Chapter 9
Chapter Nine
Kendall
A few nights later
I’m a virgin.
I actually said that. Out loud. To Jude. Ohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygod
That played on a loop in my brain following Jude’s shocked face.
“Oh, my God. Oh, my God,” I muttered aloud to myself as I scrubbed the toilet.
I had decided to do my absolute least favorite chore because I needed something—literally anything—to do with the restless energy coursing through me.
Of course, I’d made matters worse after I’d blurted out the truth.
“I don’t even know why I told you that,” I’d groaned. Jude most certainly didn’t need to know that about me.
Because now he was going to freak out. I hadn’t even given him a chance to say anything else.
I practically ran into my apartment and slammed the door in his face.
“Kendall? Kendall?” His voice had filtered through the door.
I’d ignored him because he was too polite to get pushy about it. Jude wasn’t that kind of guy. Part of why I had a crush on him.
I hadn’t even really let myself think about my feelings for him in high school. I’d figured there was absolutely no way Jude Silver would look at me like that.
“You are such an idiot,” I muttered to myself as I scrubbed furiously, moving on to clean the tile shower.
For reasons that remained mysterious to me, someone had gone all out with a tiled shower-tub enclosure in this tiny apartment in downtown Willow Brook.
It was really nice. I loved it. But cleaning tile was a pain in the ass.
I kept on scrubbing, pouring my frustration into the effort.
By the time I finished, the entire shower gleamed like something out of a commercial.
I leaned back on my heels and dragged my elbow across my forehead, wiping the sweat and errant curls away.
A glance at my watch told me it was past midnight. My tiny apartment was now officially cleaner than it had ever been, probably since I’d even moved in. For fuck’s sake. I’d worked up enough of a sweat that I needed a shower now.
I stripped out of my clothes and hopped in, starting with the water cold before switching it to hot. Afterwards, I stood in my bathroom, staring at myself in the mirror and studying my damp curls, my freckled cheeks, my big eyes. When I was little, they had always seemed too big for my face.
“At least I grew into my eyes,” I muttered to myself.
This was what Jude kissing me had wrought. I was a hot mess.
With a groan, I spun away, tugged on a T-shirt and a pair of sweatpants, and put on my favorite fluffy socks before crawling into bed to read.
Of course, the moment I reached for a book from the small stack on my nightstand, my brain registered the problem.
Reading romance was one of my favorite escapes, because I didn’t ever figure I’d have a romance.
That wasn’t my life. I wasn’t the kind of woman who fell in love. It was safe and easy to lose myself in those stories. I took a shaky breath and plunked the book on my knees, dropping my face into my hands as I let out a sigh. That’s how bad it was.
I was heaving dramatic sighs all by myself in bed. When my hands fell away, my brain clocked the T-shirt I was wearing. Jude got it for me a few years ago. Fur Real Friends – Paws, Claws, and Endless Love was scrolled across the front. He’d said it was perfect for me.
My head thumped against the headboard. “Why? Why?” I groaned aloud. Why did I tell Jude I was a virgin?
Huge mistake. Epic.
I looked down at my book and nodded in determination.
This was a great historical romance, one of my favorite types of escape.
It wasn’t even set in this era, so I didn’t have to worry about how realistic it was.
Same went for sci-fi romance. I didn’t believe in instalove, but it totally made sense on another planet.
That worked for me. Paranormal? Also worked to forget reality.
They could be fated mates, and it could truly be love at first sight.
But in the modern era? I would question everything.
Just like that, my mind spun back to the first time I saw Jude.
“So, this will be your homeroom,” the assistant principal said as she stopped at a door in the hallway of my new school.
She walked me in, introduced me to the teacher, and the teacher gave me a seat, explaining that we were usually seated alphabetically. But since it was halfway through the school year, she was going to put me in an empty seat on the other side of the classroom.
Rather than individual desks, there were tables with two seats at each. I followed her over and sat down.
“Your tablemate is Jude Silver.” The teacher turned to the boy sitting beside me. “Jude, this is Kendall Castile. I expect you to be nice to her. This is her first day at school in Willow Brook. Her family just moved here from Fairbanks.”
When Jude met my gaze, there wasn’t much I noticed about him in that moment. But I loved his eyes. They were blue with flickers of silver in them.
“Hey, Kendall,” Jude said.
“Hey, Jude,” I began.
Jude cracked a grin and waggled his brows. “You know my song.”
I bit my lip to keep from laughing. The teacher had already started walking back to the front of the classroom. We were at a table in the far back corner.
“Mrs. Landis is pretty nice,” he offered. “The bell hasn’t rung yet, so we’re allowed to talk.”
I set my notebook on the table and glanced around. Some students were reading, or doodling in notebooks. A few were talking at their tables, or between them.
