Chapter 31
chapter thirty-one
Jude
Today's vocabulary word: unfiltered
The elevator doors opened at our floor and Audrey executed a ballet leap out of the car. She didn't wait for me, instead twirling down the hallway in a series of jumps and pirouettes.
At least she was going the right direction.
I found her moving through a sequence of dance steps near our door, her shoes abandoned a few feet away. "You miss it," I said as I fished the key card from my wallet. "Dancing, that is."
She extended her leg up until her heel met the wall and then leaned into the stretch, her body open like an unfolded paper clip. Her dress bunched around her waist. I wished I could say I looked away. That I didn't stare at the light pink panties hugging her hip or stretching between her thighs.
It was only when I felt her staring at me that I finally met her gaze.
"I do miss it," she said, a loose smile on her face, "sometimes."
I held the door open. She ignored it and I couldn't get away from the sense that she was dragging my attention back to her legs, her thighs, those obscenely sweet little panties.
And I knew she wasn't herself right now.
I knew this wasn't the time for me to take what I could get.
But god fucking damn. "Still can't believe you gave it up. "
She snorted out a laugh. "I still can't believe Padrino is a dad."
"What—no. We're not bringing that back," I said, holding out a hand to her.
"Oh, come on! It's funny. I should've thought of that at the reunion. Everyone would've been like, Wait! Padrino's a dad? My mind is blown!"
I swung a glance down the hallway. I didn't want to do this out here anymore. My head was a fucking carnival show and if anyone came down here and saw her like this, I'd have to kill them. Obviously.
"Hilarious," I said, hooking an arm around her waist and hauling her into the room.
"You know, it's not a bad nickname," she said, fully invertebrate and giggling as I parked her on the bed. "Compared to—what did they call me? Antacid? Padrino is a nice step up from Antacid."
The asshole heirs at our prep school had a thing for nicknames. It was a practical necessity when most of these guys were born saddled with names that stretched back six generations.
But they were still assholes and the nicknames didn't let anyone forget who held all the power.
It started with a fake sneeze and Buh-less-me—a spin on Bellessi that was about as sharp as soup—but it didn't catch on. Too much theatrics for guys who never actually had to form their own thoughts.
They mixed it up and moved on to Bless me, Father, for I have sinned—another fail. Too long, too cumbersome. And I ate the humor out of it by telling them they didn't know the first thing about repenting for true sins.
In that sense, it was my fault that it shifted to Padrino—godfather—and that it stuck.
"Will you tell me about him?"
Audrey sat on the bed, her hair tousled and her cheeks still rosy red.
It reminded me of the time we drove to a hill outside the city to watch a meteor shower in the middle of the summer.
We'd had a blanket, some beer, and the stars.
I told her I loved her that night. That I'd never love anyone else the way I loved her.
That the only future I wanted was with her at my side.
At the time, I hadn't been able to imagine anything coming between us. Nothing we couldn't deal with. It was amazing how na?ve we'd been. I always thought I was too jaded for na?veté but here we were.
There was no denying that the plans we'd made for life after high school probably would've cracked under the weight of the real world at some point.
But that didn't mean we would've fallen apart.
I refused to see that as an inevitability.
There was no one scrappier than this spoiled society girl of mine and I lived to prove people wrong.
But the part that bothered the hell out of me was that we didn't even get the chance to fuck it all up and fall to pieces.
Not when her parents shoved her into a gilded cage, shipped her to California, and then sold her off to the highest bidder.
They knew what they were doing. They'd probably had it planned since the minute they met me.
Or maybe it had nothing to do with me and everything to do with controlling her.
I didn't like that option any better.
I dropped her shoes in the closet, set her bag on the bench near the door.
Tried to figure out what to do about this situation.
Would coffee help? Something to eat? Did greasy food soak up ecstasy the way it did alcohol?
What about a cold shower? I knew that would help me.
I wasn't sure I was comfortable leaving her alone in a shower so I'd have to go with her and— Fuck me.
I scrubbed a hand down my face. "Tell you about who?"
"Percy." She bounced on her knees. "I bet you have a ton of pics. Show me?"
I raked my bottom lip between my teeth. Photos were simple enough. Lower chance of her face-planting into a wall than the ballet moves. Much lower chance of me choking on my tongue over a flash of underwear. Maybe it would tire her out.
