When he texted to say he had dropped Caleb off and was on his way over I replied saying only that the door was open.   That was an hour ago.  I'm terrified.  Not of him.  I've never been afraid of him and I'm still not afraid of him.  The only thing I'm afraid of is that bloody envelope.

My hands hadn't stopped shaking the entire time I prepared dinner.   They shook as I chopped tomatoes and peeled onions and they shook as I layered the oven dish.   My mind went eerily calm as I prepared dinner and somehow I managed to forget everything else as I focussed sole on that one mundane task. I have no idea why I'm still making dinner since I'm certain I wont be able to eat anything ever again.    I supposed my mind just needed something to focus on other than the envelope and the possibility that Jake is a lying violent psychopath.  

The lasagne actually looks really good.  But then, I've always have been an impressive multi-tasker. I'm at the sink when I feel him appear behind me, his warm strong arms sliding around me as his mouth nuzzles deep into my neck.   I literally jump out of my skin which causes him to step back and throw his hands up.

"Shit, sorry baby.  I thought you heard me come in," he smiles apologetically.  "I rang the bell first.  Didn't mean to scare you."

My heart constricts tightly as I take in the full sight of him.  He looks exactly the same as he did this morning, except now his cheeks and nose are slightly red from the sun.  He's smiling at me the same way he did this morning, with his eyes soft and warm and full of love.    He's still so beautiful and I'm still completely in love with him and my delusions know no bounds if I thought I'd feel any different seeing him now. 
He steps back into my body and pulls me into his arms and kisses me deeply, moaning softly as his tongue finds my own. My body responds like always and I'm unable to do anything but welcome his mouth on my own. Though it takes some effort to keep my arms by my sides and not wrap them around him.

"Mmmmm I missed you today." he murmurs before pulling back to smile at me.   I want to return his smile but the tears are threatening to appear at any moment so I turn my back on him and face the sink again. 

"How was the zoo?" I ask in a strange flat tone. How was the zoo?  Has there ever been a more banal question asked at such a moment?

"Busy, overpriced.  But he loved it.  Think penguins are his new favourite thing now.    He wants to go back next week." He says.  

With my back still turned I nod, reaching my hands under the water to rinse them before squirting them with some more hand soap and repeating the process. 

"Everything ok?" he asks.    I swallow and bite down hard on my lip to stop the tears rolling down my face.  "Alex?"  Christ I need to hold it together here.  We can't have a conversation if I'm a blubbering incoherent mess.  Suddenly I feel his hands on my arms and he spins me round to face him.  "What's the matter? What's going on?" his voice has an edge to it as his eyes narrow with worry.   Oh Jake, you should be worried.

I want to answer him but I literally have no clue how to start this conversation.  'Tell me about the time you were in prison' isn't appropriate, and 'Did you beat and rape the woman who stabbed you?' aren't words I will ever be able to say out loud.

"Alex, answer me.  What's wrong?" his voice is louder now and it snaps something into me. 

Drying my hands on the dishtowel first, I walk slowly over to the dining table and lift the envelope before walking back to him with it.   When I hold it out to him he looks down at it with the some confusion before taking it from me.   Then, keeping his eyes on mine he opens and pulls out its contents.    For the first time I see that the file isn't overly large, there are maybe 10 or so bits of paper, with some of a different shinier material I can see are photos.     My stomach turns as I consider what those photos might be of since I can't see them from here.  

I don't pay much attention to the bits of paper anyway as he leafs through them.   Instead I watch Jakes face.  Outside of sex and anger, his eyes to me have always been so difficult to read and so I expect them to give nothing away here either.  

God how wrong I am.

They widen with shock and disbelief and then the colour, including the sun kissed flush, drains completely from his face.    When they begin to darken, the rage spreads slowly across his face, flaring his nostrils and setting his mouth into a fierce hard line.  When he looks up at me again he looks utterly furious.

"Where the fuck did you get this?" he asks.  As always when he's angry his rough east end accent peppers every single syllable.

"What's that got to do with anything?" I ask, puzzled.   "Is what's in there true?  Is that you?"

His mouth twitches as his gaze seems to intensify. He doesn't say anything for several long torturous moments. "What do you think?" He asks finally. "You read it.  Is it me?" I look down.  How do I tell him I was too much of a coward to read it?   "Well, I'm gonna guess by the way you can barely fucking look at me you're of the opinion that it is."  He says.