“So, you’re going to find it warm here,” he said after a moment.
“Yeah?”
“Fairbanks is freaking cold in the winter,” he pointed out, drawing a giggle out of me.
I looked up at him again. Even in middle school, Jude was handsome with his slightly mussed dark hair, his sharp features, and those eyes. When he stood to round the table to help unstick my desk drawer, I noticed how tall he was. Even then, he had broad shoulders. He moved with an easy grace.
He sat back down and flashed me another crooked grin. “Do you have a song?”
I blinked. “What?”
He nodded. “Like, ‘Hey, Jude’. Do you have a Kendall song?”
“I don’t know. That’s a pretty famous song,” I pointed out.
When he chuckled, the sound made my belly feel a little funny. “I don’t think there’s a Kendall song,” I admitted. “Or if there is, I’ve never heard it.”
He nodded sagely. “Well, Jude is a special name.”
I snorted a laugh just as the bell rang.
That was the start of my friendship with Jude Silver.
He was always kind. He introduced me to his friends in school, and he was the kind of guy who was liked by just about everyone.
He was popular, but not in an obnoxious way.
Jude was the guy who was cool with the football players and the cheerleaders and the science nerds and the math geeks and the drama kids.
He was also one of seven siblings, and I quickly learned that the Silver family took care of their own. Not that Jude ever needed any of his brothers or his older sister to protect him. He was genuinely friendly with everyone.
I felt lucky that he became my friend. We stayed friends all through high school.
I was there the day after his dad died, and he came over and cried.
I remember not being sure what I was supposed to do, so I put my arm around his shoulders and just sat beside him, thinking maybe I could impart some kind of comfort.
He had been there for me when my brother was busy being a jerk. Even if I understood Blake being a jerk, Jude didn’t stand for it.
When everything blew up for their family after the fire and Bree died, he came to my place night after night.
He never spent the night because that wasn’t the kind of thing we did.
He said it was difficult to eat when he was with his family because he lost his appetite, because it was like the sadness permeated everything.
He said if he was with me and could talk, and if we watched silly TV shows, he could eat.
So, I did exactly that. I talked to him, I listened, and we watched silly TV shows.
Over those years, I would occasionally think he was cute.
I would shove that thought away and remind myself that Jude was my friend, and I didn’t ever want to mess that up.
After the other night in the hallway—when Jude kissed me, and I told him my secret—that became a dividing line in our friendship. At least, in my mind.
For a week solid, I did everything I could to avoid him. To avoid seeing him, avoid talking to him, to not see him at all. I had plenty going on between dealing with my parents and my brother calling me more often for rides.
That detail cued me that Blake had been blowing off the fact that he didn’t have his license before and was driving anyway. He was my brother, and I loved him. I was trying to mend the messy breach between us simply by being there.
There was all of that and work, and school.
Running a large animal rescue meant I could work twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week if I wanted.
I worked longer than usual and kept busy in the evenings with the online classes to finish my veterinarian coursework.
I already had my vet tech certification, but my goal was to become a veterinarian.
The veterinarian clinic here in Willow Brook was run solely by women now. I really wanted to be a part of it. Alice, a friend and the owner, was totally supportive. I didn’t want to be an office vet. I wanted to be the vet who traveled and provided vet care at people’s homes.
All this to say, I was legitimately and insanely busy. So, avoiding Jude wasn’t too difficult.
What was different, though, was it used to be when he would stop by, I would make time to chat with him. He would help out with small things. And, now?
If I saw his truck coming down that gravel drive, I found a way to be deeply immersed in some kind of task that meant I didn’t have time. I knew this could only go on for so long. He was going to figure it out.
Seven days and seven hours later, when I wasn’t paying attention, I heard Travis start yipping in that excited way of his, the way he only did for Jude.
“Hey, my main man,” I heard Jude say casually. “Where’s your human mom?”
Travis, the little traitor, trotted right over to the stall I had just finished mucking out. I had a handful of fresh straw in my hands. I was scattering it on the floor, just as Jude and Travis came walking in.
Jude leaned against the post just inside the stall door. Several days’ worth of stubble shadowed his jaw, and his eyes held mine without breaking. My heart flipped in my chest. Butterflies amassed in my belly. I stared at him, frozen in place, until he asked, “You just gonna hold that straw?”
I pressed my lips together and carefully dropped it.
Snagging the pitchfork, I focused on spreading it evenly around the stall.
We had recently acquired a pair of large pigs from a farm that had been abandoned.
Some neighbor had stopped by, realized the family was gone, and they’d left the pigs behind.
I was still a little salty about that. Assholes.
The responsible thing to do was to take your pets to a rescue program if you couldn’t take them with you. That was my PSA for all mankind.
Jude’s voice cut through my thoughts.
“So, how long are you planning to avoid me?”