Chapter 40 #2
I headed up to my apartment and paused when I noticed the whisper of sawdust at the base of the door.
Huh.
I studied the frame but didn’t see a thing. The moment I unlocked and opened the door, I spotted it. A tiny hole by the doorknob plate. Small enough to hide a wire.
It was Jude’s own fault he had made me so observant.
From the outset, nothing in my apartment had been tampered with, but I could feel his presence. He hadn’t just been lingering outside my door. He had been inside.
It took me all of forty-five seconds to find the first camera in the kitchen. The one I found in the living room was well-hidden, but not after watching how he operated for weeks.
I stood in front of my baseball collection and stared at my signed Ortiz ball that was in a protective case. The lens was the size of the tip of a pencil, but it glinted in the light through the red stitching of the ball. How he had gotten the camera inside the baseball was beyond me.
“I know you’re nearby, so get your ass in here. And you owe me a new baseball,” I barked before storming to the kitchen cabinets. My appetite still hadn’t come back, but I knew I’d need fuel for this fight.
Three minutes later, I had finished downing a granola bar when there was a knock at the door.
I looked straight at the cabinet knob that had been replaced with one that held a camera. “I don’t know why you’re knocking since you had no problem breaking and entering once today.”
The door opened as Jude let himself in with a professional-looking black backpack on his shoulder.
I locked it behind me after I came in from talking to Jake.
“Key,” I snapped as I held my hand out.
Jude relented and dropped the spare in my palm.
“Do I even want to know how you got a key to my apartment?”
He shoved his hands into the pockets of his dress pants and shrugged.
“Most people don’t use their spare key enough to know when it goes missing.
I took it before I broke in the first time at the beginning of the summer, made a copy of it, and put the original back.
It was gone from the top of your doorframe for less than thirty minutes, and the hardware store down the street has great customer service. ”
I pinched the bridge of my nose. “You are on my last fucking nerve. Get the cameras out of my house—and whatever else you hid around here. And I cannot believe you ruined my autographed ball to spy on me.”
“It wasn’t real,” Jude said.
“Of course it was real. He signed it in front of me. I have a picture of it.”
Jude pointed to the shelf of knickknacks. “Joel sold the one that you got signed in front of you two months before I showed up here to have a conversation with him.”
“When you put him in the hospital,” I corrected as bile began to churn in my gut.
“He replaced it with one he signed himself. Ask me how I know.”
I didn’t think I wanted to know the answer, but I asked anyway in a soft, hesitant voice. “How do you know that?”
Jude unzipped his bag and pulled out a signed baseball. “Because I’m the one who bought the real one from him. I was going to put it back for you, but I never got the chance because we went on the run.”
He gently tossed the autographed ball to me. I caught it and studied the signature. Sure enough. There was the little smear on the corner of the signature from when I had taken the ball back and touched the signature before the marker ink was dry.
“Lover boy finally take no for an answer?” Jude asked, bringing me back to the present.
I rolled my eyes. “Did you bug my car too? My purse?”
“No.” Jude sauntered over to the couch and sat down like he owned the place. “I just recognized the look on his face. He wasn’t mad I was here because he thought I was a threat to you. He looked at me like I was a threat to him.”
I braced my hands on the kitchen island. “Whatever. This is not about him. This is about you not understanding boundaries. Get the fucking cameras out of my apartment. And whatever you did to the door.”
“And windows,” he added.
I balled my hands into fists and pursed my lips as a scream vibrated in my throat. “Are you kidding me?”
“They’re just sensors,” he said as he casually scrolled his phone. “I get an alert when they open or close.”
“And that doesn’t seem creepy to you?!”
“It seems like a reasonable safety measure,” he said with an irritable level of nonchalance.
I was going to kill this man.
He had survived a mobster, men hunting him on a train, and an FBI investigation, but he was going to die at the hands of a pissed-off professor.
I stomped toward the couch, ready to berate him, when he reached out and slid his hand around the back of my thigh.
I froze as my mind was immediately taken back to the cabin. To the last time he was sitting on the couch and I was standing in front of him. To the moment he cupped the back of my knee, drew me in, and gave me my first kiss.
But we weren’t in the cabin.
We were in my apartment. I was still dressed in my teaching attire.
Everything had changed. Right?
The distressing pang in my heart told me that absolutely nothing had changed.
“I’m trying to keep you safe,” he said. “The Marshals won’t step in. I’m at the limit of how many favors Cole can do for me. I’m trying to give you space, but I can’t stomach the thought of something happening to you.”
“Breaking into my apartment isn’t the answer.”
He squeezed my thigh. “Technically, I didn’t break in. I had a key.”
“A key that you stole.” I dug a hand into my hair.
“I’m trying so hard to give you the benefit of the doubt.