I look up and met his eye.  "I never read it."

He smiles then, coldly.  "You're a fucking liar.  Why wouldn't you read it?"

My back straightens and I narrow my eyes on him.  He's calling me a liar?  Oh his nerve is astounding.  "Believe what you want Jake.  But I never read it.   I never read it because I wanted to hear it from you.  I always wanted to hear it from you." I say.   Deep down though a part of me is wondering if I am indeed a liar, did I ever really want to hear this from him? His narrow angry eyes soften a little and he blinks a few times slowly before he begins chewing his lip from the inside. He's thinking hard. About how to do this perhaps, what to say, how to present it to me, which words to chose, how much to share. 

As he thinks I say the same thing over and over in my head like a mantra: Please don't lie to me, please tell me the truth; please let the truth be something manageable. Please don't lie to me, please tell me the truth; please let the truth be something manageable.

"So you know nothing about what's in here?" he says finally, holding up the pieces of paper up.  I look down again quickly.  Shit, he's right.  I can barely look at him. When I lift my head I have to try very hard to hold his gaze.

"Mark told me you were in prison, and that you had a criminal record. That's all I know." I lie.  I can't mention the woman.  I'm not ready to go there yet. 

His eyes narrow and darken again.  "Mark?  Who the fuck's Mark?" he spits.   He thinks about the name a moment as he glances around my kitchen and when his head snaps back to me I know he remembers.  "Dan's brother?  He came here?  He gave you this?" He's nodding now and so I see no point in confirming what he's just said so I don't.  "Course he fucking did."  He closes his eyes and squeezes them hard with his fingers then releases a deep breath.   He runs a hand over his mouth and licks his lips.  "Fucking hell."

I've never seen him use this amount of gestures, expressions, or stress signals.  His normal controlled, cocky, dominant demeanor is literally nowhere to be seen.

"Was he lying?" I ask after what feels like a long period of time. 

He turns his head and looks at me, studying every inch of my face for what feels like hours before finally he shakes his head.  "No.  He wasn't lying."

And there it is. The information isn't as much of a shock as I expected.  There's no crashing down of hopes and dreams and delusions at his confirmation.  I guess I've known since 3pm this afternoon that Mark wasn't lying.  Hearing Jake confirm it doesn't really have any effect other than my finally accepting it as being true.

"Why the fuck did he come here with this Alex?  Did you ask him to find out about me? Didn't you trust me to tell you?"  His voice is angry again, but there's hurt there too.  "You had to go behind my fucking back?"

"What?  No! Of course I didn't go behind your back!  I never asked him find out about you," I shout, horrified he'd think I would.   "He came here of his own volition.  He said he was worried about me.  Worried that I had no idea what I was getting myself involved with." I hug myself tight.

He inclines his head slightly, and smirks. "Oh that's what he said did he?" he nods, clearly unconvinced about Mark's motives.   "And lets not kid ourselves here baby yeah?  You had some fucking idea what you were getting involved with. You'd need to be a fucking idiot otherwise." His snide tone makes a chill sweep over me.  This guy again.   The one with the cold smirk who says things to hurt me.  Yes. This is the Jake I have no idea about.

"Oh really?  You think I had any inkling that you were a violent criminal who beats and rapes women?" I snap through clenched teeth. He flinches back, frowning.   "Yes, you're right Jake, I knew that and I let you into my bed anyway because I just love a bad boy." My voice is laced with disgust and he seems to shrink back from me.

"What the hell are you talking about?" he asks, brow still furrowed.  I say nothing and hug myself tighter.    "What did that fucking pig say to you?  Alex, I've never hit a woman in my life. Fucking hell." He sounds scared now and takes a step toward me. Instinctively I move out of his reach and he gives me a look of hurt which I ignore.   I can't let this man near me.   Not now that I have no idea who he is or what he's capable of, or which version of him I'm likely to get from one moment to the next.  "Please tell me what he said Alex?" His voice is softer now, the Jake I know seemingly back. 

I lick my lips which feel dry and chapped.  "I presume it was the woman who hurt you - he said the wife of an associate - she was assaulted.  Beaten badly.  They think she was raped too.   I don't know anymore than that." I tell him.    I know I should keep looking at him, watching his eyes for the truth or the lies that may be written in them but I can't look at him.  It physically hurts to look at him.  So I look down again.

