No Matter What (147 page)

Ray came closer, taking one of her hands, forcing her to uncross her arms.

“Will you stop calling it sordid?
 
None of what we did was sordid.”

She looked up at him.
 
“It was wrong, Ray.
 
All of it was wrong.”

He shook his head.
 
“No, it wasn’t.
 
We had sex; we had amazing sex, that’s all.
 
What happened afterwards was a sad and upsetting mistake and I’m sorry you had to go through that.
 
I truly am,
India
.
 
But all we did was have sex.
 
That wasn’t wrong.”

“Wasn’t it?”

They both turned around and
India
’s heart literally stopped beating as she saw JJ standing in the trailer doorway, his face telling her everything she’d ever dreaded. Michael had done his worst and she felt the bottom fall out of her world, right there. Right that second it stopped turning.

“I think there’s something you two need to tell me,” JJ said, his face impassive, his eyes empty.
 
“So ... shall we start at the beginning?”

CHAPTER 69

“JJ, listen to me, please, listen to me!”
India
was almost begging him, begging him to calm down and listen to her because this couldn’t be happening, it couldn’t be. She couldn’t be losing the man she loved so much it hurt.
 
Not like this.
 
She couldn’t lose him like this but he wasn’t taking it well, he wasn’t taking it well at all.

He’d left Ray’s trailer after they’d tried to talk to him and she hadn’t been able to go after him.
 
She’d wanted to, she’d wanted to forget everything else going on because he was the most important thing in her world, and God knows what he was going to do.
 
But she hadn’t gone after him.
 
Instead she’d had to get back out in front of those cameras, in front of a man who’d had a damn good go at destroying her life all over again.
 
She’d had to finish a job she didn’t want to do anymore because the man she loved was out there with the information she hadn’t ever wanted him to know.
 
He now knew that both his wife and his brother had lied to him, and it had been the hardest thing she’d ever had to do, to go out there and pretend that wasn’t going on.
 

She’d eventually found JJ back at home in their bedroom, throwing his things into a suitcase, and she felt like the nightmare was only getting more real as she watched him.

“I can’t do it,
India
.
 
I can’t take this in, it’s too fucking surreal.
 
How many more secrets are you hiding from me, huh?
 
How many more?”

She couldn’t tell him about sleeping with Michael, what would that gain?
 
It could only make things worse and they were about as bad as they could get as it was.
 
So it was more lies in a desperate attempt to salvage something out of a situation that was heartbreaking to say the least.

“None, I promise you, Joe.
 
That’s it, that’s all.”

He looked at her.
 
“That’s all?
 
That’s all?
 
You
and my brother ...”
 
He continued to throw things into his case.
 
“Forget it.
 
I’m out of here.”

“Joe, please!
 
Don’t do this!
 
Don’t do this, baby, please!
 
We need to talk ...”

“No,
India
.
 
We don’t.”

She tried to take his hand but he pushed her away and that stung, that hurt.
 
He was her world, he was her whole life and he was rejecting her and that hurt.

“We don’t need to talk because I’ve heard enough.”

“It was so long ago, Joe.
 
Ray and I, we didn’t think ...”

“No.
 
You
didn’t
think.”
 
He threw the jacket he was holding onto the floor, pushing both hands through his hair.
 
He was in the middle of a nightmare; it felt as though everything he’d thought he’d loved - he felt as though it was all crumbling down around him and he couldn’t do a thing to stop it.
 
“You slept with my brother,
India
.
 
He’s seen you naked; he’s touched you in places ... in places I thought only
I
had seen and yet he … he was there first …”

“Is that what’s bothering you?
 
That
he
got there
first?
”

“Of course that fucking bothers me,
India
!
 
But it’s deeper than that, isn’t it?
 
It’s, Jesus, I don’t know … I mean … you’re both out there, doing those scenes in this movie, kissing each other, and all the time knowing what you did together ...”

“It was five years ago, Joe.
 
Me and you, we hadn’t even met, I didn’t know you ...”

“That’s not the point!”
 
His voice was raised, he couldn’t help it.
 
“The point
is
you both knew and neither of you ...
neither
of you thought me worth telling. You were pregnant with his fucking baby, you got that close to each other and yet you both thought it a better idea to make an idiot out of me and pretend you didn’t know each other at all.”

“We didn’t want to hurt you, Joe.”

“Well done.
 
That worked.
 
Didn’t it?”

He looked at her again and it broke her heart.
 
The look in his eyes was pure hurt, not anger.
 
He was hurt and that was killing her because she hadn’t wanted to do that.
 
She hadn’t wanted to hurt him.

“I mean, exactly what am I worth to you,
India
?
 
You don’t tell me about what Michael did to you, you don’t tell me you’ve slept with my brother, how is that supposed to make me feel?
 
All I wanted was honesty, and you couldn’t trust me enough.
 
I loved you, y ‘know?
 
I loved you ... Jesus, this is messing with my fucking head ...”

