Chapter 34
JUDE
It’s that weird stretch of time between Christmas and New Year’s when everyone’s gorged themselves on chocolates and cheese, no one’s working—except Cass and Blake, they’re always working—and no one knows what day or time it is.
My whole family’s crammed into Dad’s living room watching some family movie, while I’m standing in the kitchen, tapping my fingers on the counter, my mind all over the place and body too tightly strung to sit still.
I feel like I need to work out, but I already spent three hours on the squash court this morning smashing a ball by myself.
Then this afternoon, Cap and I built a whole igloo outside.
I wanted to stay out there, but Cap’s teeth were chattering.
So we went in for hot chocolate and now I’ve got ants in my goddamned pants again.
“What are you doing, Jude?” a gruff voice barks, making me spin around. “You look like you drank two gallons too many of coffee.”
“No coffee,” I say to Griff, who’s standing in the doorway, his face grim.
He inspects me a minute, then says, “All right, come with me.” He’s using that tone that makes him sound like an army general or something.
“Where?”
“We’re going outside.”
Even though I’d be happy to go outside, I don’t like him talking to me like I’m a damn foot soldier. Or a child. I push back just because I can. “It’s freezing.”
“Then put on your fucking mittens. Let’s go.”
I consider telling my brother where to go. He may have fifty pounds on me, but I’m still strong. And fast. I could outrun him in a second. But he’s already in the hallway pulling on his coat and boots. He glances at me like he might just sit on me if I don’t do the same.
I grumble, but a few minutes later, I’m trudging along in the snow next to him.
“So?” Griff asks.
“So what?” I say, kicking snow.
“Don’t be cute.”
“I’m always cute.”
“Do you want me to toss you in a snowdrift, or help you?”
“I never asked for—”
I’m interrupted by two giant gloved hands shoving me backward so hard I don’t have time to catch my balance. I land on my ass in the snowdrift beside me.
“What the fuck?”
“You didn’t answer,” he says. “You ready to actually talk now?”
Heat gathers in my chest. “You’re being a bully, you fuck!”
It’s always Eli who I got into wrestling matches with as a kid. Griff never had time for any of that. But now he’s looking at me with his lip curled up and all I feel is anger.
Not really at him, but he’s there for it.
“Fine, you want it?” I shove up from the snow and tackle him, my shoulder in his solar plexus. Maybe he wasn’t expecting that, or he was underestimating my weight—I’m not the skinny, wiry kid I was at twelve—but he lets out a low sound and stumbles backward.
I grin. “Not so tough now,” I grunt as I try to push him back. I don’t get far though. Griff digs his heels in and hooks his arm around my waist.
Then he flips me upside-fucking-down.
I land with a thud on my back. “The fuck?” I wheeze. I’m not a small dude. No one should be able to do that to me.
“You done?” Griff asks, his ugly mug hovering over me.
I growl and flip my legs up, surprising him.
I think. I rush him, grabbing him around the waist and tugging down.
Or at least, I try. He tips forward the tiniest bit, but the bastard doesn’t fall.
He uses some weird move behind his back on my wrists, so I grunt out in pain, my arms suddenly useless.
Then he knees my legs, and I find myself on my stomach.
He’s kicking my ass, frankly, and I should know better.
But it only makes me madder. I spit out snow, getting up on all fours.
“It’s cheating, you know. All your Jiu-jitsu shit.
” Griff was into martial arts when he was a teenager.
He doesn’t talk about it, but he obviously didn’t stop there. The guy is a trained fighter.
“You don’t know what Jiu-jitsu is.”
I stand up, lifting my fists in front of my face and hopping like a boxer. “I know what these are.”
“Put those down,” Griff says.
“Hell no.”
“I’m not going to hit you.”
“You should.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because I fucking deserve it, that’s why!” I shout.
The words seem to surprise us both.
Griff’s expression changes, going from tight to kind of sad. “No, you don’t.”
“I do.” I’ve stopped bouncing, though my arms are still up. “I’ve fucked up everything in my goddamned life. No one else did that to me. It was all me.”
I swing at him, just because I’m mad at myself, and knowing he won’t let me hit him.