"I never laid a finger on her Alex.  That didn't happen.  I never hit her and I certainly never..." He can't even say the word and when I look at him he's shaking his head in disgust.   "I never touched her.  I never did that." He says.   He looks and sounds so sincere.  I want to believe him. But something is niggling and gnawing away at me.

"I asked you that night, here, why you would let the person who stabbed you get away with it. Do you remember what you told me?" I ask.  I need to see his eyes for this and so I watch them closely.   The sad, lost look that comes over his face tells me he does remember what he told me that night. 

"That's not what I meant Alex." He shakes his head, eyes and mouth hard.

"Convenient you saying that now don't you think?"

"Oh come on!  Seriously?" he roars.  "You think I'm actually capable of that?!  Of doing something like that? Baby please, you know me.  You know I would never do that.  You know me," He pleads, his eyes imploring me. 

"Oh, I think it's abundantly clear that I do not know you Jake.  That I never did know you."

He looks hurt again as he shakes his head.  "I never touched her Alex.  You have to believe that."

"Then tell me what you meant?!" I snap.  "That night, next door, you insinuated you'd meted out some vigilante justice of your own for what she did to you.  What was it?"  

He sighs deeply and squeezes his eyes shut with his fingers again. When he opens them he looks resigned.  "What I meant was that she was going to have to look after her cunt of a husband for a very long time.  Because what I did almost killed him. I put her husband in a coma Alex.  That's what I meant." 

I swallow.  He beat a man into a coma?  Is that more or less acceptable that beating and raping a woman? Of course my mind thinks its more acceptable but since I met him, and more accurately since three pm this afternoon, my mind hasn't been processing things like a normal persons would so I don't know if I trust it. 

"Did you sleep with her?" I ask.   When his eyes flicker and blaze it's all the confirmation I need.  Oh yes. He fucked her all right.   "Well they know you did, and they think it has something to do with this all of this.  They don't know about your little debt-collecting visit to her husband." I tell him.     He nods slowly, his mind ticking. "So I assume you touched her when you fucked her?   So you saying a minute ago you never laid a finger on her was actually a lie?" I'm being petty and I hate myself for making this about the fact that he fucked this woman when it's about everything but that. Yet I still harbor some stupid petty jealousy over him being with another woman.  I'm pathetic.  

He sighs again, sounding tired now. "Yes I fucked her once. Yes, I touched her then but it was consensual.  I never hit her,  before, during or after so whatever else that lying prick told you about that is bullshit Alex."

"And you have no idea what happened to her either I assume?  She stabs you with a knife, and then a week later she's beaten half to death? That's purely a coincidence I take it?  I mean seriously?  You expect me to believe that?" 

"No, but I expect you to believe me. And trust me.  Because you love me Alex, remember?" he says.   I glance away from him.   "Or do you only love me when I'm inside you and fucking you and making you come?"  I look back to find his eyes hard and mean again.   "Is it really just my cock that you love baby?  Cause in that case, we could just have done that bit, the fucking bit.  You know instead of all this love bullshit which when it comes down to it is apparently worth fuck all." He says snidely. 

I narrow my eyes and I stare him down.   I wont even respond to that.  To him - mean smirking Jake.   Finally his eyes soften again, like he doesn't have enough energy or desire to hold onto the rage.   His shoulders slump and he sighs loudly. "I don't know what happened to her but I will find out.  Trust me."

Oh that word again - trust. 

"Why were you in prison?  When?  And what for?" I ask, feeling bold all of a sudden.

"Oh he didn't tell you that bit?  He told you a pile of bullshit about me but the truth he left out?" he nods his head and snorts derisively.  "Sounds about fucking right."

"Oh, he offered to tell me everything. I told him that I wanted to hear it from you."

He gives me a long look and then runs his hand through his hair, before nodding once like he's just made a difficult decision about something.   When he moves toward me I don't flinch this time, he walks past me to the dining table where he pulls out a chair and indicates for me to sit down. 

"I'm fine standing." I tell him.

"Please sit down Alex." He says softly.

"Oh so this is the part I should sit down for?" I ask. 

He sighs.  "Please." 

I walk towards him slowly and sit down, before Jake takes the seat to my right on the long bench that runs along the wall.  He leans forward on his elbows and stares at me hard as he begins picking at his fingernails.  At one point he cracks his knuckles and places his palms flat down on the table, sliding a hand toward me like he might take mine in his, but he doesn't. 

