He had nowhere else he wanted to go, he could not return to Seattle couldn't face being that close to Fallon and not be with her, and he was not prepared to return to Grayfox. He had lost her because of them. So he continued to stay with Rachel.
One morning a couple of weeks into his stay Rachel found $2,000 on her kitchen table. She confronted him "What exactly is this for? I never asked you to give me any money; I'm doing this because I want to help you."
"I don't need your help. I am perfectly capable of paying my own way. Just because I don't appear to work I do have money. I figure $2,000 a month will just about cover things for the time I stay."
"Two thousand a month is totally unreasonable. You hardly eat anything; I almost have to force food down you. Granted the alcohol gets a little expensive, but even as much as you drink it surely is not $2,000 a month worth."
"You have to pay rent and expenses don't you, on this apartment? Well, I intend to pay my share I have never lived off a woman and I'm not about to start now."
As the days and weeks passed they settled into a strange routine. Rachel worked nights at the bar and did her best to care for him during the day. Anyway as much care as he would allow. For the most part he never left the apartment drinking, reading newspapers, surfing the internet and pacing the rooms most of the day, never appearing to notice her. She fed him, cleaned for him, purchased his papers; he insisted on one paper from each city that the nearby newsstand sold. He read every one of them each day from front to back. She continued to hope he would eventually appreciate her and even care for her. She was still unsure what it was that made him so angry yet so sad at the same time. By now she had surmised that he had lost a woman he was so completely in love with that the loss was destroying him. She was still not sure if the woman had died or left him.
He did leave the apartment each morning before his first drink of the day to workout at the local gym and do a little boxing. He did at least want to keep himself in shape because he knew he would eventually return to Grayfox and become the leader. It was the only place he had ever lived until now, all he had ever known so there was nowhere else to go. First, however, he had to find a way to control the staggering pain that enveloped him constantly he had to find a way to get over her.
The days passed into months and the routine never changed. Some days were better than others if you could consider the days when he wasn't so incapacitated by the pain that he could hardly breathe as better days. Well into the fifth month he had been with Rachel he was having an unusually bad week. So bad that there were a couple of days when he was not even able to get out of bed and go to the gym. The nights were even worse, he would sleep for only short periods but than the horrible nightmare would wake him and it would be hours before he was able to sleep again, or for that matter wanted to because he knew the nightmare was lurking somewhere near the surface just waiting to come back to haunt him.
Friday was shaping up to be the worst day yet. The night before he had had the nightmare again but was not able to wake enough for it to end. Although he could not remember any part of it on Friday morning the horror of it continued to plague him. He decided to forgo the gym and get busy on his drinking to try to deaden the pain to some degree. He decided to read some of the newspapers Rachel had bought that morning. He finished both the Seattle and Bellingham papers and had moved on to Spokane's paper next. He was not usually in the habit of reading it as closely as the others, Spokane held no interest to him, but something kept him turning each page until he reached a column titled "Out and About in Spokane." Seemed like a local gossip column and he was about to start on a new paper when a name caught his eye.
As I was going through the public records a few days back I came across a marriage license application for a Carter Brendon & Fallon Tremaine. This reporter is sure it is the Fallon Tremaine who is the daughter of our venerable Senator from the great state of Washington. There is a rumor going around that Senator Tremaine will be making a bid for the Presidential nomination in the next election three years from now. Wonder why these two lovebirds would pick Spokane to apply for their license and also why there has been no announcement reference the upcoming nuptials from Senator Tremaine's camp.
Jesse gripped the arms of the chair he was sitting in took a deep breathe and waited for the pain to hit. He was positive this time it would be so bad he could not possibly be able to withstand it, but for the first time since she had ordered him out of her father's house he felt nothing. He was completely numb. He sat there for the longest time, waiting for all hell to break lose inside him. Remarkably, nothing happened. Yes he was overwhelmed with sadness, bitterness, regret, and he wanted to die now more than any other time in his long lonely life. But he felt absolutely none of the excruciating pain that had engulfed him for the past months and would not let go. The fact that she was married, and to his brother of all people, seemed to shut everything inside him completely down build a wall around him that held back everything.
Friday passed into Saturday, Saturday into Sunday. He felt only numb, no debilitating headaches, no knives cutting at his insides every minute of the day, only a crushing emptiness and complex sadness enveloped him. His brother, married to the woman he loved and whom he would continue to love through all eternity.
Rachel was also aware of a huge change in him. He no longer drank anything, he sat at the table and ate like an ordinary person he did not read the newspapers or surf the internet at all, and he was away from the apartment now for long periods of time each day. He never spoke never uttered one word to her or anyone else who might be at the apartment or the bar on the few occasions when he went there while she was working. It was as if he really believed he was alone there. She was not sure which was worse, the drinking, brooding, and angry outbursts or the silence.
The one new development that Rachel welcomed with open arms was when several nights after the change in him occurred he came into her room, into her bed and silently fucked her. No preamble, no loving touches nothing at all intimate he simply pushed himself inside her and when it was over he left her room, took a shower, and slept in his own bed. Up to then he had never attempted to touch her or show any interest in taking that direction with her or anyone else. She always took it as him not wanting to cheat on the woman he was obsessing over. Rachel could only hope that he was finally getting over her.
Over the course of the next few weeks it became a nightly routine for him to enter her room, silently take her, shower, and sleep in his own bed. He never mentioned it to her the next morning, never acted as if it had even happened. She didn't mind, she was willing to accept any crumb he gave her, against her better judgment she was in love with him.
Jesse was not entirely sure why he was behaving in this manner. He felt nothing for this woman who had taken him in, and he knew this fact made him more of a shit than he wanted to think he was. The awful truth was it was impossible for him to feel anything but his all consuming desire for Fallon. When he was with Rachel he felt absolutely nothing so why bother. He convinced himself that this was his way of punishing Fallon for how she had hurt him, but Jesse was also sure that Fallon felt nothing for him any longer and would not care in the least if he had sex with numerous women each night.
Rachel's friend Freda told her that his behavior amounted to rape and she should call the authorities, kick him out, but Freda had been advising her to kick him out all along. She was pretty sure Freda was jealous. Rachel did not consider it rape for she welcomed it, even enjoyed it. She was sure that in time he would begin to be more intimate, more loving, sleep with her throughout the night.
Of course that never happened for two months after he read the article he called Felix at Grayfox and announced that he would be returning. Felix was overjoyed. "You have no idea how hard Todd has looked for you. He has had every man in the compound searching for you at some time or other these past months. When they found your car wrapped around that tree between Seattle and Bellingham we feared the worst, but your body was never found so we still held out hope that you were ok. The place is going to pot without you. Todd seriously wants to step down and turn it all over to you. He knows you are our only hope to fix things, two other groups like ours have formed and they are quickly taking over most of our business. One is in Europe and the other in South America. Get your butt back here as quickly as possible before we lose everything."
So, Jesse was on his way back to Grayfox. He simply walked out of Rachel's apartment and her life and never looked back. He knew it wasn't right of him, knew he owed her more than that but he didn't have it in him to give it. He was dead inside, he could feel nothing and nothing is all he was willing to give.