Chapter Six Digging up the Past
Chapter six
Digging up the Past
Jude closed the door behind him, the latch clicking softly in the quiet.
The warmth of the pub clung to his skin, laughter echoing in his ears, the low hum of conversation, and Warren’s voice lingering beneath it all like a song he couldn’t quite shake.
He was smiling. Actually smiling.
That ridiculous little thrill from the way Warren had held his hand a second too long fizzed under his ribs, hijacking rational thought and replacing it with something soft. Something he’d forgotten he could feel.
Stupid. Sweet. Seductive.
And for a fleeting moment, Jude stood there in the hallway, grinning like a man who’d remembered what it felt like to be wanted. For something other than pain.
Then—
“Hello, little lamb.”
He froze.
Those words sliced through the quiet like a blade. Jude’s breath stuttered, gone in an instant, the smile vanishing with it.
It couldn’t be.
Please. No. It can’t be.
But it was. Sitting on his sofa as if he owned the place, with one arm draped along the back cushion, legs casually crossed, was Callum Reid. As though he belonged there. As if he hadn’t broken Jude piece by piece and been put away before the cracks could heal.
The chill hit Jude slowly, then all at once. Cold and crawling.
He was out.
He was here.
How the hell had he even got inside?
That was always the worst thing about Callum.
The not knowing. How he got into places, into moments, into him.
Into Jude’s head. His space. His body. And whether, on some level, Jude had let him.
It was that eerie dislocation. The way reality smudged around the edges.
The slippery gap between memory and mistake. Between I didn’t and maybe I did.
But there he was. Not a memory. Not a shadow. Real. Present.
And he stood. Moved through the living room and drew the curtains without asking, switching on the light.
He whistled under his breath, low and casual, scanning the shelves Jude had built with his own hands, skimming his fingers over the second-hand books Jude had hunted for at weekend markets, and tapping a scatter cushion from the mismatched pair he’d found at the little seafront shop, the ones the old woman had called “rescued fabrics.” Patchworked. Imperfect. Beautiful.
Things Jude had chosen for himself.
Jude stood motionless near the front door, one hand braced on the wooden frame, heart thudding.
This cottage was meant to be safe. His.
Exposed beams, uneven floorboards, the faint scent of lavender oil he rubbed into the radiator to keep the rooms soft and warm. It wasn’t much, but it had been enough. More than enough. It had been freedom. Earned through silence and solitude and learning how to sleep without flinching.
But now Callum returned to sit on his sofa, stretching out his leg, one ankle hooked over the other, and throwing his arms along the backrest as if he hadn’t once used that posture to box Jude in.
A man finally settling into a space he considered his by right.
“Nice place.” Callum tapped the arm of the sofa, right where one of the handmade cushions sat. “You’ve done well for yourself. Very rustic. Masculine, but… gentle. Is that a real log burner?”
Jude said nothing.
Silence was safer. It always had been.
Callum drifted his gaze to the bookshelf, a smirk tugging at the corners of his mouth. “Knew you’d land on your feet. Even after everything.” He paused long enough to let the weight of everything settle between them. “Still reading all that history bollocks?”
Jude stayed mute.
Because he knew what happened if he spoke. If he gave even an inch. Callum would seize it and twist whatever Jude said into something else. Something that sounded like consent. Agreement. Affection.
Callum didn’t need permission. Just an opening.
“You look good, Lamb.”
The endearment hit like a slap wrapped in velvet.
Bile crept up Jude’s throat, sour and fast, but he swallowed it down and closed his eyes. Long enough to imagine waking from this. To pretend this was one of those dreams. The ones leaving him tangled in sheets and sweat, pulse thudding with remembered fear.
But when he opened his eyes, Callum was still there.
Smiling.
Winning.
“Cute glasses, too.”
Compliments from Callum were never harmless. They were laced with intention. Soft at first but always sharp at the edges. Silk over broken glass. They arrived like gifts but opened like traps. Jude had learned that the hard way.
He swallowed the impulse to step back, forced himself to stay rooted.
No flinching. Not anymore.
This was his fucking house.
“When did you get out?” Jude asked, flatter than he’d intended.
“Few days back.” Callum stretched lazily along the cushions, as if this were a social call. “Early release.” He smiled, and those green eyes glittered with something Jude didn’t like. Didn’t trust. “For good behaviour.”
Jude didn’t buy that for a second.