"Yeah. Sure." I swiped my phone and opened my albums. Handed it to her. "All yours."
"No, come over here," she said with a pout. "You have to tell me all about the pics. Narrate the stories for me." She patted the bedspread beside her. "Sit here. With me."
I gulped. There was no way this would work out well for me.
"Please," she drawled, her hands clasped under her chin. Full puppy dog eyes too. Fucking brutal.
"All right," I said, kicking off my shoes. As soon as I sat down, she curled into my side. She had a hand on my back and the other tapping on my thigh, hurrying me along. Killing me. "These are from a few weeks ago. At one of the parks he likes."
"He looks just like you." She zoomed in on an image of Percy climbing a playset. "What a little conqueror." I watched the way her smile dug into her cheeks and softened her eyes. "Tell me about him."
"What do you want—" She ran the pad of her finger along the seam of my jeans, right up the inner thigh, and I lost my words. Whatever I'd wanted to say perished and it was taking the last of my decency down to hell with it.
"Everything," she replied, still unspooling me from that seam.
I'd been at least half hard since she grabbed me back at Mom's place but it was full steam ahead now. As long as she didn't notice, we'd be all right. And if she did, well, it couldn't get much more awkward between us.
"He sleeps with twenty stuffed animals and it stresses me the fuck out because I worry about them suffocating him," I said in a heave of breath. "He likes outrageous burgers. You know, the ones with a scoop of macaroni and cheese on top or two slices of Hawaiian pizza instead of a bun."
She blinked up at me, owlish and adorable. "There are burgers that use entire slices of pizza to hold it all together?"
"It's not the sort of thing you'd ever go looking for, princess, but yes," I said. "Percy loves it. Give him a burger topped with an entire chili dog or some crab rangoon, and it's the best day of his life."
"I can just see him shoving a giant burger into his little face," she said.
My chest just about cracked open at that.
It was intensely confusing to have these warm thoughts about my son while a bit more pressure from that fingertip of hers would have me coming in my pants.
Really fucking confusing. "He likes Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and rocks and…
dogs," I managed. "He likes dogs. Helicopters and planes—"
"Well, of course he likes planes and helicopters," she teased. "You wouldn't have it any other way."
"Nah, I don't push it on him. He's allowed to like whatever he wants."
"Come on," she drawled. "Admit it. When you read Peter Pan to him, you added your own chapters about the science of flying to Neverland. Distance and velocity and all the other physics stuff."
I shook my head. "Nope."
"Jude," she said, stern as ever. That tone only made things more complicated for me. "I know when you're not telling me the truth."
I didn't know if I believed that. Didn't want to believe it. "I didn't get into it with Peter Pan but we did pause Aladdin at a few points. The aerodynamics of the magic carpet—I mean, the wind speed alone would've knocked them off and—"
"Like I said." She went back to swiping through the photos. "You miss him."
"Yeah." No sense denying it. "I like having him around. It's weird when he's not."
"Like your heart's walking around outside your chest," she said.
"Very much." I pointed to the screen. "That's from his last day of school."
"Why does he look so annoyed?"
"I'd call it contemptuous but annoyed also fits," I said. "That school couldn't keep up with him this year and he's still pissy about it. Actually, I could use your help with that. When you're sober."
"What do you mean?" She shifted, flailing in the most convoluted ways imaginable until she straddled my thigh. A fresh new rung on the descent into my personal hell. "I'm a hundred percent sober."
"No, baby, you're not." I cupped her chin, studying her glassy eyes. "But I love that you think so."
"I'm perfectly aware of what's going on. Everything's just a little fuzzy. Like felt. The fabric." She rubbed the pads of her fingers together, directly in front of her eyes. "No, no, it's moss. That's what I feel like. It's like I'm made of warm moss."
Audrey rocked against my thigh as she spoke. She was hot, even through my jeans. Scorching hot. And she'd hate me for this tomorrow if I let her continue.
"Okay, that's enough." I shifted up, groaning as my belt strangled my cock, and reached for her waist. I managed to turn her around and settle her between my legs, her back to my chest. I banded an arm over her to keep her still though I knew it wouldn't do much good.