“Joe, I’m sorry ...”

“Sorry doesn’t really cut it.
India
.”

He closed his case and hauled it off the bed onto the floor.
 
The bed that only hours ago he’d held her in, made love to her in, and she couldn’t stop the tears as she watched him grabbing his passport from the bedside drawer.

“Where are you going?”

“Back to
L.A.
,” he replied, his back to her as he checked a sheet of paper pulled from his pocket that she could only assume were his flight details.

She swallowed hard, wiping her eyes because crying wasn’t helping.
 
It was only clouding everything.
 
“Back to
L.A.
?”

He turned round to face her, folding the sheet of paper back up and putting in the back pocket of his jeans.
 
And once again the look in his eyes was like a stab to her heart.
 
“I’m going home,
India
.”

She shook her head.
 
“No.
 
Please, don’t go like this, Joe.
 
Not like this.
 
You need to know what went on ...”

“I don’t
care
what went on,
India
.”
 
 
He was shouting again, losing control of a situation he couldn’t get his head around at all.
 
“I don’t care that you slept with my brother, I don’t care that you did that, not really.
 
It’s the lies.
 
That’s what’s killing me,
India
.
 
That’s what hurts, what
really
hurts.
 
The lies.
 
Both of you lied.
 
Both of you.”

“There were reasons, Joe.
 
Listen to me, please.
 
There were reasons, and maybe we were wrong, maybe we handled this badly but please understand – there were reasons.”

He’d stopped listening now, she could tell.
 
He’d turned away from her again and she felt sick and exhausted.
 
She didn’t want him to go, she couldn’t lose him now, not now, she couldn’t.
 
She needed him.
 
She couldn’t lose him but he was slipping through her fingers and she was so tired.
 
She could feel the fight in her fading by the second.

“What about Ellie?” she whispered.

At the mention of his daughter he stopped and turned around, looking at her again.
 
Her face was stained with tears, her eyes so red from crying they looked painfully sore but he couldn’t get the image of her and Ray together out of his head. And it was a pain he’d never felt before.
 
The lies had hurt him, that was true.
 
But he’d lied himself when he’d said he didn’t care that she’d slept with Ray.
 
Of course he cared.
 
Of course it bothered him.
 
It may have been all those years ago but images of his brother touching her, kissing her, knowing he’d been inside her, knowing that had gone on was like a kick to the stomach for JJ.
 
He couldn’t get past it, he couldn’t stop thinking about it.
 
When Michael had told him he’d thought - he’d hoped it was just a big, elaborate lie, something he’d thrown at him to hurt him.
 
He’d hoped that was the case, but when he’d gone to his brother’s trailer, when he’d opened the door and saw them, heard them talking, the truth had hit him full on.
 
So of course it bothered him.
 
It bothered him too much.

“I’m not taking her with me, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“Joe ...” She reached out to try and take his hand but he turned away from her again.
 
He had to get away, he had to think and he couldn’t do that here.
 
He couldn’t get his head around anything here.

“Leave it,
India
.
 
Just, leave it.
 
I’m going back to
L.A.
because I need some time alone, ok?
 
So give me that.
 
You owe me that much.”

She felt the last of her energy seep out of her as she watched him open the door, kicking his case out into the hall.
 
She didn’t want him to go.
 
She didn’t.
 
But the fight was over and she’d lost, she knew that.
 
She’d lost.

“What happens now?” she whispered, and he turned around one last time, the pain in his eyes still there as he looked at her.

“I don’t know,
India
.
 
I really don’t know.”

He walked out into the hallway, closing the door behind him.
 
He was gone.

India
leaned back against the closed door, sinking to the floor as the tears returned, streaming down her face, blinding her almost as she hugged her knees to her chest and cried like she’d never cried before.
 
The pain was ferocious in its intensity, slamming into her with a force that was unreal and it felt as though her whole world had imploded.
 
Everything had gone black, it felt as if it was all disappearing around her, and every ounce of will and strength to make this better had just gone.
 
It was over and she couldn’t get it back.
 
It had gone and she didn’t care.
 
She didn’t care, because the only thing she really cared about had just walked out of that door and until he came back she didn’t even want to think anymore.
 
Until he came back she didn’t want to go on.
 
Until he came back ...

CHAPTER 70

“Where is she?” Kenny asked, coming into the kitchen of the main house.

Reece was sitting at the table, his head in his hands, but he looked up as Kenny stood beside him by the breakfast bar, his arms folded.

“She’s still upstairs,” Reece sighed.
 
“Still in their room.
 
She won’t come out; she won’t even talk to me, Kenny.”

“Yeah, well, she’ll talk to
me,
” Kenny said, starting to make his way out of the room.

“She won’t talk to anyone, Kenny.
 
You’ve tried before, we all have.”

Kenny stopped and turned back around.
 
“So, we just leave her there do we?
 
We just leave her on her own?
 
Has she eaten anything?
 
Has she even seen the kids?”