Page 29 of The Redemption of Alex Cade
“You’re a terrible liar. But, I can’t force you to tell me.”
No, he couldn’t but if we were to become… something… if we were to be more, then shouldn’t I be truthful? I was standing at a crossroads, with a decision to make about which route to take. All I could do was hope to god I made the right choice.
I shifted out from his touch, because if I was to tell the tale I’d told no one, I had to do it with a clear head. “I ran away, I suppose, because I’d become involved in stuff I wasn’t proud of.” Jesus, what an understatement.
“What do you mean?” Alex rested his hand on the back of my neck once more, resuming the gentle back and forth of his thumb; I let him, and didn’t pull away.
“I’d got myself into a situation. Because I was so short of money. It seemed like a quick and easy way out. I thought I could handle it, but I couldn’t.” I turned to face him, willing him to make sense of what I was telling him without me having to spell it out.
“Life forces us to make choices. The rock or the hard place. But if that’s all there is, there isn’t really a choice.” His voice was low, and his eyes, although trained on mine, seemed to dim and fade as though he were no longer seeing me but something else, and for a moment I wondered what secrets he kept hidden.
“Tell me, Kit. Tell me what made you run away.”
I hesitated. Could I do it? Push had come to shove. He’d said he couldn’t force me to tell him why I’d gone to Thailand, but if I didn’t where would it leave us? If we truly wanted to make a go of things, didn’t Alex need to know what’d had happened? I only prayed he’d understand. He’d talked about choices, and right then I only had the one.
“University was a struggle,” I said quietly. “Not academically, but financially. I had loans. I worked two jobs. I couldn’t make ends meet. Living and studying in London wasbleeding me dry. I even thought of chucking it all in, but I’d still have debts and no degree to show for it.”
I curled up into the corner of my sofa, a sofa I was so proud of because I’d bought it with my first month’s salary from my boring office job. It was a symbol, like the house and everything in it, that I’d pulled through.
“A friend of mine, who was always as skint as me, was suddenly flush with money and he helped me out a couple of times with no expectation I should pay him back.” The man whose wedding I’d attended, the man I’d cheered and clapped for when he’d kissed his beautiful bride. “He’d chucked in his part time jobs but he had cash to spare and I couldn’t work out why.” I glanced across at Alex. He knew, I felt it in every part of me. Slowly, carefully, Alex pushed his fingers through my hair. His touch was tender, soft almost, and I swear to god that simple gesture was all it took to open the flood gates I’d kept locked for so long.
“He introduced me to somebody. A couple of evenings a week, that was all I had to commit to. A smart hotel in central London, not some stinking alley or the back of a car. Hand picked clients, I was told.” The words rushed from me, clawing at my throat. Alex’s fingers faltered, just for a moment, and fear gripped me that he’d take his hand away, that he’d withdraw. His fingers resumed their regular, almost metronomic rhythm, and the breath I was hardly aware had caught in my chest released on a shaky sigh.
“That first time, I was so nervous. It was just sex, I told myself. It wasn’t as if I hadn’t had my fair share of hook ups at parties and clubs. I wasn’t some naive virgin. So I could handle it. I could bank the cash, chuck in the minimum wage crappy jobs, and reserve my worry for making it through my course rather than how I was going to pay the rent or buy food.”
“But it wasn’t like that.”
I looked at Alex, really looked at him. It had been a statement not a question. I shook my head.
“At first it was. Maybe I got lucky. After the first few times, I was able to read the men and figure out what they liked. Nothing kinky or weird. Nothing too demanding. Everybody got what they wanted out of the arrangement. Later on I had a couple of tricky encounters, which spooked me a bit, but they weren’t anything I couldn’t handle. Because I could handle it, or that’s what I told myself, but underneath and if I really let myself think about it, I knew I couldn’t. Not really.”
I shifted around to fully face Alex. Everything I’d bottled up for so long, it was pouring out of me. A part of me wanted to stop, to press my lips into a tight line and not talk about it again, ever. But I couldn’t. A tap had been turned on and I couldn’t turn it off.
“When all this started, I’d had a boyfriend. It wasn’t anything too serious, we weren’t in it for the long term but I liked being with him.”
“Did he know what was going on?”
“No. There was no way I could tell him because I was afraid of how he’d look at me, that he might see the label rather than the person I was. My extra curricular activities started to affect our relationship. I couldn’t stand him touching me, or kissing me. It felt wrong in a way it hadn’t before. I made excuses. He didn’t push or get annoyed; he wasn’t like that. I think he was confused. We’d been out one evening on another awkward date, and he kissed me. I was caught unawares and went crazy; I completely lost it. Needless to say, that was it between us because he ran for the hills and I didn’t blame him.” I rubbed my hands down my face,the memories of those times I’d pushed so far into the darkness were rushing back to meet me.
Arms encircled me, strong and tight. Alex pulled me close, the solid warmth of his body lending me the support I sorely needed. He placed a light kiss on my head, and I knew I was safe to tell him the rest.
“Twice a week, at the same hotel, became as much a part of my routine as attending lectures and writing assignments, and I did it right up until I graduated. I’d saved a lot of money, and I was going to use some of it to go travelling for a year. I had it all planned out. And then one day I got a call asking if I wanted to attend a party—” Alex’s muscles twitched as I clung onto him. Fear rippled through me that this would be too much for him to take. I looked up. His expression was closed off, unreadable, rather than full of the disgust I’d half expected to see.
“Go on,” he said quietly.
I settled back into him, taking my time to gather my courage to tell him what happened next.
“A select client list, I was told, at a large house just outside London?—”
“Whereabouts?” Alex’s arms tightened around me.
“What? Why does it matter where it was? It was somewhere in a posh part of Surrey, at a huge modern house. I remember thinking, when I first saw it, how ugly and cold looking it was. The party was a weekend affair, and if I had any reservations about it, the fee on offer swept those aside. The amount was eye watering and if I’d really thought about it I’d have realised there would have been a reason why. But what they were paying…” I shook my head as I thought back. “It was going to be my last big earner. I was going to go out on a bang. Sorry, that was one bad fucking joke.”
I wriggled out of Alex’s hold and pushed myself to theedge of the sofa. I needed a break, a breather, before I went on. The coffee had gone cold, but it wasn’t caffeine I wanted. Opening up the cheap brandy, I sloshed some into the glasses. Swallowing back a mouthful, the burn at the back of my throat made me cough and brought tears to my eyes. Alex plucked away the glass and put it down, and took my hand in his.
“You’re the only one who knows,” I said, my voice little more than a rough whisper. “We all had our reasons for being there. Some were students, like me. Others had full time jobs but couldn’t make ends meet. But we had a choice about what we were doing, there was no coercion. That wasn’t the case for everybody.”
“What do you mean?” Alex asked slowly, keeping his gaze locked to mine.
