“Morning, sunshine,” Tierney says, oddly chipper given the fact that all she did was complain about how tired she was from eight o’clock on last night.
“Thought you’d be sleeping in today.” I take a seat beside her.
“Nah. Slept like a million bucks. These beds are heaven on earth.” She swats her hand. “Anyway, want to walk to the market? There’s this little café on the water that has the most amazing crepes you’ll ever have.”
Glancing out the window toward the crashing ocean waves and the smooth trail of beach where the water has washed away any remnants of our footprints, I nod.
“How’s Jude?” she asks. “You hear from him?”
“We texted a little bit last night.”
“How’s his niece?” She begins to rise from the table, cupping her hand over her belly as she attempts to squeeze through.
“She’s good. She came home.” I rise, gathering my bag and phone off the counter and locating my strappy sandals and straw hat. “Is it weird that half of me doesn’t want to hate him anymore?”
Tierney turns on her heel to face me, head cocked. She doesn’t answer, but her silence says it all.
“I just … it’s hard to look at him and the things he does and think that he’s pure evil,” I say. “There’s goodness in his heart. What he’s doing is horrendous and indefensible, don’t get me wrong, but the more I’m around him, the more I’m pretending right alongside him, the more I find myself not pretending. Does that make sense?”
“You’ve never been good at being fake.” Tierney stuffs her feet into a pair of espadrille flats. “So are you saying you’d forgive him if he came clean?”
“No, not at all.”
“Then what are you trying to say?”
I shrug as we head outside and Tierney locks the door behind us. “I don’t know. I guess I’m trying to say that half of me can’t stand him and the other half of me keeps forgetting that I can’t stand him.”
Tierney loops her arm over my shoulders as we head toward the path to the market.
“You want to know what I think?” she asks.
“Sure.”
“Too bad. I’m not telling you.” She loosens her hold on me, her arm brushing mine, and the light breeze whips her auburn hair across her smirking face. “Because it doesn’t matter. All that matters is what you think.”
“You make it sound so simple,” I say, adjusting my straw hat as we walk. We take a few paces, neither of us speaking, and I lose myself in thought for a while. I don’t think I can ever forgive him for lying to me, so it’s pointless to entertain the fact that sometimes I forget how angry I am with him.
Grabbing my phone from my bag, I fire off an early morning text to Jude, just to keep up appearances.
“What are you doing?” I text.
“The usual,” he responds a minute later.
“Consulting?” I ask.
It hit me yesterday as I was leaving his apartment in the early hours of the morning. His room was light enough that I could take a better look around, and it only took a minute for my blurry gaze to hone in on the guitars resting in stands in the corner, the closet door half open and offering a glimpse of men’s clothes hanging on plastic hangers, and on my way out, I passed a stack of mail sitting on the kitchen table, the bill on top addressed to Jude Warner and the address matching the apartment.
We didn’t sleep in his sister’s guest room that evening—that was his room. His real room.
And he’s not a “strategic consultant.” I imagine Hunter dreamed up that phony title for him to go with his phony wardrobe and his phony apartment.
“Not today,” he responds a second later.
It might be the truest thing he’s ever said to me.
Thirty-Eight
Jude
* * *
“The fuck.” I nearly choke on my words when I return from my run and find Hunter LeGrand standing in the middle of the apartment.
“Two million,” he says, arms folded across his narrow chest.
“What? No.” My jaw clenches and the pulse point in my neck throbs. The sight of this douchebag’s unexpected presence sends my blood pressure soaring. “What are you doing here?”
“Giving you one last chance to finish what you started.”
“You’re wasting your time.”
“Have you ended it already?” he asks.
“Tomorrow,” I say.
His lips crack into a smile that has no business being on his smug face because I’m not changing my mind.
“All right then.” His hands press together. “One last time … two million dollars.”
Heading to the door, I yank it open and nod for him to leave. If he’s lucky, I might let him leave without telling him exactly what I think of him—not that he’d care, and he probably already knows what he is. But a not-so-gentle reminder couldn’t hurt.
“Fine,” he says, feet planted. “Five million.”
“You might as well be talking about Monopoly money, Hunter, because it’s just paper to me.”
His self-righteous smile fades and his complexion darkens.
“What’s this about anyway? Why do you want someone to marry her?” I ask. He wouldn’t tell me before due to “liability reasons,” but now that the deal’s off, it shouldn’t matter. “And why the hell is it worth millions of dollars to you?”
Hunter releases an incredulous laugh. “You don’t get it at all, and I suppose you wouldn’t … alimony.”
“Alimony? What about it?”
“Once she’s married and becomes someone else’s problem, I no longer have to donate millions of my hard-earned dollars to a woman who didn’t do a damn thing to earn them. That manhating judge let her make off like a bandit, and then she gave her alimony on top of it. Can you believe that shit? What gives her the right to give away my money like that?”
Raking my hand across my jaw, I have to look away for a second to keep myself from knocking him to the floor.
“So Love didn’t stand by you and support you while you made your first million?” I ask. “She didn’t put her dreams on hold so you could chase yours?”
“I don’t see how that’s any of your business,” he says. “And honestly, let’s be real. You were nothing but hired help. The details of this arrangement have nothing to do with you and quite frankly, you have no right to concern yourself with them.”
Hired help.
I suppose he’s right. But it doesn’t change the fact that he’s the biggest piece of shit I’ve ever met in my life—right up there with my father. Only difference between them are a few metal bars and the disproportionate size of their bank accounts.
“Five million,” Hunter says, finally strutting toward the door. “Take it or leave it.”
The tautness in my jaw sends a dull ache radiating up the sides of my face, threatening the beginnings of a tension headache.
“Fuck off, Hunter.”
He stops in his tracks, turning on his Prada loafers and charging toward me until his face is way too fucking close to mine.