Finally he drops his hands onto his lap and leans back against the wall.  When he finally opens his mouth to speak his whole body seems to deflate, his shoulders dropping down and the tension lifting off of them before my eyes. 

"I was sixteen and utterly out of control." He starts.   "Jon had fucked off to the army by then and I hadn't seen my mother for years so I was on my own.  No one to answer to for what I did and no one who gave a shit what I did.   I started drinking when I was ten I think, it was easy to get a hold of stuff than you'd believe. I mean they call them care homes but honestly, no one cares.  No one gives a shit." he laughs, it's a sad empty noise.    "Anyway, by the time I was sixteen I was on something every day.  Coke, speed, pills, anything I could get my hands on, legal or not." He flicks his eyes up to check my reaction, which as far as I'm aware is impassive and calm.   "None of this is any excuse for the things I did, its just, I don't know, context." He shrugs.    "Anyway, the guys I hung around with were always older and just as bad - worse even.  Their hobbies were stealing cars, robbing houses, dealing.  I used to just tag along, happy to have something to do and people who didn't mind having me around.  So one of the older guys got a job at a security depot and told us about a safe, and about how the duty guys had the codes.  I can't remember the details, I wasn't really told any, I was just supposed to be the lookout."  He shrugs again and runs a hand over the back of his neck and focuses on a point on the table.  "Anyway, it went wrong, the guy on shift didn't know the code and somehow managed to press a panic button.  It was a total fuck up.  When they split with some valuables I got left behind."

I shift forward in my seat, shocked.  "You were 16?" It's not what I was expecting, not at all.  He nods.  "So you were a child, and a look out?  You couldn't have been given much of a sentence?"

Some hope floods into his eyes for a moment but then its gone again.  "I took part in the beating of the security guy.  I hit him with a baseball bat a few times and he identified me in court.  What really did me in though was that I wouldn't talk.  I never gave them anything on the others.  That was worse to them.  I got 4 years."  Oh that seems cruel.  Too cruel for a damaged teenager from a broken home.   "Eighteen months in a young offenders, and then ten in Wandsworth after I hit 18.  They let me out early for good behavior." He offers me sad smile.

As I process the information I realise I'm relieved.  It's not a nice story but it's also not unmanageable.  Strange how different things are to how they first appear.

"Why didn't you talk?  Give up the others?"

He smiles, but its empty. "Four years is nothing compared to what would have happened had I grassed.  It's just not how it's done. You learn that shit pretty young.  It's part of what you live by.   I got caught.  I paid the price." He shrugs again.

"You were a child Jake, and under the influence of older people.  They should have taken that into account."

He nods.  "They did Alex.  I'd been in and out of Feltham since I was thirteen. I was a repeat offender.  Judge said I needed to grow up - guess he thought a longer sentence would sort me out. He was right.  Certainly helped me mature."

I picture a thirteen year old Jake lost and lonely with no one who cared about him and I feel my heart break a little.  He must have been so afraid and so angry at everyone.  He's still lost and lonely too.  He thinks I don't see it but I do. I try and remember what I was doing at thirteen.  Having piano lessons and holidaying in the south of France surrounded by a happy loving family.  I feel sick.  

"It must have been awful." I say, tears welling up behind my eyes again.  I glance down, focusing hard on the colouring of the wood of my dining table. 

"It wasn't so bad.  It got me off the street. And keeping my mouth shut and taking the fall for it got me some respect.   It was how I met the guy who pretty much changed my life."  His voice has a strange tone to it and I cant tell if this man changed his life for good or bad.  Though looking at the person he is today I suppose it can't have been all-bad.   Maybe he's talking about Danny Ward.  The guy Mark was so interested in.

"Which guy?" I ask.

He's silent for a moment, his green blue gaze inscrutable. "You really didn't read that file did you?"

I confirm this with a small shake of my head. 

"He isn't someone you need to know about.  In fact it's best you don't," he tells me, his eyes narrow and serious.  "Its best you're not involved when it comes to him."  

We're both silent for a long time as Jake draws circles on the table with his finger and I watch him.  If only that was that. 

