Chapter Twenty-Five The Final Account
chapter twenty-five
The Final Account
Jude hurt.
Not from the stitched gash at his temple, nor the concussion they’d scanned twice and cleared. Those were tidy now. Sutured, stapled, neatly signed off in his notes. He’d passed every neuro obs. Stable. Mobile. Independent. Fit for discharge after forty-eight hours.
On paper, he was healed.
In his body and mind, he was anything but.
Every breath dragged fire through his ribs, the dull throb of bruised bone blooming with each inhale.
Smoke still haunted the back of his throat, acrid and bitter, as if it had settled in for good.
And beneath it all sat a bone-deep exhaustion no sterile ward could touch and wouldn’t fade with rest.
“Do you want Nate to get you some stuff from the supermarket?” Freddie dropped onto the edge of the bed beside him. “Get you some food in for when you get home? Whatever you need?”
Freddie was in uniform. He’d been the one the police had sent to ensure his safety, to ask the questions that would feed back to whoever it was in charge.
“I’ll be fine.” Jude slid his spare glasses on, the ones Nathan had collected from his house along with spare clothes so he didn’t have to go home in a hospital gown. “I’ll live on takeaways.” He glanced between them, managing a smile. “Thanks, though. For bringing my things. And… being here.”
“You’re our friend, Jude.” Freddie dipped closer until Jude couldn’t avoid his gaze. “That doesn’t change. No matter what.”
The words cut deeper than the bruises. Jude smiled again, sniffing back the sting behind his eyes.
They didn’t know everything. Couldn’t. Not about the operation, or Callum Reid, or Jude’s own past and how that had dragged him into the Radley house.
But they knew enough. At least Freddie did, as the officer on site.
Enough to know Jude had been tangled in it all.
And that thought gutted him. That his reputation, the friendships he’d built in Worthbridge, might already be slipping through his fingers.
That he might have to leave again, vanish, start over somewhere else with nothing.
Would he even still have a job? Be allowed to teach?
What school would take him if the truth surfaced?
The questions circled endlessly, tightening like wire around his chest.
And beneath all of it, the fear that Freddie’s words would crumble the moment the whole truth came out.
Jude pushed it down. Reached for safer ground. “How’s Piper?”
Freddie drew in a long breath rattling his chest. “She’s okay. She and Ryan were outside the blast line. They got out unharmed.” He shot to his feet, unable to stay still, hands restless at his sides. “I wish she’d fucking told me that Radley was Ryan’s father.”
Nathan stepped in, sliding a hand onto Freddie’s shoulder and squeezing with that easy intimacy lovers carried.
A touch that said I’ve got you. Freddie leaned into it, softening, the storm inside him anchored by Nathan’s presence.
Watching them, two men who’d found their way back to each other, made him smile through the pain.
“Maybe she didn’t tell you because she knew you’d throw your warrant card the second you found out,” Nathan said quietly.
“I would have.” Freddie’s voice cracked with the truth of it.
“Hopefully, if anything, it means she and Ryan will get some compensation. Ryan must be entitled to something.”
Freddie had told him the bare minimum he was allowed until the task force gave orders.
Radley had escaped with nothing worse than a broken leg and a smoke inhalation Jude himself carried in his lungs.
For the second time. But he was unharmed.
Housed somewhere in this same hospital, mercifully far from the ward Jude had been in.
With police standing guard, too. There were those who hadn’t made it out of the explosion, but Freddie’s lips stayed sealed, sworn to the confidentiality of the investigation.
“I also wish you’d told me.” Freddie gave him a look that he used on his sister, or the one Jude used on the kids in his class.
“You know I couldn’t.”
“I don’t mean Patel and whatever operation she had you in.” Freddie’s eyes met his. “I mean everything else. When we asked if you were okay, you could’ve said something. We’re here for you.”
Jude’s throat tightened. “I know. I just… trust is hard to believe in when you’ve had it stamped out of you.”
Freddie and Nathan exchanged a look, one Jude pretended not to see. Whatever passed between them didn’t belong to him. Not anymore. Then a soft throat clear from the end of the cubicle had them all turning.
Jude smiled.
Because there was Warren, clutching a bunch of flowers and the sight hit like air after drowning.
He looked different out of his cover: faded T-shirt, worn jeans, locs a little messier than usual.
Clothes that had been dropped off by someone else because he’d never left Jude’s side long enough to fetch his own.
From the moment they wheeled Jude in from the scene, he’d been there.
