Chapter 40
AMELIA
My phone rang as I turned the steering wheel to slip down a side street. Cutting through campus on my way back from Dr. Chen’s office would save me five minutes getting home. Streetlights flickered as dusk gave way to darkness. “Hello?”
“Where are you?”
I glanced at the screen to make sure I had read the caller ID right. Never once had Jake sounded so panicked or aggravated. “I’m on my way home from an appointment. Why?”
“I thought you’d be home. I came by to see you, and that guy was at your apartment.”
It wasn’t fear that shook his voice.
It was anger.
“What guy?” I asked as I careened into an empty parking lot and stomped on the brake.
“The one that took you. He cut his hair. Looks more cleaned up. But I know it was him. He was all over the news.”
Right. It hadn’t been made public knowledge that Jude was in the FBI.
I didn’t know if Jude’s employment was the kind of thing that was kept classified. It had certainly been kept from me.
I was emotionally spent after going to work today and teaching in person while garnering strange looks from every student and faculty member on campus.
On top of that, my in-person appointment with Dr. Chen ended with me unpacking the fact that I didn’t have anyone I truly felt connected to—except for Joel, who had truly been working his ass off to make amends.
Some cousins who lived across the country had emailed me, but it was more out of curiosity than care.
My neighbors peered out their windows whenever I came or went but never talked to me.
Vaanya and Caitlin had waved at me from a distance this morning.
Marcus actually left the room when I walked in to get coffee, and Courtney pretended to take a phone call.
Jake was the only one who had reached out, and that was just because he was still trying to get in my pants.
I was really, truly alone.
The notion I’d had at the beginning of the summer was true. If I disappeared, no one would care. The earth would keep spinning, and life would go on.
Was it so wrong to want to mean so much to someone that their world stopped on a dime for me?
For Jude, it had. He’d made the split-second decision to give up his safety and good standing with the underworld and the Feds for me. But I hadn’t said that part to Dr. Chen.
And then I dropped the bombshell that I had been stewing on since the moment my first class ended: I didn’t know if I’d be able to stay at Alcott.
It wasn’t that I felt unsafe or that I didn’t like working there. It was because the story that had been told about me by the news would always precede my professional accomplishments. The whispers of what had happened would always bring my ability to do my job into question.
I wasn’t Dr. Hawthorne anymore.
I was that girl.
And it was all because of him.
Even though Jude had given up his world for me, he had wrecked mine.
“Stay where you are. I’m calling the police,” Jake said.
“No. I’ll deal with him,” I muttered as I pulled back onto the street. “The police will be too nice.” Instead of driving straight to the nearest police station, I floored it all the way home.
Maybe Jude thought we had made some kind of amends, but we hadn’t.
I was still very pissed at him.
The rest of the drive back to my apartment took half the time it usually did, thanks to my fury.
No matter how much I craved him, I just wanted to be left alone.
I’d detox from the love sickness eventually.
Jake was waiting for me in the parking lot, pacing the empty space around his car. “Amelia, I don’t think you should—”
“I’m fine,” I said as I hopped out. “He’s not going to be fine by the time I’m done with him.”
Jake glanced around. “I think he left.”
No. Jude would’ve known that Jake made him before Jake even pulled his phone out to call me.
Jude would be watching from somewhere close by.
“I’ll be fine. I just need to talk to him.”
Jake let out a laugh of disbelief. “He should be in jail.”
I swallowed and debated how much to tell him. “You don’t know the whole story. There are details that were kept out of the news.”
“Details like what?” he practically shouted. “He kidnapped you. He’s a criminal. He’s–”
“He’s with the FBI,” I said quietly. “When he . . . took me . . . he was working undercover.”
Jake froze.
“Yeah. It surprised me too. But they have good reasons for not making that public knowledge. It could mess up what he was investigating when it all happened.”
I was talking out of my ass, but Jake didn’t know that. It was the picture I had put together with the puzzle pieces Jude had given me. It made sense to me and, from the looks of it, Jake bought the story.
“That stays between us,” I said. “He’s not dangerous. He’s just doing his job.”
“If he’s not a bad guy, then why did you come back to New Haven completely traumatized after the whole ordeal? You haven’t been eating. You cut your class schedule. You shut everyone out—”
I reared back. “I didn’t shut everyone out.