He doesn’t. He catches my fist in his hand, easily, though his hand goes back a little. My arm is reliably strong. Another man would have fallen over. But Griff just hangs onto my fist. “Stop, Jude. For the first time in my life, I’m asking you to fucking talk. So just talk, okay?”
It’s that word, okay, that has my arm dropping finally, my shoulders sagging. I look around to see we’re right next to the park half a block down from Dad’s place. Eli used to play t-ball here.
I sigh, nodding.
Griff leads me over to the little dugout, one of two built on the side of the ball field. We sit down in the concrete and chain-link bunker, looking out over the snowy field.
It takes a few minutes, but finally I speak. “We had the best week, Griff. It was just like old times. Only there was…well, we were having sex, too.”
Griff still says nothing. So I keep talking.
“We probably shouldn’t have done that, but when I first saw her again, it was different.
I think I was always attracted to her, but I just stayed away from that stuff.
This time, there was this…I don’t know. An edge between us.
I was pissed. So was she. You remember me last Christmas right, where I was so fucking miserable because she just told me she was leaving? ”
“Yeah, I remember. I thought you looked like a sad sack then.”
“But now it’s worse, right? It’s a thousand times worse.”
I lean back with a clink against the chain link behind us.
“When we saw each other, it was like that whole year never happened. We just hung onto the weird feelings, and things were off. But then we talked about it a little. Then some more. I guess we both kind of knew things weren’t the same anymore, and it suddenly became so obvious that we were… you know, we had a little chemistry.
“A little?” Griff scoffs. “I saw you two at the restaurant.”
“Okay, a lot.”
Griff raises a brow.
“The most I’ve ever felt. The sex was incredible. And it fixed whatever was between us, at least at the time, because we did go back to the way we were. Best friends again, on the Eleanor Cleary case. It was fucking heaven, actually.”
“So you liked how it was between you?”
I look at him like he’s insane. “If things could have stayed exactly the way they were, everything would have been perfect. Me, Nor, Cap. Full stop.” I lean forward like Griff is doing, resting my elbows on my knees. But my old injury twinges with the angle of my elbow and I sit up again.
“I think…” I swallow, because this is the part I haven’t admitted even to myself. “She wanted to talk about a future, even with us being so far apart.”
“And you didn’t?”
“I want her in my life. But she doesn’t want it to go back the way it was.
So she left. She wasn’t pissed or anything, which was the weirdest part.
She looked… Fuck. She looked beautiful. Like she’d finally seen how perfect she was.
How she deserves the fucking world. But she left me, and it feels like it’s for good. ”
“Do you blame her?”
That heat comes back. “She knows I don’t know how to handle that shit. She knows I have no idea how to love someone.”
“Who told you that was true?”
“I did. I know it. I was always too much for everyone. Too enthusiastic. Too distractible. Too many dumb ideas. Things only work when I focus on one thing at a time.”
“So you can’t chew gum and walk at the same time.”
I know how stupid it sounds. “You know what I mean. It’s the only way I got to where I did with tennis, and tennis is the only thing that I was ever proud of. That and Cap. When I take my eye off the ball, I lose.”
Griff is quiet so long I say, “What? I know you’re thinking something.”
Griff nods. “You stuck to your old shit on this one and you look like a fuckin’ loser to me, anyway, Jude.”
That heat flares to anger again. “You’re really good at pep talks, you know that?” I say sarcastically. “No wonder you dole them out so often.” A beat passes. “Besides, you’re wrong. I let myself get distracted with Nora, that’s why everything went to shit.”
Griff sits up, leaning his head back. “Is it? Or is it because you were too chickenshit to tell her you loved her?”
I balk. “I’m not in love, Griff.”
Griff gives me his bullshit look.
“I’m not. I would know.”
“Because you’ve been in love so many times before.”
“What, and you have?”
My brother looks down.
He has. Shit. I had no idea. “Wait, you were? Who was she? Is she?”
“Was, and it doesn’t matter now. What matters is I guess you’re right. You wouldn’t know love if it punched you in the face. Maybe I should hit you.”
“I told you, I’m not—”
“Do you care about her?”
