Chapter 37 Gracie
I love you, you love me, I love you. When I wake the next morning, those words have been scrolling like a quiet ticker tape in the recesses of my mind all night.
I crack my eyelids open, half wondering if all the stress and buildup to the wedding finally sent me into a series of extremely lucid sexual hallucinations in which I repeatedly professed my love for Jude Larkwood.
But the dark riot of his hair against my pillows and the heavy, sleep-softened planes of his body in the streaming morning light seem to confirm that last night wasn’t a dream.
Even the part where he said he loved me back.
The memory sparkles in my chest (yes, it sparkles) before fanning outward to the tips of my fingers and toes. It’s not the first time someone has said those words to me—Calvin used to say them, but only after I’d say it first and always casually. Love ya, too, babe!
But last night, Jude made his feelings on the matter clear, which is probably why I was incapable of being stressed after we’d cleaned ourselves up and gone back to the reception. It’s why I can’t stop grinning like a lunatic at him while he’s still unconscious.
Creep alert, Gracie.
Reluctantly, I force my gaze away from his serious profile. How does he look like he could read a deposition in his sleep? I sigh. There’s no way I’m falling back asleep now, but as my stomach gives a growl, I decide to return the favor of breakfast in bed.
I sneak out of the bedroom as quietly as I can.
As usual, I have nothing to write home about in my own cupboards, but after spending quality time in Larkwood’s pantry last night, I know I’ll be able to make something there.
With a small thrill, I pull on Jude’s white button-up, despite the red lipstick all over the collar and suspiciously lower places.
After scrawling a quick note to him, I leave the cottage and jog across the garden to the kitchen door. As usual, it’s unlocked, but when I walk in, a surprised yelp makes me yelp and I nearly fall backward out the door.
“Oh my God, Gracie. I thought you were Ronald McDonald.”
My heart is still convinced that my esophagus is a far safer place to be than my chest, but it’s just Henry. Henry… who is probably the last person I want to see while wearing another man’s lipstick-covered shirt. Especially his best friend’s.
“Ronald McDonald?” I repeat with a nervous laugh, willing my pulse to slow. “That’s a pretty specific conclusion to jump to.”
“Well, if he were your worst childhood fear, your mind would probably jump to him, too.”
“Your worst childhood fear was being set upon by the McDonald’s clown?” I ask, momentarily distracted.
“Set upon? You make him sound like a roguish highwayman with a penchant for petticoats and virgins.”
“And that’s less terrifying how?”
“Good point.” Henry shudders. “Sorry I scared you. I’ve been texting Jude all morning.
We usually meet at the pool on Sundays, but he never showed.
I got worried Taco finally assassinated him and came over, but…
” His eyes move to each lipstick stain on Jude’s shirt like he’s mapping crime scene evidence.
“Looks like he just had a change of plans.”
My arms cross, uncross, and cross one more time as I try (and fail) to cover up the deep red stains.
Jude told me that he let Henry know about us, but in the crunch leading up to the wedding, I haven’t had a chance to talk to him about how it went.
But from the hurt outlining all of Henry’s features, it couldn’t be more obvious how he feels.
“I’m so sorry for how everything happened,” I say earnestly, wishing I could ease all his disappointment. “Everything with Jude just happened so unexpectedly.”
He tries to smile, but it comes across as a grimace. “I wish I could say I was surprised, but it’s nothing new at this point.”
“Nothing new?” I repeat.
Henry frowns down at his keys on the butcher block counter. “Oh, just the well-established pattern of the women I’m interested in falling head over heels for my best friend instead.”
His words stun me. Up until this second, I had imagined Jude’s sex life as having a traceable app history and being as far from the realm of “personal” as rubbing two bodies together gets.
The revelation that it somehow ever intersected with Henry’s love life—that my situation with the pair of them isn’t unique—makes my heart stumble.
He loves me, I tell myself. And while I feel terrible that Henry is hurting from my unrequited feelings, I remind myself that I did give him a chance and didn’t feel a spark.
I tried so hard to ignore what I felt for his best friend, but in the end, our connection consumed me. It consumed Jude, too.
I take a breath. “I’m sorry this isn’t the first time something like this has happened, but I promise it was never my intention to hurt you.”
“I’m not the one you should be worried about getting hurt,” he says, his face somber.
At his insinuation, I wrap my arms tighter around my middle. “He cares about me,” I say, trying not to let him see the hairline fractures he’s creating. “He told me he loves me.”
“Loves you?” he repeats, eyebrows raised. “Wow, he really went there.”
His surprise slides in between my ribs like a knife, but I force my voice into something confident. “Believe it or not, yes, he does.”
He must sense from my tone—or maybe it’s the way my chest has deflated from its newest puncture wound—that he’s hit a nerve.
“Shit, Gracie, I didn’t mean to imply that you’re not—” He exhales. “It has nothing to do with you. It’s just, I’ve known Jude for nearly half my life, and I don’t think he’s capable of letting himself love someone, no matter how wonderful the woman in question is.”
“Then why on earth would he say it if he didn’t mean it? You’re his best friend. You of all people should know how capable of love he is,” I argue, some of my fear spilling from me like a jostled cup.
