Chapter 38
AMELIA
Unlock the seatbelt. Let it retract beside you. Shoulder your bag. It’s in the back seat. Reach for the handle. Pull, then push the door open. Put both feet on the ground. Stand. Close the door. Lock the car.
Walk across the faculty lot. Step onto the sidewalk. Use your badge to unlock the door. No one can unlock the door without a badge. Go down the corridor. Take a left at the first hallway. Your office is the second door on the right.
I ran through the process that used to be as easy as breathing. I had made the same walk for years. I knew the building like the back of my hand.
I tried to reach for my seatbelt, but it was like my brain had become disconnected from my brain stem. My mind knew what it was supposed to do, but my body refused to cooperate. I let out a growl and slumped forward, resting my forehead on the steering wheel.
The lot was empty. It was a Sunday, after all. The semester didn’t start until tomorrow. None of my colleagues would be in the building as they savored the remaining hours of their summer break.
I had managed to leave my apartment and make the short drive to campus.
Dr. Chen suggested that I practice my Monday routine.
Because of course one of my two in-person classes had to be at eight in the morning on a Monday.
Everyone knew not to take eight a.m. classes. Who the hell had even signed up for it?
Dr. Chen and I had worked on breaking down tasks into single steps. It felt ridiculous to have to mentally rehearse taking a shower and brushing my teeth, but I did what I had to do to keep going after him. After Judah.
That’s how I had started thinking about my life.
There was before Jude and after Judah.
Between those two singular points in time, I was more myself than I’d ever been. I wasn’t wearing the labels of Dr. Hawthorne, Joel’s sister, Mia, or the mother hen my friends expected me to be. I was just myself.
I liked the person I was when I was with him. For once, it felt good to have someone care for me the way I had become accustomed to caring for everyone else.
But after Judah, it felt like I had disappeared entirely.
I couldn’t do this. Especially not after seeing him Friday night.
I hadn’t been prepared to see him. Frankly, I never thought I would see him again. I wasn’t prepared for how much it would hurt to see him.
But there he was—all buttoned-up in his white dress shirt, black slacks, with a gun displayed front and center.
Didn’t own a gun, my ass.
His hair had grown out from the buzz cut I’d given him at the cabin.
He must have shaved off the dye before letting it grow back out, because it was back to his sunlit light brown hair.
He had it combed over on top and neatly faded on the sides.
His tattoos were completely hidden by the sleeves and collar.
The man standing on the other side of my door hadn’t been the Jude I knew. It had been Judah; he was a stranger. I had never laid eyes on him, save for the choirboy headshot the agents in Las Vegas had shown me.
He was Jekyll and Hyde. Maybe that’s what was hardest to come to terms with: how seamlessly the duality of his personas meshed.
They didn’t clash—they harmonized. The soft and strong side.
The duty-driven soldier with a thousand-yard stare.
The gentle poet. The easygoing playboy with a naughty side. The clever strategist.
He was everything I believed he was.
And more.
It was the “more” that he had lied about. What his true intentions were. Who he was really working for. I couldn’t understand why he had trusted me to hold pieces of him—the dark side I wasn’t supposed to trust—but not all of who he was.
Why? Why? Why?
The thing I hated myself for the most was that I wanted to know that man too.
Tears rolled down my cheeks as I rested my head against the steering wheel.
A soft tap rattled the window. I shrieked, jolted, and smacked my forehead on the steering wheel. I rubbed the spot I was certain would bruise right before the first day of school. Just great.
I glanced out the window, expecting to find Vaanya or Marcus on the other side.
They were the types to show up and prep in their offices the day before class started.
Courtney and Caitlin were the types to roll in five minutes late on the first day of classes after a weekend spent celebrating the last days of summer.
My breath caught in my throat. It wasn’t my colleagues.
It was him.
Which side of him had shown up, I wasn’t entirely sure.
He was in a pair of dark-washed jeans and a gray T-shirt, tattoos on full display. Fuck.
It had been easy to turn Judah away when he showed up at my door. But this was Jude. I couldn’t deny him.
He wasn’t even looking at me, but my chest ached and I couldn’t breathe just the same. His ass was pressed up against the side of the car, facing away from me like he was scanning for potential threats.
Of course he was looking out for me.
I reached for the keys to crank up the engine and leave him standing in the parking lot when he knocked again.
Dr. Chen hadn’t prepared me for this. We didn’t meet over the weekend.
I had yet to unpack all my feelings about Jude showing up at my door on Friday night.
I couldn’t handle seeing him twice in the same weekend without a neutral third-party giving me permission to be angry about it, even though he was probably just trying to apologize.
Why is your first inclination to justify what he did? Why not just acknowledge that what he did was wrong? Dr. Chen’s first question from our inaugural session was one I still hadn’t been able to answer.
Jude knocked again, a little more insistently.
My hand fell away from the keys as my resolve waned.
I didn’t rehearse the steps in my mind. My body moved of its own free will, unlocking the door.
Wait. What? Why did I do that? I didn’t want to unlock the door. I wanted to leave. I wanted to—
Jude rounded the hood, popped open the passenger door, and sat down before I could lock it again.
“Leave me alone,” I whispered as more tears welled in my eyes, blurring my vision.
“I won’t be long, but we need to talk.”
I laughed.
And for the life of me, I didn’t know why.
“Are you following me or something?” I dismissed the ridiculous question with a flick of my hand. “Of course you’re following me. You probably put a tracker on my car.”
He hunched forward and pulled his feet back against the edge of the seat, trying to make a little more room for his knees. The slight change in posture tugged at the hem of his T-shirt and exposed the gun that was holstered on his hip.
“And of course you’re carrying a gun.” I scoffed as I dried my eyes with the hem of my Alcott T-shirt. “Was any of it true?”