Sliding my chair back, I stand and cross the kitchen to the fridge and open it.  After inspecting the choices I pull a bottle of Muscadet from the fridge rack.    I fill my glass way beyond half way and take a long welcome sip, and then another, all the while with the weight of his stare on me. Lifting the glass and the bottle I carry them back to the table and sit back down.   My body needs wine for whatever happens now.  My body probably needed wine way before now.  He watches me intensely as I take another sip of the cool sweet wine. 

"How do you make a living?" I ask as I lower the glass from my mouth.  He looks shocked.  Good.  

"What do you mean?" His eyes are suspicious, like he's trying to figure out what I'm keeping from him, or what I know.  Which is still exactly nothing since I didn't read what was in the envelope.

"I mean, is your nightclub your main and only source of income?  Or do you have other, less legitimate streams?" My voice is steady but my body feels like its about to shatter any moment.  When I lift my glass, I'm surprised by the fact that my hands don't shake even a little. 

His mouth twitches slightly, so slightly that I almost miss it.  "There are a couple of others but the club is my main concern now." To be honest I'm surprised at the speed and clarity of his reply and so I don't have my next question ready.

"Because it's where you launder money for your less legitimate streams?" I sip my wine and stare him down.

His nostrils flare and he shakes his head. "No. The club is completely legitimate and I plan on keeping it that way." 

"But you do have other streams?  What are they?" I press on, feeling oddly exhilarated, in control even. 

"Alex... be careful." He warns.

"Is that a threat?" I narrow my eyes. 

He looks confused.  "What? Of course not.  I just mean, be careful about how much you think you need to know.  Do you really need to-."

My glass lands on the table with such force I'm surprised it doesn't break.  "How much I think I need to know?  Are you serious?"  I flare.   "I think I need to know the truth don't you? Who the hell are you?  What the hell are you?"  I shout, my voice echoing around the quiet kitchen.  He's quiet for a long moment before he lets out a breath.

"You know exactly who I am Alex.  You've always known." He says.  His tone is so calm and so soft that it magnifies and intensifies the rage swirling inside me. Well, I have to hand it to him - he always has the ability to be the calm in the eye of my emotional storm. 

"Excuse me?"

"I've never lied to you about who I was." He repeats. "I've evaded, withheld yes but I've never lied to you.  I never wanted to lie to you.   Caleb I should have done different, I'll admit that.  The rest," he shakes his head.  "No.  There are things about myself and about what I do that I know now I can never tell you."  

Never.  He was never going to tell me.   He promised me.   I go to cut in but he puts his hand up.  "And believe me, its not because I'm afraid you'll run a mile.  That shit is all pointless.  It's far too late for that now anyway.  The reason I can never tell these things is because it's safer for you.  Do you understand what I'm saying?"  His tone is grim and his eyes are resolute. 

"No I don't.  I don't understand what you're saying.  Safer?  What does that mean? How can it be dangerous to know who you are?" I frown.   Jake's eyes are pleading with me, tortured pools of green.  I knew his name – we all know his name.  Seriously, who is this person sitting in front of me. 

"You know I thought I could wait... let you keep your secrets.   But I can't live like that.  Not now." My voice fades as breathlessness overtakes me.  How much more is there?  How much more am I in denial about?  Do I just keep moving the limits of what I'm willing to accept so that I can be with him? No, that's weak and I know it. 

"I need you.  I love you." He says quietly.   "Nothing else matters." 

Oh that's cruel.  I give him a look that I hope conveys that I think it's cruel before lifting my glass and downing the rest of it.   No, it all matters. He knows it matters.  We can't keep doing this.  Over and over.   I need him to tell me it all now.   So that when it's over and I'm alone I can tell myself it's because he left me with no other choice.  "What are your other streams of income? I want to know."  I don't want to know.   I need to know. 

His nostrils flare and his beautiful mouth sets into a hard straight line but he doesn't open it and he doesn't say a word.  Not one word.   He just stares at me, warning me, defying me.  

There's heat and desire in his eyes too and from nowhere the image of him taking me rough and hard and angrily across the table currently wedged between us teases the front of my mind.  That's when I know I'll always want him.  No matter what he is or what he's done, my body is just conditioned to want him. To beg him if necessary.  I refuse to let it take control right now. 

To try and wash away the illicit thoughts that I can almost taste on my tongue, I reach forward and refill my glass.  Jakes eyes observe me with interest but he says nothing of course. He's going to make me play the stupid game of questions again.  Nothing has changed since that night in the restaurant.   That night which now seems like years ago.  I'm still playing the game.  The stupid game of my own making. 