But he also didn’t believe Callum could’ve staged a prison break, not without help. And if he was wanted, surely he wouldn’t be here, in the open, in the house Jude had never told him about. Unless he thought no one would look. Unless he knew no one would stop him.
“I heard about the fire.” Callum slipped off the sofa and rose to his full height.
Jude’s breath caught.
He hated how Callum always seemed bigger than he remembered. As if time apart had made him shrink in comparison. Six feet of ink and muscle stepped forward, cutting the space between them as if it belonged to him.
“I saw your name in the coverage.” Callum lowered his head to meet Jude’s eyes. “Had to check on you, Curls.”
Jude tensed as Callum cupped Jude’s face in both hands. Calloused palms. Inked knuckles. New tattoos coiling over his skin. Words Jude didn’t recognise. Symbols he didn’t want to.
His body locked.
He didn’t mean to close his eyes, but they fluttered shut the moment Callum traced the ridges of his cheekbones with his thumbs, pretending it was affection.
But it wasn’t.
It hadn’t ever been.
It was a test. A quiet claim. Callum reminding him he could still touch him. Still tug on the invisible leash he’d worn for years, tightening it notch by notch, and disguise it as tenderness.
“You had me worried.” Callum’s voice was all heat and honey.
Jude said nothing.
His throat had closed, locked down tight around the panic rising in his chest. The part of him that wanted to run—bolt, vanish, disappear—was still at war with the part that had learned, slowly and painfully, that sometimes survival meant staying very, very still.
But beneath the stillness, the questions surged.
How did he find me?
The moment he saw his name in the fire coverage, Jude had known it might come back to haunt him. He hadn’t expected it to arrive like this, though. On his doorstep, in his living room, under his skin.
He should’ve seen it coming. Should’ve done more.
But without being listed as a victim of Callum’s crimes, there’d been no alert. No warning. No one had told him the man who’d broken him was back on the streets.
And that?
That was on him.
He’d protected Callum. Lied for him. Covered the worst of it because shame had curled around his ribs and made him complicit in his own undoing.
So maybe this was what he deserved.
The debt due.
Why hadn’t he said no when Callum crossed the threshold? Why hadn’t he turned, slammed the door, shouted? Called someone. Anyone. Because he had no one. Who could he turn to? Who wouldn’t ask questions?
That was how Callum always won.
Because Jude’s survival instincts had long since been rewired to mistake danger for familiarity.
Because Callum hadn’t needed fists to break him, even if he’d used them on occasion.
All he’d really needed was years of quiet dismantling, teaching Jude how to flinch inward, how to fall still, how to turn himself into a soft place to land for the man who kept knocking the air from his lungs.
And bribery.
“You can’t stay here,” Jude said.
It wasn’t loud. But it was the bravest thing he’d said in years.
Callum stilled.
His eyes sharpened, head tilting in that dangerous way Jude remembered too well. A predator assessing prey.
“I travelled a long fucking long way to get to you.” He clutched Jude’s chin in one brutal hand. “After everything you’ve been through… I thought you’d be glad to see me.”
Jude inhaled. Deep and steady. The way he’d trained himself for when panic threatened to take hold.
Every breath a battle. Every muscle taut with restraint carved into him by survival.
Then, with the smallest, most deliberate motion, he turned his head and slid out of Callum’s grip.
A careful twist of the jaw. Not defiant. Not aggressive.
But enough.
“How did you find me?”
Callum cocked his head, lips tugging into that same infuriating smile of pity he’d worn all those years ago.
The one he’d used the day he first offered Jude a way out of one hell, only to build another.
And maybe Jude had escaped something worse, maybe not.
He’d never know. That’s what Callum had always counted on.
He’d looked at Jude then as if he was something to rescue and reshape.
Naive. Fragile. A project. And Jude, lost and seventeen, had fallen for it.
“I can always find you.” Callum dragged his knuckles along Jude’s cheek.
“You’re my little lamb. I marked you, remember?
Painted your coat, clipped a tag to your ear…
” He tugged on Jude’s earlobe, gentle enough to mimic affection, but sharp enough to leave heat in its wake.
“And I know you weren’t running from me.
” He prodded Jude’s nose. “Despite the radio silence while I was inside. But don’t worry.
I know. I understand. You were protecting yourself. From your involvement. My smart boy.”
Jude pulled another gasp of air into his lungs before he could spiral.