But then he grabbed my hip, pulling my body closer, and opened my mouth with his. “You like him?”
I swallowed his words, pressed my lips into his, and his pressed back. “I fucking love him.”
“I can tell.” He kissed me harder, held me tighter, my soft stomach against his firm, and then he stared at me for long moments.
I stared back, feeling a million miles away from reality and never wanting to return.
Within minutes, he was asleep.
Unable to move from his hold, even though I knew he might wake and ask me to go, I watched him sleep for what felt like countless minutes.
And, of course, I took the opportunity to sniff his hair—mint and cedarwood.
I glanced behind me at his phone and saw it was almost midnight.
Peeling myself away, I carefully lifted his arm and set it on the bed, my heart thrashing when he curled it into his chest, and a soft snore left his parted lips.
I bit mine when my eyes skated down his alarmingly stunning physique. His briefs were still tucked under his perfect ass.
Spying a knitted throw on the arm of the chaise near the row of French doors, I collected and draped it over him.
That was when I saw it again, and how I’d almost forgotten about its existence after spending two evenings in this very room with it upon his bare back was a testament to how thoroughly Jude Delouxe could turn my brain to sludge.
Varying shades of gray and solid black, the serpent tattoo spread from between his shoulder blades across his upper back.
Three snakes. Their eyes dollar signs, and their fangs dripping with blood that cascaded onto vines. No, not vines, I realized as I peered closer, but barbed wire. The barbs dug into their scales, manipulating their bodies into the shape of a diamond.
I grabbed his phone and risked the flash but made sure it was on silent before I snapped a picture. One of his back and another of his sleeping profile, ensuring the flash was off for the latter. I preferred to see him just how he was at this moment, half cast in shadow and feeding my hungry heart.
After sending them to myself, I deleted the evidence and silently dressed before creeping out of his room. I backtracked, grabbing the money I’d dropped, and wondered if I should turn the lamp on his nightstand off. I decided to leave it.
A cry sounded just as I reached the stairs, faint but loud enough to halt my feet.
I looked back at Jude’s room, then around the staircase to where a sliver of light crept out from his brother’s room. Another cry, this one sharper, and then I was moving toward it, unsure why but doing so anyway.
I opened the cracked door all the way, startling the young boy inside who was sitting on his bed.
“Who are you?” Henry asked, large blue eyes taking me in.
“Your neighbor, Fern.” I stepped farther into the room. “I was just leaving and heard you crying. Are you okay?”
He rubbed his eyes, lips pouting and wobbling. “Want Jude.”
I nodded. “I know, but he’s asleep. Can I get you something? Water, maybe?”
He shook his head. “Jude…” He drew in a shuddering breath. “He sings to me.”
A shocked noise left me, scrunching Henry’s eyes. I quickly schooled my features. “Well, I’m a terrible singer, so I’m afraid I can’t help you there.”
“So is Jude,” he said, smiling then, and I noticed a dimple pop in his cheek. “He sings me Mommy’s song.”
My heart sank a little. “Where is she?” I knew it was wrong of me to ask, but I couldn’t stop myself. If I knew where she’d gone, maybe the enigmatic boy in the other room might make more sense to me.
“Gone,” Henry said, followed by another wobble of his lips.
“Shit,” I muttered under my breath.
Apparently, he still heard. “Rhiannon’s swear jar is in the kitchen. You owe her a dollar.”
“Right,” I said, smiling as I walked over to his bed. “Why don’t you lie down, and we can talk a little? Quietly, so we don’t wake your brother.”
“I do wake him up a lot,” he said with a loud sigh, lying back down. “But he doesn’t seem to mind.”
No, I had a feeling he didn’t mind being there for his brother at all.
My throat swelled, my desire to know Jude in more ways than just the physical making itself painfully known. He’d never let me—I already knew that—but that didn’t mean I couldn’t help his brother back to sleep for him.
“Seems like you and I might have something in common.” Keeping my voice low, I dropped my boots to the floor while saying, “I don’t know where my dad is, either.”
Henry, who’d been rubbing his cheek, stilled. His arm dropped, lids low over his sleepy blue eyes. “You miss him?”
I twisted my lips. “Sometimes, yeah. But I used to miss him every day.”
“I miss my mom every day,” he said through a yawn. “I dream about her.” I waited to see if he wanted to say anything else, and after a moment, he looked down at his hands over his navy comforter. “Every other night, she visits me when I sleep, and so when I wake up and she’s not there, I miss her.” I heard him swallow. “A lot.”
“How old are you?”
“I’ll be nine this summer,” he said, a little smugness entering his voice. Unlike his brother, and I was sure his father, he had no accent. Likely from growing up here instead of in the UK. “How old are you?”
“Eighteen,” I told him. “Though, sometimes, I feel much older and far younger at the same time.”
“Yeah?” he asked.
“Mm-hmm.”
“That’s confusing.”
I laughed but cut the sound quickly. “You’ll know what I mean one day.”
“Jude says that too,” he said, sounding annoyed.
He yawned again, and so did I. “I used to write my dad letters.”
“Did he get them? Write you back?”
“I don’t know, and no, he never did.” Old pain became brand new. Pain I thought I’d killed dead years ago. Funny how when we cracked open our souls in the dead of night, the things we told ourselves didn’t matter seemed to be the things that mattered most.
I tensed when a warm hand landed over mine on his bed. Staring down at the small fingers curling around my own, I then looked at Henry, feeling my eyes well. “What’s your middle name, Henry?”
“Dalton,” he said. “Same as my brother.”
I sniffed, nodding, and hugged his hand with mine. “Well, wanna know what I think about people like us, Henry Dalton?”
“People with no parents?”
I arched an eyebrow at that. “We have one; we’re just missing the other.”
He nodded, waiting.
“I think we’re lucky.”
His dark brows scrunched with his lips. “What? How?”
“Because,” I said, leaning forward to move his comforter up and over his chest. “To love someone so much that it makes us really sad means that we have big hearts,” I whispered. “Do you know what big hearts are capable of?”
He shook his head.
I squeezed his hand. “Big love, and with big love, all our wildest dreams can come true.”
“I wanna be an astronaut.”