Chapter 19 #2
Bruno rams into me, slamming me into the wall.
Robyn yells out in surprise. Her hand is wrenched from mine.
My heart hammers in my chest. Adrenaline surges through me.
I stare into eyes that everyone always said looked like mine, which I haven’t seen since that night I lost my family under bruises and blood.
The night I lost my brother.
Only, did I ever truly have a real one like I do now with Eden?
“Get off him.” My brave Robyn is slamming her palm on Bruno’s back. “Let go.”
Bruno doesn’t loosen his grip. He is staring at me with a burning rage. His hold on my collar is choking me.
I surprise myself by blurting, “I’m taller than you now. You must hate that.”
Bruno’s eyes widen. “Shut up, Jude.”
I flinch.
Hearing him use my first name after all these years is like being stabbed.
Robyn freezes. “Your brother.”
Bruno doesn’t look away from me. “Why are you here, Jude? I fucking knew that you would be. You have to ruin everything, don’t you? Are you trying to wreck this for Maria?”
He’s pulverizing my heart.
I shake my head.
“Liar.” Bruno studies me contemptuously, as if I’ve been reduced to a kid again.
“I’m a busy man. I have a family, unlike you.
Children, three of them. Not that I would allow a person like you around them.
” I fight hard not to show on my face how much that hurts.
A person like me…? “But I had to drive here to make sure that Maria was safe. Go home, Jude. I knew that you’d pull something like this. ”
“Like what?” I grit out. “I’m only going to watch her play.”
“She doesn’t want you to.”
My heart breaks. “Did Maria say that?”
“My sister didn’t need to. Mom and Dad sent me. They told you to—”
Sudden anger flashes through me.
I am not Bruno’s younger brother any longer. He killed any right he had to boss me around or have a place in my life after what he did.
Why should I let him talk to me like this?
“I know precisely what they said to me,” I reply, as cold as ice. “I didn’t intend to talk to anyone.”
I grab his hand, which is pressing me against the wall and bend it back, until he is no longer holding me down.
Bruno blinks in shock like he can’t believe that I am stronger than he is now.
He has no idea how much stronger in every way I am.
I am shaking with the urge to kick his ass.
I used to lie awake, imagining what I would do if I met Bruno again.
Sometimes, on bad nights, I dreamed of driving to his home and beating him like he’d beaten me.
I didn’t feel better the next morning and I never did it.
Now, my eyes flare with fire. “You don’t get to touch me. Ever. Again.”
Bruno backs away, gesturing at the door. “I’m waiting.”
He would say that when I was in trouble.
It slams me back to being a tiny kid. Sometimes, it meant that I was meant to trail up to my room, when he sent me to bed early. Or sometimes, to wait nervously for Dad to return from work to deal with me.
I’m not that same kid anymore.
I slip the recital tickets out of my jacket pocket. “Look, I have tickets. Is this your new job as an usher? Are you going to show us to our seats?”
Bruno raises his hand like he’s about to backhand me.
Robyn gasps.
I don’t flinch. Instead, I steadily stare Bruno down.
Slowly, he lowers his hand.
Robyn marches to stand next to me. She firmly takes my hand.
“My boyfriend and I are walking through those doors to watch the recital now.” Robyn tilts up her chin. “If you try to stop us, I will call security who are sitting outside the town hall. Want to know what security? The ones for your NHL legend millionaire of a brother.”
I fucking love this woman.
Bruno glances between Robyn and me in confusion. “She’s your girlfriend. But you’re…?”
“Don’t,” I say, quickly. I won’t let this asshole throw a single slur at me. “I like to kiss both men and women. Sometimes, I do it in front of packed arenas. I’d have thought that you would follow the sports news. You used to.”
“I avoid reading about you,” Bruno replies. “It’s triggering to me. You destroyed our family. Don’t you have remorse about what you did to Mom and Dad? Our family fell apart because of you.”
I pull Robyn away from Bruno, forcing myself to swagger across the lobby like his words aren’t slashing me to ribbons.
Yet I know what I am going to say to him…words that I whispered in the dark of the Discipline School.
Words that will mean nothing to him.
But words that mean everything to me.
I glance over my shoulder at Bruno. He is standing hunched with his hands in his pockets. He looks small and older than any image that I had held in my head.
I give a sharp smile. “The fucking Discipline School didn’t work. Tell that to your mom and dad for me. They tortured me for nothing. They destroyed your family for nothing too.”
Bruno’s head ducks. His hair falls over his face.