Quiet. Constant. Asking the same two questions over and over.
Are you in pain? Do you want me to leave?
The answer to the second was always no.
Now, watching him, Jude could see the exhaustion around Warren’s eyes.
The toll of everything they’d both survived.
A career up in flames. A disciplinary inquiry waiting.
A life that had no clear shape anymore. Yet he was here.
Still. Solid. The only steady thing Jude had left to hold on to.
Relief hit hard. It wasn’t peace. He doubted he’d ever know that again.
But it was close.
Warren caught his gaze and smiled back.
“Sarge.” Freddie nodded.
“PC Webb.” Warren stepped past him, leaned down, and pressed a kiss to Jude’s cheek before handing over the flowers. “Ready to go?”
Jude inhaled the scent. Fresh, green, a little wild.
He nodded. Words wouldn’t have worked anyway.
So Warren helped him up, steadying him with one hand, their fingers finding each other as naturally as breathing.
Together, they walked the long corridor out of the hospital, Freddie and Nathan trailing behind.
At the doors, they said their goodbyes, leaving Warren to guide Jude into the passenger seat of his car.
The world outside smelled of rain and cut grass, that earthy, unsettled scent coming before a storm. Jude held the flowers in his lap, their sweetness rising like a shield against the silence between him and Warren. A silence thick with all the questions he hadn’t dared voice.
Questions about Callum.
About Radley.
About what happened now it was over.
And the one that hollowed him out most—Them.
All the things they’d skirted around, because Warren had insisted Jude rest, heal, breathe.
They hadn’t spoken about the future. Or whether they had one.
Jude kept telling himself it meant Warren was giving him space.
But sometimes… sometimes it felt as if the space was simply Warren easing himself out the door.
As the car turned into the narrow lane to his cottage, Jude felt that tight, familiar pinch behind his ribs.
Home used to mean safety. Now it meant reality.
He’d spent days pretending the world had paused, pretending Warren’s presence was permanent, pretending that when the case ended he wouldn’t lose him.
But the world had unpaused.
A black SUV sat in the gravel drive, its tinted windows reflecting the grey sky back at him. And just like that, everything he’d been holding together snapped loose.
Of course.
Of course it was ending.
That’s what the flowers were about. A goodbye.
Jude tensed, tightening his fingers around the stems. “What’s this?”
“S’alright.” Warren slowed to a stop. “They’re here to talk to you. Not me.”
Not me.
The words sliced straight through him.
“You’re not coming in?” Jude turned, eyes wide before he could hide the fear. Because if Warren didn’t walk through that door, Jude wasn’t sure he’d survive hearing the rest.
“Not yet.”
Two small words.
Two huge meanings.
Jude didn’t know which one would break him.
“What does that—”He didn’t get to finish.
The SUV doors opened. DCI Patel stepped out immaculate and sharp as ever, rain beading on her coat. Naomi unfolded from the passenger side, hands shoved deep in her pockets, her posture less formal but no less serious.
Jude swallowed hard.
Whatever came next, it wasn’t going to be easy.
He opened the car door and stepped out into the wet gravel, the air cold against his face.
“Mr Ellison,” Patel greeted, her heels clicking with brisk purpose. “Welcome home.”
Jude forced a nod, flowers trembling in his grip.
Home.
Right.
Except nothing felt like home right now. Not the cottage, not this driveway, and not his own damn skin.
Because the case was over.
And he had no idea if Warren stayed when the fight was over.
“What are you doing here?”
“Could we have a word?” Patel inclined her head towards the house. “Inside.”
Jude stepped up to the house, unlocked the door, and let Patel and Naomi in. He peered behind him to Warren in the car. He hadn’t got out. But he smiled. Nodded.
So he stepped inside. “Tea? Coffee?” he asked automatically, then winced. “Although I’ve no idea if I even have milk left.”
Naomi handed him a carrier bag. “You do now.”
Inside: milk, bread, tea, butter. Even a box of Heroes tucked beneath. Jude huffed a small laugh despite himself. “Thanks.”
He took the bag through to the kitchen. Let the quiet ritual of boiling the kettle, dropping teabags into mugs, and shoving the flowers into a vase, calm his nerves. Every clink of spoon on porcelain bought him a little more time before whatever news Patel carried detonated.
When he brought the mugs through, he lowered himself into the armchair opposite, shoulders rigid. Patel and Naomi sat together on the sofa.
Patel set her untouched tea on the table. “I imagine the last few hours have felt isolating. Radio silence.”