He cuts his food and chews a bite. I feel a large chunk of my heart soften for this guy. His family. I can easily fall for him, and I don’t know if I can stop it.
“What about you?” he asks, sipping his water. “Your family?”
“Ahh.” I sip my wine slowly, procrastinating. “Different from yours.”
I love my mom. She’s sweet and fun and artistic and as a babysitter or aunt or older sister, she’d be the coolest person I know in the world.
“That doesn’t sound like a good thing.”
“My mom, she’s like, the hippie of the twenty-first century. She raised me traveling up and down the coast of California, stopping long enough for me to start making friends at schools before a new wind blew and she found a new passion.” I shrug it off, but while I saw a lot of beautiful scenery and met some fascinating people, it wasn’t easy not knowing where our meals would come from, where we’d sleep. “Mom made things—crafts, knitting, crochet, other things. She used to sell everything at craft fairs or pop up a tent in a city that would allow them. We were, I don’t know… gypsies? Traveling homeless people?”
I’ve never been sure how to explain my mom or how I was raised, and after hearing talk of Jude’s family, it’s harder.
“She’s a good woman,” I tell Jude when he watches me with a look I can’t decipher. It’s not pity. “She really is. She just… I don’t know, likes to live free and by whims, not plans.”
“And your dad?”
“I don’t know. She says she got pregnant with me during a few months she was in San Diego. She was pregnant, she moved on, and that was it. She told me he was a good man, but the men in her life never stuck around long, or maybe it was her that didn’t. Either way, I don’t even know if she really knows who he is.”
There’s no way to make Mom look worse than admitting that, but while her heart is huge, she never learned how to live based on facts and not emotions.
“And Chicago? How’d you end up here?”
“Chicago College gave me an academic scholarship, and I took it. I wanted a normal life. Something stable.”
In truth, I had academic scholarships from all over. When I turned sixteen, I forced my mom to settle for two years while I finished high school. It was the first time she sacrificed herself for me, but I told her if she didn’t, I’d be emancipated from her and live on my own. The idea I wouldn’t be with her was worse than staying. Apparently, for as much as Mom hates settling, she still needs someone. For two years in high school, I was at peace, happy. Mom was miserable. I could tell it killed her to stay still, her wandering spirit always pulling at her. She compromised by taking a lot of weekend trips leaving me alone, but I was still thankful. For one, we’d had an apartment, food in the cupboard. I made a couple friends who I quickly lost touch with once I moved, but those two years gave me the time I needed to apply for colleges, get scholarships. I had them for a dozen colleges and universities throughout the country.
I chose Chicago because it was a big city in the Midwest. Far enough from the coast I was tired of traveling up and down, and I wanted my experience with the Midwestern-flyover-forgotten and what seemed like decent and simpler people. It was an incorrect judgment in some ways, and in others, they fit the stereotype exactly.
I’ve never regretted my choice.
“So, North Carolina, huh? Are you excited about the possibility of playing with your brother?”
I don’t like talking about my past or my mom for various reasons. Most people assume she’s a deadbeat, some loser. I can see their point, but it’s hard to explain how good she is. She’s just not maternal.
“Yeah. I’ll mostly play in their minor leagues for a couple years, though.” He switches topics easily and we finish our dinner, enjoying the time while I sip on a second glass of wine and we split a cannoli for dessert.
When we’re back in the Uber afterward, I slide my hand into Jude’s. He’s warm, his body taking up more than his share of the back seat of the Ford Fiesta.
Once we arrive back to my apartment and he walks me to my door, I place my hand on his chest.
For once, I’m taking a risk of my own.
“Want to come inside with me? Stay for a while?”
Chapter Ten
Our apartment isn’t anything to gush over outside the fact that Lizzie and I both have our own bathrooms, prime real estate for two college-aged females. Our living room is small, our kitchen is along one wall with a small island barely large enough for two stools.
Somehow, like everything else, as soon as Jude steps across the threshold into our open living area, he consumes the space. I toss my keys to the kitchen island and step back.
It’s been a while since I’ve had a guy over here and none of them make me feel the way Jude does—electrified, interested… wanting. I’m unnerved how to proceed, but Jude seems to show none of that while he scans the apartment, kicking off his brown work boots and kicking them to the side like he’s planning on staying a while.
And I can’t help but tease him for it.
“Make yourself at home.”
“I plan to,” he says, and he takes three strides before he’s reaching for me, pulling me to him. “At least until morning.”
I haven’t invited him for the night. But with his arms around me, I can’t, and won’t deny it’s exactly what I’m hoping.
“Are you going to ask me yet?”
My mind swirls. “Ask… what?”
“I said someday you’re going to ask me to kiss you and I think that day is here.”
I can keep teasing him. I think he likes I don’t fawn all over him and fall at his feet like other people. I think he likes I make him work for it, but it’s been too long since a man has been between my legs, and it seems like even longer I’ve imagined it being Jude between them so I’m all out of teasing.
“Kiss me, Jude.” I barely manage to get the words out, already pressing to my toes, and his mouth is on me.
Warm heat suffuses our lips together as he brushes back and forth and I moan almost instantly, gripping his arms so I don’t fall over.
He’s… heavenly. I can taste the mint he popped in his mouth as we left the restaurant, inhale the masculine scent of his cologne and his arms holding me up feel unbreakable. Like if he could hold me for the rest of forever, I would never bend, never break… he’d have me at all times.
And it’s silly to think, to hope. Our lives will soon take a shift, but I can still imagine that life with him.
I can feel it in the possessiveness of his kiss, the confidence as he opens our mouths, slides his tongue into mine, the way his hand slides up my back and grips the back of my neck.
Jude Taylor is a man who protects those who he cares about and the man will someday be a rock in the storm, unwavering in his support and love.
If only we’d met sooner. Or later.
“Jude,” I gasp against his mouth, breathless, needing a minute. There’s too much swirling, too much I’m feeling, and we’ve barely gotten started. “My room is down the hallway.”
“You ready for that?” His thumb brushes over my cheek. I love that he asks. My knees shake from the gentle brush of his thumb, the firm hold at my back.