If I should have done so long before now.
“You know I can’t say anything, Fern.” Her voice gentled, eyes darting around. “And you know, or you will soon, what could happen if I do.”
Hope was squashed by fear.
If Jude was right about their punishments, and deep down, something nudged that he was, then I couldn’t do that to her. Reluctantly, I nodded, sliding off the torn plastic of the stool. “You’re right, and I shouldn’t have thought to ask.”
“You should,” she said, and my eyes shot to hers. It took everything I had to keep my expression somewhat neutral as she began wiping down the countertop, humming a tune I only vaguely recognized.
“Why are you humming the Australian anthem?” Veronica asked, laughing a little.
“I hear the winters there are like spring here,” Ray said, daydreaming and airy. “You know I love me some springtime weather.”
“So weird,” Veronica mouthed to me.
My aunt raised a brow, and smiling, I backed up to the door. “Catch you crazy ladies later. I need a nap after finally turning in that paper.”
Australia.
She wouldn’t have said that unless he was there, but I had to wonder, why so far away?
Before I could ponder it anymore, a black Town Car pulled up to the curb in front of my car.
Shit.
Shit, shit, shit.
A tinted window rolled down. “Get in, Fern.”
With my heart beating in my ears, I slid over the leather seat and closed the door, the car pulling away instantly. “What’s up?” I said with as much calm as I could force.
Mom was clicking away on her phone. “You’re missing something, and we need to rectify that as soon as possible.”
I had no idea what she was talking about, and she didn’t deign to fill me in. Her phone rang, and I listened to her squawk into it for the ten-minute drive to the docks.
We pulled up outside a long row of warehouses, and the car waited as we headed inside. Mom’s heels clipped over the asphalt, echoing as the roller door went up, revealing hundreds of crates and boxes.
We walked into the dark. The door rolled closed behind us, trapping the scent of brine and erasing the shriek of a lone gull. I followed the winding path between stacked mayhem behind my mom, one that she seemed to know by heart, until a small bright light from a windowed room came into view.
Inside, a guy riddled with tattoos with a piercing through his nose tipped his chin up at me in greeting.
“Uh, hi,” I said, flinching when he snapped on some black gloves.
Then I remembered.
Jude’s tattoo. The picture in the foyer of our home. The giant one at Nightingale headquarters.
“Sit down, Fern.”
I think that was the first time I wished my husband was present since the moment he became my sworn enemy. And as my limbs trembled, my every exhale shorter than the last, I knew.
I knew with concrete certainty he’d encouraged me to drink until I could hardly see for my own good.
I wished he was here to do the same now.
Left with no other choice, I swallowed the rising fear and dropped onto the chair, my chest facing the back and my arms hugging it. My back was prepared with clinical swiftness.
I squeezed my eyes closed at the sudden hum of the gun, but the tears escaped anyway.
Fern
I was dropped off at the curb, my mom’s driver speeding away.
The silence swallowing our street, the darkness seeping from inside the house before me made the eroding ache in my back so much worse.
I wiped beneath my eyes, my fingers were probably black and my cheeks too, and walked up our short drive to let myself in.
A lamp clicked on outside the living room. “Where were you?”
I would’ve screamed, but just flinching hurt like hell, and I was too spent to bother. “Oh, you know. Just getting maimed for life.”
Jude launched out of the armchair he’d been waiting in, wearing plaid pajama pants and nothing else. My eyes dragged up his ribbed, solid torso, every darkened crevice absorbing the buttery glow of the lamp behind him, to his eyes.
They were filled with something I’d never seen before, and I didn’t want to take a leap of faith by thinking it was something it definitely was not. Fear.
His next words were sharper than the needle used upon my flesh. “What did they do?”
My tongue was too thick, the sides of it battered from my gritted teeth as a thousand knives had drilled into my back. “The tattoo.”
He cursed, gently grasping my wrist and turning me into the light of the lamp. The back of my dress had been cut open, exposing my new scars for him. I felt his hand hovering, fingers curling over the red, freshly inked skin, but they didn’t touch.
He knew firsthand just how badly it hurt. “Come upstairs. I have some cream for it.”
Too stunned from the evening’s events, I didn’t think to question why he was being nice or if it was a trap. I simply followed him upstairs to his room and waited outside, not wanting to enter. In the short time we’d lived here, I’d never once stepped foot inside it.
From where I was standing, it was sparsely dressed in a much similar way to his room back home. Grays and blacks soaked up the moonlight, spraying bursts onto the dark bookshelves lining one wall.
I wondered which books he’d brought with him, and what he’d chosen to leave behind. For although his room here was huge in its own right, it paled to the size of his room at his dad’s place.
Jude exited his bathroom with some type of cream in hand. Gesturing to the guest bathroom down the hall, I walked there and waited as he uncapped the tube and switched on the light.
His touch was fire, the pain a steady burn that spread with every careful swipe of his fingers. I bit my lip so hard that I tasted more blood.
“Mine was done right after,” he said, so soft, I almost didn’t hear. “I’m surprised they let you leave the hotel without it.”
“We had just gotten married,” I whispered, not trusting myself to use my entire voice.
He hummed. “For a shark with the sharpest teeth I’ve ever seen, your mother is shockingly soft on you.”
“I’m beginning to see that,” I whispered again. “And that you’re probably right about it doing me more harm than good.” It was as if I’d spent my life living in the sun, never knowing what true night looked like, nor how it tasted.
Now I knew it was luxuriously toxic, a bitter red wine, and I was still learning. Undoubtedly, I could have been better prepared for this new world that had always existed alongside my own and many others. Maybe then, each new revelation wouldn’t feel like a slap to the face.
Not that I’d even know what that felt like.
Jude took his time until every ounce of ruined skin was smothered in the heavy, oily barrier. “No, I think she was right to make you exactly the way you are.”
Cold swept in, and I turned to find only the tube of cream remained.
Out on the main street, a cobbled road filled with roaming weeds, I stared up at Cory’s vine drowned window and called her.
She hadn’t answered the door, so I’d sent her a text telling her I was outside. No response, and as I saw the time, realizing I’d been standing there for twenty minutes, I had a feeling she wasn’t about to humor me at all.