Jude wasn’t here, thankfully. Mom informed me he was spending the weekend at home with Henry, which was why, with school starting on Tuesday, I’d finally quit living in denial and decided to move my things across the bridge.
An hour later, Cory was still taking stock of my new living arrangements while I was trying not to have a panic attack in my new room. It was huge with a king-sized bed dressed in a fitted white sheet, waiting for my bedding in the center of the room. Either side of it were two high arched windows, midmorning light spilling onto the low lying whitewashed dressers beneath them that served as nightstands.
“Did your mom furnish the place? Or Jude?”
“I think it was purchased furnished,” I said, not knowing for sure, but assuming so judging by the bareness of it. If my mom was given the task, she’d have decorated far differently. Our home was old charm meets modern sterility.
This place was antique, old money, everywhere I looked. I pondered whether Mom or Elijah had even purchased it, or if it had already belonged to Nightingale.
I was willing to bet on the latter.
In the kitchen, we marveled at the new appliances and the French provincial cupboards and countertops. “There’s no fucking food,” Cory said, moving to the double door fridge “Protein shakes, fruit, microwaveable meals… you can tell he’s been here a while.” Shutting the doors, she turned to me with a smile. “Let’s go snoop in his bedroom.”
“Let’s not.” I shivered at the mere thought.
“You’re not the least bit curious?” She jumped up onto the counter, chomping on a green apple. “I would be. The universe has given you some rotten as fuck lemons, time to milk them into revenge.”
There was nothing I wanted more than to hand Jude Delouxe his balls, still bleeding and warm, but not like that. “I want nothing to do with him.”
“Well,” she said, chewing. “You’re about to have a lot to do with him, I’m afraid.”
“Not if I can help it.” I inspected the barren pantry myself with a sigh. “I plan to live in my room and never see him.”
She snorted, knowing that was going to be virtually impossible.
The front door opened, and I spun around, throwing my back against the closed pantry door as Silas’s deep baritone bounced off the walls. “You never know.”
I looked at Cory, who was staring wide-eyed at me. “A complication we should’ve foreseen,” I whispered. “Where’s the back door?”
She jumped down and turned in a circle.
It was too late. Jude entered the kitchen, followed by Silas. They both froze, Jude with his hand halfway through his luscious hair, and Silas with his eyes glued to Cory.
No one said a word.
I wondered if anyone besides me was breathing.
Then Jude’s hand dropped to his side, and he dug out his phone from the pocket of his jeans, walking forward to dump it and his keys on the counter.
He didn’t speak, just walked right by me to the fridge, pulled out a water bottle, and headed to the living room.
Silas was still standing there, hands fidgeting at his sides as if warring with what to do.
I decided to back out slowly, but before I was free, Cory’s apple flew across the kitchen toward Silas’s head. He ducked, and it slammed into an old cross-stitch of a bird on the wall before splattering to the floor among the broken glass.
“Cory…” Silas started.
But she’d taken the opportunity to run straight past him, her sneakers crunching over the glass on her way out.
“Cory, wait!” he yelled, and the desperate hitch to his voice stunned me.
Then he gave chase.
The laundry room was next to the kitchen, and I found a dustpan and brush inside a tall cupboard next to the washing machine and dryer.
I couldn’t hear them, and I didn’t know if he caught her, so I closed the front door and cleaned up the mess they’d left behind.
Jude’s boots appeared, and a tiny shard of glass was kicked toward me. “Missed some.”
I collected it into the pan, then lifted the picture from the ground. The frame was fine, but there were jagged triangles of glass sitting beneath it.
I noticed then that it wasn’t just any bird. “A Nightingale.”
“How observant you are,” Jude commented with lethal snide.
I set the picture against the wall and gazed up at him. His eyes were narrowed on me, his jaw flexing and his arms crossed.
Even in just a baggy plain gray T-shirt and dark jeans, he was stunning, and I fucking hated it.
I also hated how small he’d made me feel in just a cluster of seconds. Unsteady, I rose and walked around him, taking the glass to the trash can under the kitchen sink.
“For someone who’s been handed what she wanted, you don’t seem very appreciative.”
I closed the cupboard, a little harder than necessary, and whacked the dustpan onto the counter. “You actually think I wanted this?”
“Sure looked like you did a few months ago.”
Taking in the severity of his face, the lowered brows, and the pressed state of those lips, I laughed. Then I laughed some more.
“What’s so funny?” he said, resentment fading into confusion.
“You,” I said and plucked my car keys from the pocket of my peach shorts. “You’re the last thing I want, Jude, believe me.”
He feigned disappointment with his hand against his broad chest. “You wound me. Wasn’t it your diary I read just a few short months ago?” His voice deepened as he added, “Wasn’t it you who wrote all those poetic musings about a boy you’d been watching for years?”
Fuck him. I needed to find Cory and get some food into this hellhole.
“Yeah, well,” I said, leaving him and heading to the door. “A lot can change in three months, asshole.” I slammed it behind me and heard the picture inside smack against the floorboards.
Jude
A lot can change in three months, asshole.
No, Red, I’d wanted to shout. A lot can change in an instant.
“I’m sorry,” I said for what seemed like the hundredth time. If I were looking at the entirety of our relationship, it probably wasn’t far from the truth. “But it’s done, Marns. We tried.”
“I tried, you mean. I fucking tried.”
I waited for her to finish yelling at me, my head in my hand and the darkness of my new room threatening to eat me alive.
“… has to be someone else.”
“Marnie,” I said, gripping my phone so hard, I thought it was going to break. “You’re in New York now, and I’m here, and I need to go.”
“What?” she screamed. I lowered the volume and waited once more. “You call me up to dump me when I’ve only just taken you back, and then you need to go? I don’t think so, Jude. You’ve known I was going to Columbia for months. Something’s happened. If you’ve slept with someone…”
“I haven’t,” I said, and that was the honest to god truth. I was a scoundrel, through and through, but I would never do that while actually dating someone. I could tell, though, that if I didn’t give her a little honesty, enough to hurt her some more, then I wasn’t getting off the phone anytime soon. I needed this done before I caved and told her way more than I should. “But there is someone else.”