have mercy, I can’t believe there’s now a
first
time—but after brief discussion they move in the opposite direction to another table.

I scoot around the corner of the bar to gain a better vantage point of them through another window.

Stacy faked it with him, and now he can’t resist her. He’s an addict and she’s his smack, loaded into a syringe and positioned right into his vein. He can’t resist shooting her up, regardless of whether he loves me or not. Would loving me change a goddamned thing if he were a heroin addict? No, it wouldn’t. An addict needs his fix—loved ones be damned. And this is Jonas Faraday’s fix. I knew it from day one, but I wanted to believe I could change him. I thought I was his rehab, his savior, but I was deluding myself. He held off as long as he could. He tried.

Tears squirt out of my eyes.

I grab at my hair and pull on it. I’m out of my head right now. My heart physically aches inside my chest cavity. I’ve never felt so lost, so alone, so betrayed in all my life. So heartbroken.

When Jonas fucked Stacy the Faker and wished she were me, sight unseen, before he’d ever laid a magical finger on me, well, that was hot, hot, hot—but Jonas fucking Stacy after all that’s happened between us, after all we’ve said and done and
felt,
after everything we’ve told each other, after that kiss outside the cave in Belize, after all the times we’ve made love, after all the times I’ve “surrendered” to him, and jumped off a frickin’ waterfall for him, and the bracelets he put on our wrists—oh my God, holy fuckballs, the bracelets!—well, after all that, Jonas fucking Stacy the Faker is a different kind of
hot
—the kind of hot you get when you burn down your boyfriend’s fucking house.

My chest heaves.

My mind feels like it’s detaching from my body, and not in the way Jonas always refers to—I feel my sanity slipping away. I imagine myself walking in there and slapping Jonas across his gorgeous fucking face and telling him to go to fucking hell. But the thought makes my heart seize and twist and burn. I thought he loved me the way I love him. I thought we’d discovered a mutual madness.

I’ve got a serious mental disease,
he told me.

No shit, you do, Jonas Fucking Faraday. Even after everything we’ve been through together, you kept that damned iPhone so you could fuck a prostitute who—

I stand completely upright, suddenly having a lightning bolt of a thought. I cock my head like a cockatiel. Hang on a second. This doesn’t make any sense.

Hang on a cotton pickin’ second.

This doesn’t add up.

Jonas would never fuck a prostitute.

I squint through the window and peer at him. He’s talking, smiling, looking as gorgeous as ever. He swigs his beer.

He’s not wearing his purple bracelet.

I’m frozen on the sidewalk in the cold night air.

Jonas would never fuck a prostitute.

I saw the way Jonas reacted on the airplane when I told him about my encounter with Stacy in the sports bar—how it tortured him to realize he’d unknowingly brought a hooker into his bed. He became physically ill. Mortified. Humiliated. Angry. He wasn’t faking that reaction—it was real. And in Belize, on that first magical, sexless night, he sobbed into my arms as he told me about his father’s self-destructive obsession with prostitutes during the year before his suicide. Jonas called his father’s behavior “disgusting.”

I’m shaking, adrenaline coursing through me.

Jonas would never knowingly sleep with a prostitute. Sex is the ultimate expression of honesty to him. Ergo, paying a woman to
pretend
to “surrender” to him would be antithetical to everything he stands for. It would
repel
him, not turn him on.