Jude rested his elbows on his knees and steepled his fingers. “There’s a difference in liking guns and being required to carry one on and off duty.”
“You never carried one in New Jersey or when we were together.”
“Being undercover comes with a different set of rules.”
“Like the fact that it’s apparently totally fine for you to break someone’s kneecaps with a baseball bat and not go to jail for it?” I sat a little taller as rage brought me back to life.
“Joel was given immunity for his financial crimes. He’s not going to jail in exchange for testifying against Valentine.”
“The ends do not justify the means!” I bellowed as rage gave way to heartbreak.
“You didn’t save anyone. You ruined me. You should have left me to fend for myself in Atlantic City!
You should have left me to—” Uncontrollable sobs racked my body.
My shoulders shook as I held on to the steering wheel for dear life.
I could barely speak through the involuntary heaves that were making my body ache.
“I can’t live like this, Jude! I-I’m n-not living at all! ”
I didn’t have the energy to fight him as he wrapped an arm around me and held me in spite of the center console between us.
“If I could go back in time, I would have told you everything.”
“You promised that you wouldn’t keep secrets. You promised you would tell me the whole truth.” My voice broke the same way my heart had. “You promised.”
The muscles in his arms tensed, like he wanted to hold me closer, but he didn’t. Or couldn’t. Or wouldn’t.
Warmth blanketed me as he rested his forehead on the back of my neck. “I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry.”
Neither of us said a word for the longest time. At some point, he began to rub my back, lulling me into a daze.
The comfort that I had always felt with him immediately returned, but it was a sick tease.
“I’m so tired,” I whispered. “So tired.” I sat up and wiped my eyes. “I can’t do this. I can’t handle this.”
“Can’t handle what?”
“You. I don’t know why you came but—”
“I was on my way down from Rhode Island.” Jude pointed out the window at the truck I had become all too familiar with, though it sported a new paint job—ready to tell a new story.
“Cole brought it back from Chicago. I’m taking it back to Newark.
” His thumb stroked across the back of my neck. “He told me you were here.”
Fury boiled in my gut. “And how did Cole know I was here?”
“He’s had people from his team keeping an eye out for you and Joel,” Jude said without a hint of remorse.
“Of-fucking-course,” I muttered as I unlatched my seatbelt. “Well, congratulations. I’m alive on the outside and dead on the inside. Since apparently the former is the only thing that matters to you, you can go.”
“That’s not all that matters to me.” Jude said, his voice gentle as ever.
“But yeah. I have people watching out for you when I can’t because I have reason to believe there’s a mole in the FBI.
One that’s working for Valentine. It’s what I wanted to tell you Friday night.
” His hand fell away and rested on the console.
“I wasn’t trying to upset you, but it was important.
” He rubbed the back of his neck. “I’m sorry.
I just—I thought you should hear it from me. ”
“And is the FBI aware of this ‘mole’?” I said drolly.
“No,” Jude clipped. “You. Me. Cole. A few of his people, since they’re in the private sector.
The moment I bring it up to my chain of command, it’ll go on record, which means, if I’m right, we’re all in danger again.
” He sighed and ran a hand through his artfully messy hair.
“If I can bring it up to my chain of command. I’m not sure that’s the best course of action. ”
“And I’m not sure why you’re telling me,” I muttered. “Not like you trusted me with the fact that you’re in the FBI to begin with.”
“Little fox—”
“Don’t call me that. It’s Dr. Hawthorne to you.”
Jude sighed. “I went AWOL from an undercover operation. It carries some severe consequences. If they thought you had anything to do with it, you could have been prosecuted. I was trying to protect you. I’m sorry that I hurt you in the process.”
I didn’t say a word because he didn’t deserve my forgiveness, even though I desperately wanted to give it to him.
I would always want to give it to him. I would always defend him. I would always forgive him. I would always love him.
Which is exactly why I had to walk away.
“You’re here to walk through the process of going inside tomorrow, aren’t you?” Jude guessed.
I swore and didn’t bother to keep it trapped in my head. I was done hiding how I felt.
To my surprise, Jude got out of the car, shut the door, and walked around to my side.
The concrete in my chest had cracked, even though we hadn’t resolved a damn thing. I knew what he was doing, and I was too tired to argue with him about it.
Instead, I unbuckled my seatbelt, reached into the backseat to grab my bag, then pulled the handle and pushed the door open the way I had rehearsed in my head.
Jude stood to the side, hands on his hips and head on a swivel, as I shut the door and locked my car.
He stayed a foot away, silent as he escorted me across the parking lot and onto the sidewalk. My hand trembled as I reached for my key card.
“Count your breaths,” he gently instructed. “Think on the inhale, act on the exhale. You can do it.”
Inhale. Tap the keycard against the black box. Exhale.
Beep.
The green dot flashed, signaling that the door was unlocked.
“Good girl,” Jude said quietly, though he didn’t reach for the door handle. I yanked it open and slipped inside as he followed.
The walk was all muscle memory. I rounded the corner as my office came into view. The placard on the door was exactly as it had been at the end of the spring semester. But so much had happened since I saw it last.
I focused on my breaths as I unlocked the door, then I slipped inside and turned on the lights.
Jude stayed by my side and watched my back. I didn’t want to need him. I didn’t want to like having him near. I barely survived being torn away from him the first time. I wouldn’t make it through this unscathed—if I made it out at all.
But today, he had given me something that I desperately needed: the courage to wake up and do this tomorrow.
I reached over and flicked the light switch, then froze.
My degrees were still on the wall. My ancient computer was right where it always was. The photos I kept on the shelf behind my desk were exactly how they had been. Upon first glance, it was like the horrors of the summer had never happened.
The only thing out of place was the poker chip on my desk.
One that sported the logo of the Four Horsemen.