“Don’t change the subject, Judy.” He shook with silent laughter. “I’ll never tell anyway.”
“You don’t need to,” he said softly as though worried I’d snatch the truth away from him.
I was fine with him keeping it.
Silence descended as he stared at the game, and I stared down at him.
Ironic, how his every dream seemed to have been tied up in something that would only squash them in the end. “And here I thought they could give you the world.”
“But of course,” he said dryly. “Just as long as it suits them.”
“Jude,” I said after a couple of minutes had created goose bumps upon his arms from my dancing fingers. “What did they ask you to do? To get in?”
I felt him consider it, the idea of telling me, of setting what plagued him free.
But deep down, I knew what he’d choose to do. That he’d dance around the darkest part of himself.
“What they ask of everyone. To destroy myself,” he murmured, “and so I did.”
I didn’t press for more details. With my fingers still in his hair, I just pieced together what I knew, and within minutes, he had fallen back asleep.
I arrived home late the following night after seeing Ray when I was done with class.
But Jude hadn’t been there anyway. I didn’t call him. I didn’t know if doing so would make whatever it was that we’d been doing seem real, and if he wanted that.
And after having enough space from him to stare at the dark ceiling in my room, wondering what he was doing, I didn’t even know if that was what I wanted.
When I walked into the kitchen the next morning, I was met with, “Henry called me.”
Climbing onto a stool at the counter, I nodded, relief quick to curdle into concern. “A nightmare?”
“He had one the night before, and he was worried he might have another. Dad’s home now.” He pushed a bowl of my favorite cereal toward me and then grabbed the milk.
He rounded the counter. “You didn’t call me.” Turning me and stepping between my thighs, he glared. “You didn’t so much as text me.”
I noticed he was still wearing the same ripped jeans he’d left the house in yesterday morning, his shirt different, gray instead of black. He must have left some things at his dad’s. “You didn’t call or text me, either.”
“I wasn’t sure you’d want me to.”
“I do,” I said, clutching his crinkled T-shirt when he leaned down to plant a lingering kiss on my cheek. “I think I do.”
His mouthed tickled into a grin against my lips, where he kissed me so softly, I felt my eyes flutter. “You think you do?”
I didn’t want to talk. I didn’t want to figure things out for fear of not being able to like them once they were. So I cupped his rough cheek with one hand and his hip with the other, pulling him closer to devour his mouth.
“Fern,” he whispered, sounding pained as he pulled back.
Maybe he was just as confused as I was, just as unready as I was.
The possibility helped me to admit, “I don’t know what I’m doing.”
His teeth scraped his lower lip, his hand at the back of my head holding me still for him to whisper against my mouth, “I know exactly what I’m doing.”
I smiled even as trepidation set in. “What’s that?”
“Tasting euphoria.”
I leaped up, and he laughed, catching my ass and carrying me to the couch as the stool clattered against the floor.
Pulling him down over me, I lifted his shirt, wanting my hands to comb every inch of his skin. I kissed him with a tenacity I’d never felt before, needing so much more. I wanted his skin on mine, his body connected to mine, his mouth forever on mine.
“Red.” Jude lifted his head, breathing heavily.
I tried to bring him back, but he couldn’t be moved. He just stared at me with that infuriating amusement. Amusement that soon dripped away, revealing something that looked a lot like fear and adoration in its wake. “Red, I…”
The front door opened and slammed closed. Jude groaned.
I bit my lips to keep from laughing when his head dropped to my breasts, rubbing back and forth. “Not home.”
“Don’t care, shithead.” Silas came into view over Jude’s shoulder, his hair tied back at his nape, and his face tinged red from the cool air outside. “No wonder you didn’t wanna come for our run.” He gave me a flat smile. “Hey, Fern.”
“Hi,” I said, then shoved at Jude’s shoulders. “You should probably go get ready.”
He groaned again, but got up, leaving me lying on the couch in a position that suddenly felt way too awkward.
Clearing my throat, I sat up and returned to the kitchen to right the stool and pour milk into my bowl of cereal. “Cory still won’t talk to me.”
Silas got a bottle of water from the fridge. “That makes two of us.”
“I miss her,” I said.
“Yeah.” He stared at the ground. “Miss isn’t exactly the right word, but yeah.”
He drank his water, and I ate half my cereal, unsure what else there was to say.
“So you and Jude are a thing now?”
My brows jumped, sarcasm drenching my voice. “Um, we’re married.”
Silas chuckled. “Sure, you are.”
I lifted a shoulder. “It’s fun, I guess. I don’t know.”
“You were obsessed with him,” Silas stated, brows low. His nose was still kind of bruised as if maybe it’d been broken. “Finally being with him is just fun?”
“It’s not meant to be more than that.”
“Why’s that?” When I said nothing, he set the bottle on the counter. “Look, you might have been obsessed, but he was fucking terrified.”
“I wasn’t that bad,” I said, feeling that familiar sting return to my chest.
He huffed, scrubbing a hand over his mouth. “Not of your obsessive ways, sweetheart. But because he secretly loved it.”
My mouth fell open, but he only winked before heading upstairs to shower.
I didn’t hang around to say goodbye. I doubted Jude would do that in front of his friend anyway. After quickly rinsing my bowl, I collected my keys and bag and got out of there.
My first class wasn’t until ten forty-five, so I decided to take a drive home.
Mom wasn’t there, as I’d hoped she wouldn’t be. Driving up to the house, I realized this was the first time I’d come back since moving in with Jude.
Everything was the same—silent, sterile, and far too much. Upstairs, I found what I was looking for in my old walk-in, exactly where I’d left it.
Ricky must have moved it into the corner and closed it up. It wasn’t anything he hadn’t seen before, but that red-hot embarrassment still arrived.
Silas was right. I had been obsessed, and the scariest part was that I didn’t think it’d lessened. It had only multiplied and grown into a shapeless, more permanent entity.
That was why I grabbed the box, and that was why I took it into my old room and sat on the bed, which had been dressed in fresh, crisp blue linens to look at the contents inside.
I needed to remember. Perhaps if I remembered how much it’d hurt to be knocked down by Jude Delouxe, I’d be more rational about whatever the hell it was that we were doing.