"Less legitimate?  Dangerous to know?   What does that even mean?" I muse, lifting my glass to my mouth.  As I swallow this time the wine feels sweeter and thicker and more potent. I look him over, the small scar on his eyebrow, the reddish scar on his neck that I helped put there, his knuckles that always seem to be red and angry, the expensive watch on his left wrist.   "I mean are you a drug dealer?" I ask.   It's a stab in the dark but when his eyes flicker slightly I know I've just struck something. Oh my god. 

"I'm not a drug dealer." He says carefully.  Too carefully.  I need to press on another spot.

"Ok.  Are you involved in the supply or manufacturing of illegal substances?"

His nostrils flare slightly before he lets out a small breath.  "It's complicated." Is what he says.

Oh my god.

I push the wine away and sit forward. "What's complicated about it?  You either are or you aren't. There isn't anything complicated about it.  It certainly wont be complicated when you're arrested." I snap.

"That's not going to happen Alex." He says quietly, confidently.    My mouth drops open in shock.  His arrogance is almost breathtaking.

"Oh its not?  You know that for a fact? Do you?"

"Yes." Again he looks staggeringly confident.

I cant breathe. I'm speechless. I push the chair back and stand, crossing the kitchen to the window to try and get some air into my lungs.  I lean my body against the sink and my head towards the window and the fresh air and I hear him stand and come toward me.   I don't know how close he is and I don't want him near me.  I feel sick again.   So he's what? A drug baron? Christ that's ridiculous, its not bloody Mexico.  I feel him slipping further and further away though.  Becoming far less manageable. Which pile would this go into?

"Alex," he says, close behind me.  Too close.

I whip round to face him. "And what about where these drugs of yours end up Jake? Schoolchildren? Addicts? Families torn apart. Do you care about any of that? About the damage they do?" 

He sighs, looking a little less sure of himself finally.  "Alex you need to try and understand, that this shit happens all over the world.  It'd be happening anyway, they'd be coming in from somewhere.  It's how the world works.  At least our stuff is clean." He says as my mouth drops open.  He actually sounds almost reasonable. 

"Oh my god you're serious?" I shake my head.   "You, arrogant patronising bastard.  Our stuff?  I'm a doctor - I see first hand what your stuff does to people.  I think what you mean is that it may as well be you profiting from other people's misery? That's really what you mean isn't it?  I mean you have to pay for your duplex apartment in central London and your sports car somehow right? Is that how you bought your nightclub too Jake?" I'm shouting now and I cant breathe properly.     He moves toward me, imploring me.  "Don't you dare come near me.  I don't want you near me.  You disgust me." I snap. He stops, frozen to the spot, his eyes wide and afraid.   

"Alex please..."

"What else? There's more I presume?  With people like you there's never just one thing is there?  Keep going, the safe stuff of course.  The stuff it's not dangerous for me to know about?  Human trafficking perhaps?"

"Don't be ridiculous. " he says looking down.

"Oh I'm being ridiculous?  So that's a ridiculous illegitimate income stream?  Sorry, my mistake.  But drugs are fine? Selling people poison is fine?" 

"You dish poison out too baby, yours just comes on a little piece of paper with your fancy signature at the bottom." He says.   Before another thought enters my head I step forward and slap him hard across the face. He barely flinches but my hand stings and so I know I've hit him hard.   His eyes soften immediately and I see regret and remorse seep into them but I turn away from him.  I can't look at that.

I feel utterly exhausted, like I'm suffering the after effects of an adrenalin rush.  I don't want to hear anymore.  I don't think I can stomach it.  Do I really need to hear any more anyway?   My bones feel like lead and my head feels far too heavy for my birdlike neck. In the garden a sparrow sits on the birdfeeder and stares back at me with what looks like pity.  It looks strong, stronger than me, and even it's tiny little legs, which normally appear so fragile look strong compared to how mine feel right now.

"Say something Alex." He says finally. 

I sigh and close my eyes. "What's left to say?   Anyway, I told you to tell me the rest."   My voice is calm now like there's nothing left in it.  All of my strength has gone to my legs to save me from total collapse.

"I don't want to hurt you anymore." He says. "I never wanted to hurt you."  

As I press my eyes shut tighter I feel the tears squeeze out and down my face.