I wish that I could see his eyes.
“Jude…” His voice is quieter but not gentled.
“Also…” I rest my hand on the door. My smile widens. “You know that car you always wanted to buy? The one that we talked about all the time? There were posters of it plastered over your bedroom walls.”
Bruno raises his head. “The 1960s Alfa Romeo Stradale? What the hell has that got to do with anything?”
I turn away from him. I don’t need to see his face.
Never again.
Instead, I slip my arm around Robyn’s waist, holding her against my side. “I own one.”
I don’t wait for Bruno’s reply.
I push through the doors into the hushed, dark of the hall. I pass the tickets to the usher.
Inside, I’m singing.
Robyn leans to murmur into my ear, “Satisfying?”
I chuckle, before whispering back, “More satisfying than the tenth orgasm that I’m going to give you in the seat of that Alfa Romeo on the drive home.”
Robyn’s breath hitches, and that is satisfying too.
I lead my gorgeous girlfriend across the scuffed floor through the low-ceilinged hall to the empty back row. We shuffle into the aisle of mismatched chairs.
Moonlight streams over the audience who are quietly chatting in the darkened hall.
As we slip into our seats, I try to come down from the high.
Robyn glances at me, concerned.
“Okay?” She rests her hand in my lap.
I nod, turning to kiss her because I want to and because I can.
It’s a small thing. Yet it’s also the largest thing in the world.
“You were amazing. Fucking courageous, Jude.” When Robyn reclaims my name, I know that I should never have allowed Bruno to steal it for a moment.
I kiss her again. “Hmm, as courageous as the woman who proudly declared me to be her boyfriend.”
“Only because I couldn’t claim you as my husband. I’m possessive like that. Sue me.”
I grin.
Then I take some more courage into my hands and turn to look at the small, raised stage at the front of the hall.
A slim woman in her early forties with long, glossy black hair and elegant fingers is seated in front of the ancient, upright piano.
Maria is still as pretty as ever.
She is focused, shuffling the music sheets.
A warm circle of haloed light falls from the single spotlight.
Maria doesn’t glance at the audience. She never does.
It’s as if she is playing for herself in her own world, and if anyone else hears her play, then it is nothing to do with her.
It’s why I knew that it was safe to sit here like this and listen.
Perhaps, I am indulging in something that I have no right to. But this is as close as I can come to introducing Robyn to Maria.
Unfortunately, Robyn has met Bruno.
I won’t let that happen again.
When Robyn finally sits straighter, laying her long fingers on the keys, conversation dies down. There is a thrilled anticipation in the air. It is electrifying like a storm about to break.
I entangle my fingers with Robyn’s.
Robyn is staring intently at Maria, as taken in already as the rest of the audience is.
Then Maria begins to play, and Robyn draws in a sharp breath. She shuffles forward, perching on the edge of her seat, spellbound.
I allow the incredible music to wash over me, losing myself in the haunting Chopin. The piano is off-key; its tone is uneven but also warm and mellow. I like it more than my Steinway at home.
As Maria’s fingers glide over the keys, each note echoes around the Virginian hall, transforming it into a new, fantastical world.
Suddenly, I remember why it made me so happy to sit next to my sister on the piano bench while she played.
She still looks like an angel.
I slip my hand into the pocket of my trousers. I keep my gaze fixed on the stage as I fiddle with my phone.
I know that I have pressed the right thing, when Robyn’s hold on my hand becomes a death grip and she doubles forward.
I smirk.
Robyn didn’t think that our game had ended, right?
Na?ve.
If my principessa wants to win, then she must reach ten orgasms, which I intend to hit in the car — my fuck you, brother car — on the way home.
Except, I’m going to edge her for the next hour.
I settle back comfortably in my seat, crossing my legs.
I can hear Robyn struggling to catch her breath and not squirm in her seat.
Anyone else would take pity on her.
Anyone but me, when I know how hard I will make her come later.
As the music swells around me and my heart soars, I raise the back of Robyn’s hand to kiss it.
Finally, I can say goodbye to the dream that I once had a real family. I was in love with the idea like I loved Maria’s music.
Yet Robyn and the twins, the Kinks, the Bay Rebels players and staff, Cody, Michael, and Neve, along with more people than I once thought would care whether I live or die, are now part of my life in Freedom.
They are real.
They’re my true family.
My past is dead. My future, however, is alive.
I sneak a glance at Robyn, whose cheeks are flushed.
And my future is fucking beautiful.