To forgive you. To move on. But you lied to me.
You said you never make promises that you can’t keep, and you promised to be truthful.
You promised you wouldn’t keep me in the dark.
” I tipped my head back and laughed at the ceiling. “I don’t even know who you are.”
Slowly, he stood, his hand never leaving my body. He slid his palm from my thigh to my hip to my waist before stretching to his full height and towering over me.
But his touch was gentle as ever. With his free hand, he took mine and laced our fingers together. “Hi. My name is Judah Greear. I live in Newark, New Jersey. I work for the FBI out of the headquarters in New York City. And I am madly in love with Dr. Amelia Hawthorne.”
My throat constricted and tears pricked my eyes. I stumbled back as he took a step forward.
“She was the last person I was supposed to fall in love with, but I fell anyway.” His hand left my waist as he tucked my hair behind my ear and cupped my cheek.
“I fell in love with her mind. I fell in love with her sassy mouth. I fell in love with her heart and how tender it is. I fell in love with her wit. I fell in love with how fucking beautiful she is.” His thumb smoothed over my lips.
“I fell in love with every piece of her in ways I didn’t think were possible. ”
Another step forward for him. Another step back for me.
“I fell in love with her eyes. With her lips. With her smile. I broke every rule for her because, for the first time in my life, I fell in love with something bigger than the duty I felt for my country. I risked everything for her. And I will keep risking it all. There won’t be a day that goes by that I will not wake up thinking of how to protect and serve her above all else. ”
I gasped as my back hit the wall. His lips ghosted over mine, teasing me with the familiarity I had missed.
“It doesn’t matter if she never loves me. It doesn’t matter if she hates me. The only thing that will ever matter is how much of myself I can give her.”
The ache inside of me only grew as my heart craved what I’d starved it of.
“Judah,” I whispered as a tear slipped down my cheek.
He cupped my other cheek and kissed the tear away. “Please don’t cry, little fox.”
“You called me foxglove in the poem you wrote.”
“That you are,” he said as he kissed the corner of my mouth. “Beautiful. Deadly. Alluring.” He slanted his mouth over mine. “And I would happily go to my grave just to taste you. To be consumed by you.”
I was the one who kissed him, giving in to the inexplicable desire to have him near. I was tired of fighting.
His taste was all too familiar. The moment our lips touched, the knot in my chest unfurled, and I could breathe.
His fingers tangled in my hair as he traced my lips with his tongue. I opened for him, drawing him deeper. Needing more of him.
Needing him.
Needing the man he is.
Not who he pretended to be. Not who he thought he had to be. I wanted the desperate man who burned down his entire life for me.
“Bedroom,” I whispered as my hands grew frantic. “Now. Right now.”
“Amelia—”
“Don’t tell me you don’t want it. Don’t you dare lie to me. If everything you just said is true, then I want you to take me to bed and prove it.”
That was the last straw.
But Jude didn’t throw me over his shoulder the way I had become accustomed to. He scooped me up in his arms and cradled me like a bride as he carried me to my room and laid me on the bed.
“Arms up,” he said as he lifted the hem of my blouse and worked it up and over my head.
My bra was next. He unfastened the band and slowly pulled it free.
He continued the slow, methodical process until I was spread naked for him.
Jude let out a slow breath. “I missed you.” He kissed my navel. “I missed you so fucking much.”
“That’s not the word you used a minute ago,” I said as I started on his necktie.
It was strange seeing Jude in a tie.
He caught my wrist in his hand to stop me. Stormy eyes met mine. “I love you.” He took off his tie, then straightened. I watched as he lifted his untucked shirt and unclipped his gun from his hip and set it on the nightstand, beside the book of poetry.
The juxtaposition was perfectly Jude.
“I love you, Amelia,” he said as he unbuttoned his dress shirt.
“And before I say it to you again with my lips on your skin and my hands all over your body, I need you to know that I have no expectations of you saying it for a long time. But I’m going to do my best to make you feel it.
” He bent and kissed up my sternum before resting his forehead in the valley of my breasts.
He sat up and shirked his button-up. “And tonight, I’m going to sleep on your couch—or maybe in your bed with you if you’re willing—and then I’m going back to work in the morning in these exact same clothes.
” He dropped his dress pants, revealing black boxers that left nothing to the imagination.
“And in between all those things, I will tell you anything you want to know.”
I wrapped my arms around his neck as he hovered over me. “Right now, I want you to stop talking.”
Jude did just that. He braced himself over my body, keeping us heart-to-heart as he kissed, nipped, and sucked at my skin while I did the same to him.
His hands were warm and his touch was tender. Each caress was an unspoken word.
The ones he vocalized were the same eight letters, over and over again.
I love you.
And I believed it.