"Then you should go.  Your being here hurts me."  I tell him in a dead voice.    When he doesn't move I turn to face him, watching as his face twists at the sight of me and my pathetic tears.   I use the back of my hand I wipe them away. "I want you to leave now."

He shakes his head. "Please don't do this to us again Alex."

I want to hiss and snarl at him then as the rage comes from no where, loud and sudden.  How dare he.  "I haven't done this.  You have!"  I tell him.   He doesn't argue with me and his eyes drop from mine.   "You were right.  I can't be with a man like you. Someone who does the things that you do, I cant-."  He moves quickly and then he's on me, his hands on my arms pulling me into him, into his body, and his heat and his smell, smothering me.  

"All of that was before.  I'm going to change.  I am changing.   Just give me time baby please.  I'm working on it. I'll do whatever I need to do.  I cant lose you Alex, I'm done if I lose you. I told you that."  He has my head in his hands and his eyes are burning into mine. "I love you.  You love me. We can sort this. Please let me sort this."  His voice is raw and passionate and normally it would stir my insides into a frenzy, breaking everything else down so that I can't think straight.  So that all I can think of is him.    But I don't feel that now.  It feels like there's nothing to break down.  I feel empty.  Like he's taken everything I feel for him and turned it into something else.  Something that was never real.  Something made of paper, or air, or nothing.  You know exactly who I am Alex.  You've always known.

"No," I shake my head and push at his body.   "I can't love you.  I can't be with you." Is what I hear myself say.  It's not to him I don't think.  It's to myself, like a warning, or an alibi for the pain that will come later.

When he finally steps back from my body I feel so cold. 

"You can't love me? Or you don't love me?" he asks, his eyes glittering and hard.    "Cause those are two very different things baby.   One of them makes you a coward and the other makes you a fucking liar."

Under the weight of his stare I think about that.  I suppose I'm a coward then.  A coward like him. 

"I don't know what I am anymore."  I mutter looking away from him again back out the kitchen window.   I need him to go now.  The sooner he leaves the sooner it can start. The sooner it starts the sooner it will be over.

"Well I do. I know who you are. You're the woman I waited my whole fucking life for Alex. You're everything I want." His voice is so soft and so sad and it almost floors me.  My tears are falling harder now.   Why does he say these things?  How am I supposed to hold onto the strength I need to end this when he's saying these things?  I don't turn around to see his face because I'm not strong enough for that.  Because I'm a coward.

I just grip onto the sink hard and watch the sheets that we made love this morning blow gently in the wind, they're stark white sheets with faint pink petals on them. The sparrow from the birdfeeder is perched on top of them now and creeps across the top of the line tentatively.

"Please take the envelope with you when you go." I tell him.

He doesn't respond but eventually I hear the sound of his footsteps going across the slate floor and the sound of him lifting up the godforsaken envelope.   When I hear him come back towards me and stop I hold my breath.

"So, this is really it this time?   You're gone. " I cant decide if it's a question or not.

From somewhere I find the strength to turn around and look at him.  His face is ashen and his eyes are wide and unbarred.  He's so bloody beautiful.  "Did you really expect anything else?  Once I knew everything.  Isn't it what you always said would happen?  That I'd run a mile?  This is what you meant isn't it?"

A sad look comes over his face.  "Yeah, I expected it. I always knew it would happen.  I'd deluded myself I guess.  Thought maybe once I had you, once you loved me, then all the dark shit wouldn't matter." 

So I confirmed his worst fears.  I was everything he expected.  The thought depresses me I find, as though in some way I've let him down.    As though I wasn't strong enough.    "But I'm glad it matters to you.  It should. It should matter to someone like you." He nods.

As he stares at me with that look on his face I think that maybe he's going to come towards me again, and grab me again, pull me into him again. I can't decide if I want him to do that because I know I'm not strong enough to resist it.   He doesn't move though.   Until suddenly he does and it's not towards me, it's away from me.  Instantly, my whole body begins to throb with the weight of a heavy suffocating loss.    My brain explodes with a torrent of thoughts. 

It's happening.   He's leaving.   He needs to.  He can't.  I can't let him go.  I need to let him go.   I love him.  I'm in love with him.  I can't be without him.  I know what that feels like to be without him. It's walking living breathing death.   I can't go through that again.  What am I doing?

