24. Jude #3
“I knew the moment he said those words, and that he would never get over losing his wife and son, that I would never see any of them again.”
He sinks his head into my stomach, kissing me there with shaky breaths. I keep stroking his hair, waiting for him to keep going.
“They gave me an out, Jude. After what I did, they still gave me an out, wanting to save me, even though I didn’t deserve it. I should be in jail.”
My stomach twists. “What did you do that was so bad? Whatever it was, if they covered for you, then they must forgive you? I don’t understand. You’re serving a sentence here without them. You have no one.”
He shakes his head, the dullness in his eyes signifying his acceptance of a situation without hope. “What I did was unforgivable.”
“You could talk to them,” I whisper.
“I’m a ghost, Jude. I can never go back. I can’t do that to them. Tell me you understand. This is about them. Not me.”
Every instinct I have starts waking up, goosebumps peppering up my arms. “What do they think you did?”
“It’s not what they think. It’s what I did do. I’m guilty of all of it.”
He screws his face up, kissing my stomach again before he sits back on his heels and gently smooths his T-shirt back down my body, covering me. His eyes track it inch by inch, like he’s committing this moment to memory.
He gives my waist a final squeeze between his large, warm palms, then removes all physical contact from me.
I rush up to a sitting position, staring into his eyes.
“Don’t make me tell you, New York City,” he whispers. “Let me remember you looking at me like this.”
“Like what?”
“Like I’m someone you could actually love.”
“What?” I sob.
What could he possibly have done that he thinks is so awful? For his family to tell the world he’s dead, and for him to say he should be in jail? My head knows the truth must be terrible. But my heart refuses to listen.
“How am I supposed to leave knowing something, but also not knowing anything?”
“You just do it. You pack your suitcase, and you get on your flight to New York.”
“What will you be doing?”
“What I said I would.”
“Not think about each other again?” I choke out. My throat thickens until it’s painful and my eyes brim with tears. “You think we can both do that?”
“I know I can.”
“You’re a liar.”
“I’m a lot of things, Jude, none of them good.”
“I don’t understand. What did you do?”
“Don’t.” His voice takes on a low warning, and he stands and storms to the edge of the deck.
I jump to my feet behind him, marching over to where he’s standing with his hands wrapped around the steel guardrail like he’s strangling it, the muscles in his arms straining like they’re about to pop.
“Tell me!” I cry. “You can’t do this. You can’t give me all this time with you, make me start falling in…” I swallow, forcing away what I could so easily say. “You can’t do this. Please. I need to understand, otherwise how do you expect me to get on that plane and never think of you again? How?”
“I can’t,” he grits.
“Please!”
“No!”
“PLEASE!” I sob.
He snaps his head around.
“I killed her! I killed my own mother.”
I stumble backward.
My ankle rolls, and I almost fall down but manage to right myself. He doesn’t offer me any support, instead his eyes sheen with something dark and twisted.
“You fucking happy now?”
Everything around us ceases to exist. It’s like I’m inside a vacuum, blood rushing in my ears, heart pounding against my ribs, my breath punched from my lungs.
“You’re lying. Tell me what really happened. Slade… please?” I beg.
“What really happened? Jude, I just fucking told you. I killed her!”
“I don’t—”
“Don’t what? Believe me? Because you don’t want it to be true? Well, it is. It is fucking true!”
His grip on the rail intensifies as though he’s about to rip it out of its bolts.
“I swear on my life, your life, Declan’s life, Nandi’s life, everyone’s goddamn life, okay? I killed her. I killed her with my own bare hands. I saw the life drain from her eyes as she stared at me. As she fucking clawed at me, fighting to live.”
“No,” I choke.
“Yes. Fucking believe it!” he yells. “I’m not this man who you want me to be. I’m a murderer you fucked to get over your ex. Now accept it.”
I burst into heaving sobs. This isn’t him. He’s lying. He must be.
It can’t be true.
“You’re lying.”
His eyes take on a deadly calm. “I had my hands around her throat, Jude. I saw the light fade from her eyes. Because of me.”
“No.”
“You need to walk away, Jude,” he says in a low voice. “Walk away and don’t fucking look back.”
Bile surges up to my throat and it takes everything in me not to vomit. I tear my eyes away, no longer able to look into his eyes.
Because when I do, there’s nothing there anymore.
No warmth. No tenderness.
Just coldness.
And truth.
“Go on! Fuck off!” he roars.
I stumble backward, hot tears coursing down my cheeks. I turn and race across the boat’s deck and jump clumsily onto the jetty, narrowly avoiding falling through the gap and into the water.
Slade bites out a sharp curse behind me, but his voice hasn’t moved closer. He isn’t following me.
I run all the way out of the marina, tears blurring my vision.
And I don’t look back.