Chapter 8 #3
“And maybe that’s his plan still, and he just wants to wait and see how things go,” I said, but deep down, I didn’t think that was the case at all.
I was pretty sure he had told me the truth that he’d never dared to tell his parents and had kept secret until today.
What he wanted most of all was the chance to just…
exist, not worry about grades, sports, his upcoming time in college, and the career that was supposed to follow.
I couldn’t exactly pretend I had been privy to everything Jude had been raised with, but I had a pretty good idea.
While Charlene was the outward mover and pusher, I knew it would be easy for a kid like Jude to see his father’s life and believe that deep down, his father wanted Jude to be just as successful and driven.
That this place, being here, was a chance for Jude not to escape those demands, both from without and within, but maybe in some odd way, it was a chance for him to connect with a part of his father’s life that he’d never been able to do before coming of legal age.
It was easy for someone like me to look at a kid like Jude and scoff at the idea that he might struggle or think his life was hard, but that wasn’t really fair.
It wasn’t Jude’s fault that my father had been a mean-spirited bastard who thought ‘tough love’ meant tearing his kids apart rather than encouraging them to be better.
His life was his own, and honestly, I didn’t envy him for having two highly successful, driven parents who had achieved so much.
Their shadows had to loom large over him, and the pressure would either break him or make him, depending on what he did.
“I think whatever he does here will be to his benefit,” I said finally, pulling my eyes away from Jude as he tipped his head back and I heard the bellow of a laugh that echoed through the room.
Marc was quiet, and then said, “You had one of your moments, didn’t you?”
I smiled because sometimes there was something so absurdly comforting about having someone in your life that knew you well enough that you didn’t have to explain anything; they just…
knew. “A little lightbulb went on over my head, and I think I might have even heard a soft little ‘ding’ to go with it.”
“Care to share?”
“Do I care to share one of my ‘moments’ I had regarding your son while I’m supposed to be his Guide?”
“Well, phrased like that, I feel like a bastard for even expressing curiosity.”
I chuckled. “Just a nosy one.”
“Right, let you do your job, as I’ve done for years, and have yet to be disappointed,” he said, and damn him for that because it gave me more warm and fluttering feelings than it usually did when someone complimented me. “But…was it a good one or a bad one?”
“It’s a moment of possible understanding and insight,” I reminded him gently. “And this one, like most of them, isn’t good or bad. Kind of a mixed bag, but just…people.”
“People,” he repeated, remembering me explaining that to him more than once. “And people are messy creatures that don’t fall neatly into categories.”
“A shame people don’t come with neat little labels you could slap on them, huh?”
“It would make life easier.”
“Yeah, well, the mysteries of life might be a pain in the ass, but they are also what make life great. Don’t forget that.”
“I suppose a surprise here and there isn’t a bad thing,” he said, and oh, how I wanted to plunder the depths of that sentence alone. There was so much in those words that felt like there were thousands of things he wasn’t saying.
Instead, I said, “It looks like they’re done tying him to the post, so I suppose I should get his last words before they set the fire.”
“Make sure they’re poignant, or at least a proper curse against those who have betrayed his already fragile trust,” Marc told me, knowing damn well it was going to make me laugh. “And in the future, you are going to tell me how you feel about actually getting skull-fucked.”
And then he ended the call, leaving me to sort through my short-circuiting brain to remember what I was doing and what the string of letters and numbers on the screen in front of me meant.
That, of course, was a losing game, so I instead turned around and looked at the doorway again.
Luka was still there, but Jude was on his feet and clearly leaving.
There was a smile on his face, so I assumed he was just done rather than horrified by whatever he’d heard.
He was sheltered to a healthy degree, but I didn’t know how sheltered because…
well, it was a group of guys and you never knew what was going to come out of their mouths.
Once again, though, Jude laughed, and I had an odd moment, as if I could suddenly see through time, almost twenty-five years into the past. Now it wasn’t Jude I was seeing, but the spitting image of what Marc must have looked like at eighteen.
Add on a few years, take off some leftover baby fat, add some muscles, and I could picture what he had looked like when Charlene met him.
It was easy to see why Charlene would have been so smitten at that age.