Every cell in my body is screaming and running after him and I hear myself shouting his name and asking him to wait, before telling him not to go and crossing the room into his arms.  I'd tell him we could work it out because I love him and because he loves me and because that's all that matters.  

But none of that happens.  

I don't shout and I don't move.  Instead I just stand there and watch as his tall, powerful, beautiful form distances itself from me. When he stops at the kitchen door and turns back to me my heart stops beating entirely – I'm certain of it. He stares at me a long time before speaking, his eyes soft and full of pain.

"You know I really wish I'd been born into a different life Alex.  I wish I'd been born into the kind of life where I could have met you, and you could have been with me without any of the dark shit or the secrets and the things you can't forgive me for.   You know when I was young I used to daydream that I'd been dropped into someone else's life, cause I never felt like I belonged there.  I thought maybe, I don't know, maybe my real family were decent people with nice lives and they were looking for me." He stops, looks uncomfortable, embarrassed even before his eyes go serious again.   "I stopped dreaming about that but I never stopped wishing I was someone else.   What I did, I did to survive, to make a life for myself that was in some way tolerable. Recently it was to make my sons life better than what I had.  I know you won't understand that, and I get why you don't, I get why to you I should have made different choices and you know what? You're right.  If faced with better options I probably would have made different choices.  But you know something? I wouldn't change any of it now.  Not a single fucking thing.   Know why?"  

Strong.  His words are always so strong. There's so much strength in what he's just said. Since I don't know where my voice has gone I just shake my head. No I don't know why he wouldn't change a thing.

"Because everything I've ever done, every bad choice I ever made was worth it the night I met you." I stop breathing entirely.  I've no voice or breath or heartbeat.  I'm sure.      "I'd never have been there that night if I hadn't made those choices and I believe in things happening for a reason. It's one of the only things I believe in.   I don't judge you for not wanting to be with a guy like me.  You deserve better I know that. I always told you that.  I guess I just bought into the fantasy of what you gave me.  I just believed you when you told me I was wrong." He says, his eyes full of conviction. 

As I stare back at him every single second of our relationship plays through my mind like a film. A beautiful art house film where everything is given a sort of nostalgic romanticism - the night we met, the night in his office, the first time we made love - all of it plays quickly through my mind against a beautiful piano instrumental and it looks perfect.  Every single frame of it.

"You shouldn't have listened to me Jake.  I didn't know what I was doing.  I didn't know anything."  But that's a lie isn't it? I knew some things.  But mainly it was secrets and evasions and delusions.  

He closes his eyes as though the very sight of me is causing him pain.   I know that feeling.  I really wish he would leave now.   When he opens his eyes again they look glittering green. 

"I never wanted any of this." He tells me. 

Of course he didn't. Why would anyone want this?   This kind of pain.   I honestly have no idea what he wants me to say in response to that so I just nod and steady myself by turning back around to look out the window.

"Please go now.  I need you to go now." I beg.

"Alex please..."

"Goodbye Jake." My voice is steady and loud.  The strength of it surprises me.

I hear nothing for what seems like hours.  Why isn't he leaving?  He needs to go.  I need him to leave now.    When I turn to face him I almost shatter completely.  His face is so full of pain and hurt and it twists everything up inside me tightly.  I want to go to him and hold him but I cant.  Because I cant love him.  Because I'm a coward.  

Then, with a nod of finality he turns and walks out of the kitchen and out of my house and out of my life. 

After I hear the door close it's a full 5 minutes before the tears come again.  I know this because I stare at the clock the entire time.  It was 6:10pm when he walked out and I don't feel the hot slow moving tears roll down my face until 6:15pm.  They seem to come from my throat or my lungs because they burn on the way up and I can't breathe properly.  As my body finally gives in I slide down to the floor and cry like a child.  Great heaving noisy sobs which stagger and shake my entire body.  A moment later Fred comes padding up to me and curls up at my feet, nudging his head against my knee in what feels like solidarity. Though he did seem to be fond of Jake, I'm certain it's just because he's hungry, cats tend to very one-track minded in that respect.

Oh my god he's gone.   He's actually gone.  I let him go.  I had to let him go.   I'm in love with him.    He's gone and I love him.  How do I live like this? How do I live without him?

My heart feels like it's been battered and tortured and left out to die. As the tears keep falling Fred presses his warm comforting little body harder against me.

It's young though, my heart.  It will recover.  It has to.