The phone works both ways. I’ve been waiting for Vaanya or Caitlin or Marcus or Courtney to call or email or drop by my office.
You know what I’ve heard? Fucking crickets.
I’ve always been the one to call first. To make the plans.
To get everyone together. I’m tired of it.
That’s not friendship. That’s me being an activity director and I quit. ”
“Amelia—”
“And you—” I laughed sarcastically. “You’re just waiting for me to be ‘over it’ so that you can ask me out again without feeling bad about it.”
“That’s . . .” Jake huffed and glared at the sky. “That’s not . . .”
He didn’t deny it.
“I hate seeing you like this.” Jake raked a hand through his hair. “You’re barely functioning as a person. I don’t care how ‘not dangerous’ you think he is. He did this to you. I don’t know how you don’t see it.”
I knew his exasperation and frustration came from a mostly good place, but he didn’t see it.
I wasn’t traumatized by Jude. I was broken by the fact that he didn’t trust me enough to tell me the truth.
I was devastated by the broken promises.
I was heartbroken at falling hard and fast and having to pick up the pieces myself when it all went to hell. I was exhausted and I was done with it.
If Jude had showed me one thing, it was what it felt like to be chosen.
I wasn’t going to settle for anything less ever again.
“Go home, Jake,” I seethed.
Jake scoffed. “I’m not leaving you alone.”
I lifted an eyebrow. “If you think I want you around while you’re using that tone with me, you’re sorely mistaken.”
He pinched the bridge of his nose. “I’m trying to give you space to work through all the shit you need to work through. But it doesn’t seem like you’re trying to get over it when you’re defending him and keeping him around.”
“I’m not keeping him around!” I shouted louder than I intended to. “Just because I need to have a conversation with someone—”
“Let me be there for you while you have that conversation,” he pleaded. “I just—”
I put my hand up. “Jake, stop.”
He swallowed.
“I don’t want to lead you on. I loved our friendship,” I said. “But if you want to be in my life at all, that’s what it’s going to be. A friendship. Take it or leave it. I’m not begging for you to stay.”
His features tightened. “But—but once things blow over—”
“Things won’t ‘blow over,’” I hissed as I realized it for the first time, no matter how often Dr. Chen had repeated the exact same sentiment.
“I am not the same person I was four months ago. And it’s been hard to come to terms with that.
I don’t want you waiting around for the old me to wake up one day like it never happened. You’re a good guy. I know you are.”
“Don’t give me that line,” he said as heartbreak began to set in. “Don’t give me platitudes about how I deserve so much better. I want you, Amelia. None of this changes that. I just need you to realize you deserve better than what that guy put you through.”
I didn’t bother explaining that Jude had sacrificed himself for me. Jake wouldn’t understand the nuances of what we had gone through. The risks. The reward. The bond.
I had tried to keep from hurting Jake for so long. I had a hunch that his feelings for me were simply heightened after the events of summer.
They say absence makes the heart grow fonder, but so does fear.
“You’ve always been one of my closest friends, but I don’t want to pretend like my feelings for you go beyond platonic.
You’ll find the person you’re supposed to be with.
But that person isn’t me. It would be cruel for me to pretend otherwise.
You deserve someone who’s crazy about you, just like I deserve people in my life who actually want to be there. ”
Jake scrubbed his hand down his face as he paced. “What if he wasn’t in the picture?”
But Jude would always be in the picture. There was no changing what I felt for him, no matter how much I tried.
“Jake, I knew you were trying to ask me out when the six of us went out to lunch at the end of the semester. I’m not an idiot, I just didn’t want to hurt you.
I don’t want to hurt you.” I nudged him with my elbow.
“We have a good thing. And if I leave Alcott, you’re going to be the first and only person I recommend to take my place. ”
Jake let out a sharp breath. “Yes, please. You guys get paid so much better than I do.”
We shared hushed laughter as the tension began to ease.
His expression softened, though I could tell how much he was masking the heartbreak. I knew that feeling all too well. “Are we good?”
“Yeah,” I said as I pulled him into a hug. “We will be. But I might need you to pay my bail when I kill Jude for coming out here.”
Jake squeezed my shoulders a little tighter than he usually did. “Text me when you’re done, and I’ll help you hide the body.”
I waited until the taillights of Jake’s car faded into the distance before scanning the parking lot, but nothing stuck out to me.