I fold my arms. “Of course. She’s my best fr—”
“Like really fucking care about her. Like if she called you right now and said she was scared or hurt, or missed you, would you hop on a plane?”
I would. In a heartbeat. “She could tell me she needed a peanut butter sandwich and I’d bust ass to the airport.”
“And are you attracted to her?”
I harrumph. I already told him I am. The sex dreams have been out of control since I got back. I’m surprised I still have my full head of hair with all the times I’ve yanked it to GTFO of those dreams. I picture her now, draped over me, bent before me, or that first moment, on the edge of the tub.
“Well?”
I squeeze my eyes shut, scrubbing my face with my hand.
“Fucking yes, I’m attracted to her,” I say through my fingers.
“She’s the sexiest woman I’ve ever met. But she’s also the smartest, always figuring things out before anyone else, always full of ideas that I wish I would have thought of.
She’s funny, and she laughs at my jokes, and she loves my son, and yes, I can’t stop thinking about her every second of every day.
I picture my future and…” I swallow. “I can’t see it without her in it. It’s like a giant black hole.”
“That’s what love is,” Griff says, so soft I almost miss it.
For a moment, I have no words.
Then I turn to my brother, my chest as tight as a drum. “I can’t be. I’ll just fuck it up.” My voice is a whisper.
“You already did.”
I shake my head. “I’ll keep fucking it up.”
“That’s what relationships are about, Jude. You fuck up, you apologize, you talk it out, you’re happy.”
Since when is my stoic older brother so wise about love?
But I don’t linger on that thought. I linger on the word love.
My heartbeat increases in speed now, clattering like I just ran a marathon.
“I’m in love with her,” I say with almost wonder.
“I’m in love with my best friend.” Then the panic sets in.
My breath comes fast and shallow as I turn to Griff.
“But she already left me, and it nearly fucking broke me. If I tell her I love her and she leaves me again—”
“Goddammit, Jude, that’s the whole fucking point! Love is about sticking your neck out like a chicken on the block, knowing you’re going to lose your head and doing it fucking anyway. Do you know how goddamned lucky you are?”
Griff’s voice is strained with more emotion than I’ve ever seen in him. I didn’t know he had real feelings like the rest of us.
Griff leans over, his elbows on his knees.
“Jude, I don’t think you’re stupid. You always know the right thing to say when some of us struggle to string a sentence together.
You saw your gift on the courts and you took it.
You met an amazing woman and somehow got her to fall in love with you and your son, after you probably showed her more than you’ve ever shown anyone. ”
“She saw me at my worst. You think…”
She’s in love with me.
“I have to go,” I say, standing up.
Griff grins at me. I haven’t seen him smile like this in years.
“You look like a psycho when you smile, you know.”
Griff smiles harder, only it’s kind of a grimace.
“Just stop.”
He chuckles.
“Get up.”
“Why?”
“Because I said so.” I say it in his general voice.
Griff frowns, but stands.
I wrap him in a bear hug. “You really should give pep talks more often,” I mumble, before letting him go.
Then I’m sprinting out of the dugout, back to Dad’s, not even waiting to see if he’s coming with.
I burst back into Dad’s place a few minutes later, heading straight for the living room where I stand directly in front of the TV.
“Hey!” everyone shouts. I turn around and pause it.
“Jude, you’re getting my carpet wet!” Dad admonishes.
“Sorry for the interruption. I have to talk to Cap, and then you guys.”
Cap stands up from where he was sitting on the floor playing with his little cousin. “Yeah, Dad?”
His look of importance at being called on is so fucking cute I can’t stand it.
“Hey, buddy,” I say, pulling him away from the crowd. I whisper in his ear, and he meets my eye, then nods, grinning. “I don’t mind,” he says to my next question.
“Okay,” I announce. “Cap is going to need to spend a week with one of his aunts or uncles or Grandpa’s over New Year’s. Who volunteers?”
Everyone in the room puts their hand up. All five of my siblings, even Griffin coming in the door, breathing hard.
I grin at him, and he does that little lip curl back.
Cap beams. “Dad, I can’t choose! I think we’re going to have to do rock paper scissors!”