“I never said he wasn’t capable of love; I said he would never let himself have it,” he says, frustration creeping into his tone.
“If you haven’t noticed, his whole personality is keeping people at arm’s length.
He thinks he’s protecting everyone he loves from whatever the hell happened to him here, but if you think I’m any closer to knowing what that was, my current working theory is that he got probed by fucking aliens. ”
I don’t want his words to make me doubt Jude, but questions are wriggling in. Yes, he’s guarded, but hasn’t he also trusted me with those hidden pieces of himself? Hasn’t he shown me glimpses?
As if Henry hears me think it, he asks, “Has Jude actually told you anything about himself? About his past?”
I’m about to retort that yes, he has. Just the other night, he told me about his DV work and his tattoos.
But only because you pushed him, a small voice argues. And even then, he only told you the barest minimum.
I bite my lip, searching for solid proof against Henry’s assumptions. But that same night, when I finally felt like Jude was going to open up, he only shut me down again. Don’t ask me that. I can’t talk to you about this. I hate keeping secrets from you.
But he does keep secrets. And no matter how badly I want solid ground to stand on, my argument comes out so weak that I wonder if I even believe it myself. “His actions speak louder than any painful secret he could tell me,” I insist. “He cares about me, and he’ll open up when he’s ready.”
“His actions,” Henry repeats quietly, shaking his head as he leans his weight on his hands. “So I take it he hasn’t told you his plans for Larkwood yet?”
A sharp-edged chunk of ice seems to surface in my stomach like a glacier. “He’s going to keep it,” I say, wishing I sounded more assured. “We’re talking about it today.”
Henry pulls a hand down his face, looking at me like I’m a seven-year-old about to find out there’s no Santa, Easter Bunny, or Tooth Fairy in one fell swoop. “Gracie, he’s selling. I talked to him a few days ago, and that’s his plan. It was always his plan.”
I shake my head. “No, that’s not right. Last night he said—” I stop, panic tightening my throat. “He promised—”
“What did he promise, exactly?” Henry asks, but his tone isn’t vindictive. It’s tired.
The answer bounces around inside me like an echo in an empty room. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.
“Listen,” he says gently. “I do think he cares about you. But there is nothing—nothing—he cares about more than getting rid of Larkwood.” His gaze is sympathetic.
“I don’t want to say that he’d make big, empty declarations to achieve his ends, but if he were backed into a corner and desperate…
I don’t know. He really needs your cottage, Gracie. ”
I take a step back from him. “No,” I say, like that simple word could banish every poisonous possibility Henry has forced me to consider. “No, he wouldn’t do that. That would be… no,” I stammer, unwilling to consider it.
When we made our bargain, he agreed to keep an open mind. He went on every errand I asked him to and told me that meeting Larkwood’s vendors had opened his eyes. But more than that, I’ve seen him undergo a change of heart—not just about me but about love itself.
I may have misjudged him at first, but now I know Jude.
He’s shown up for me in ways that I thought only Sofia and her family ever would.
He helped me find the confidence to stand up to my family.
He dedicates a large portion of his life to helping people out of terrible circumstances.
He’s a good man, and nothing Henry could say is going to shake—
“I know it’s hard to hear, and honestly, I blame myself for suggesting it in the first place,” Henry goes on, absently massaging his opposite shoulder.
“Suggest what, exactly?” I say, my voice pulled tight enough to snap.
Henry lifts his eyes to mine in a slow, guilty rise. “It was just a stupid joke. I had no idea he’d seriously consider it. But I guess I underestimated the lengths he’ll go to get rid of this place.”
I don’t think steam has started shooting from my ears, but Henry clearly picks up on my nonverbal request for him to spit out whatever he’s thinking.
He sighs, dropping his hand back to the counter.
“It was the day I told him Agatha left you the cottage. He was spiraling over getting you to sell it to him, and I…” He shrugs uncomfortably.
“I suggested he just seduce you for it.”
It’s like the words have been printed on the bottom of a falling anvil. I comprehend them, but when they really hit me, all the air is evacuated from my lungs. I don’t have a moment to catch my breath before Henry plows on.
“At first, he just rolled his eyes and told me that wouldn’t work because you hated him.
I didn’t think anything of it again until I’d heard you’d gone out for drinks and sung freaking karaoke with him.
” He shakes his head incredulously. “I thought to myself, if anyone could pull off that one-eighty, it would be Jude.”
My heart is limping quickly in my chest, desperate to get away from the onslaught of mounting evidence that everything I thought I knew about Jude was a lie.
I’m trying not to cry—I don’t want to shed a single tear until he either fesses up to gross emotional manipulation or presents me with irrefutable counterevidence.
But even if he does, it wouldn’t completely heal the grief of finally knowing I’m losing Larkwood, even after all my efforts to change his mind.
“I have to go,” I say, turning away from Henry.
“Gracie—”
“Please,” I say, stopping for a moment and closing my eyes. “I need to talk with Jude, and then I need some space.”
“But your deed to the cottage—I was going to drop it off this week,” he says.
I swallow, resisting the burning pressure building behind my eyes. “Don’t bother. Jude can have it.”