Hell, if I had gone to school with someone like that, the young version of me would have been barely able to contain himself and needed a drool bucket.
Then again, at that age, I wouldn’t have stopped to learn what kind of person Marc was, to know that he was serious but was just as serious about taking care of people, that he could be a little hard, but never stopped caring.
That he really liked to laugh, but that sometimes he needed to be reminded of that fact.
And then the spell was broken, and instead of a young Marc, I was watching his son come my way, a smile on his face and a new spring in his step. He was just that kid I had met years ago who had grown up, and while he was on his way to being a man, I could still see the boy in him.
God, and I was responsible for making sure he had a good time…so maybe Marc and Charlene had some questionable qualities as parents after all.
Jude cocked his head when he saw me. “Something wrong?”
“Just…wondering what the hell is wrong with your parents,” I told him and laughed when he looked confused.
“I’m having about thirty thousand thoughts at once, kid.
Don’t make the mistake of trying to keep up with my brain.
You’ll end up more exhausted and frustrated than if you tried to catch an oiled-up weasel on crack. ”
Jude stared at me and snorted. “Now there’s some vivid imagery.”
“Paints a picture, doesn’t it?”
“Not a pretty one.”
“I said a picture; I said nothing about whether it was a pretty one.”
“Fair point.”
“Done socializing?”
“Oh, I’m, uh…gonna join a couple of the guys at the gym later,” he said brightly. “Cade said I haven’t been lifting properly and offered to show me what he learned in the army.”
“Clay joining you two?”
“I don’t know, probably. They seem pretty close. Are they…?”
“Clay is, Cade isn’t…as far as I know,” I said with a frown, and for a moment I thought about warning him but…
stopped. First off, it wasn’t fair to assume Clay was only being nice because he wanted to get his dick wet, despite being a walking, talking boner, he was a good man who didn’t treat people like they were holes to get his dick off in.
Secondly, I had promised I wouldn’t interfere unless it was absolutely necessary, so even if Clay had…
intentions, I needed to let Jude handle it, and if he needed help, let him make the choice to reach out.
“Like I said, kid, you’re going to find there’s a lot of that going on around here. ”
“I guess,” he said. “But I wanted to talk to you for a bit before I went off and did my own thing.”
“A little solo adventure never hurt anyone,” I said, patting the seat beside me. “Make yourself comfortable.”
“What are you doing, anyway?” Jude asked as he sat beside me.
“I am currently enjoying the enviable task of going through error reports from the computer help system to ensure it doesn’t shit the bed…again.”
“Should you be admitting a problem with your systems to one of your guests?” he asked with a smirk.
“You’ll find that I have a pretty open policy about most things,” I said with a shrug. “Except those covered by common human decency, NDAs, my own moral code, and…HIPAA.”
He smiled, and I remembered that smile on his face when he was ten, the first time I’d met him in person.
He’d been a scrawny thing with ears that stuck out, big eyes he hadn’t quite grown into, and a gap between his teeth that was eventually fixed.
He’d been covered in mud and grass after playing in the woods behind his house, grinning a grin that was so similar to the one on his grown face that once again, I felt like I had been taken back in time.
“Remember when you tried to scare me with a snake?” I asked, the words leaving my lips before I could question whether a non sequitur was a good idea.
He looked surprised, then chuckled. “Yeah, I used to play back there all the time and find all sorts of things. Mom hated it. I mean, she wanted me outside, getting dirty, being a kid, but I knew it freaked her out. I mean, I was always bringing things back to the house that would freak her out, so maybe that was part of it.”
“Probably,” I said dryly, remembering the exasperated sigh Marc had made when he’d realized the trick his son was trying to pull.
“You were so disappointed when I looked down and informed you it was in fact a snake, and I wasn’t going to feel bad if it turned around and bit you because you were manhandling it. ”
Jude laughed. “And then it did, immediately after you said it. Me and Dad both promised each other we wouldn’t tell Mom. I didn’t want to get in trouble, but I don’t think he wanted to either.”
I snorted. “Well, there’s that, but I know your dad pretty well. I’d guess he also thought the bite was enough to teach you a lesson…did it?”