Chapter 17 I’ll Be
I'll Be
Work is stupid, as usual. Sadly, the building was still standing when I got here, and it brought me the same amount of joy it always does.
None.
But I’m on top of my game tonight. I finished cleaning and all of tomorrow’s prep work before closing time, despite an early rush.
“Did you get your car fixed, or is your sweet boyfriend picking you up again?” Lainey asks. I realize, from the swoony look on her face, she means Jude.
Nathan was a cook when she first started here. She remembers when I describe him—dark hair, dark eyes, and smaller build than Jude. But she’s shocked to learn I’m still with him.
Aren’t we all.
“You mean, you really aren’t with that hot rocker guy, DC?
The one who always waits for me to leave first?
” She scrunches her brows at me. “I thought you were kidding when you called him a friend. You haven’t mentioned Nathan, and DC’s always here for you.
I don’t even know him, and I can tell he’s a good one. ”
A lot of uncomfortable questions follow, because she thought she had witnessed the end of Nathan and me weeks ago. Hot shame fills my face when she brings up The Incident.
I’ve tried to forget about it. Nathan didn’t seem to have any trouble wiping it from his memory.
There’s a fine line between forgiving and being an idiot, and the shocked look on Lainey’s face tells me I’ve crossed it. She looks up to me. What kind of example am I setting for her?
Anyone who so much as thinks unkind thoughts in her direction would have me throwing hands. They’d be on the receiving end of some scathing verbal warfare and vicious attacks to their shins. Yet I allowed someone who claimed to love me humiliate me while she watched.
And I did nothing.
It should’ve been the end, and at the time I believed it was. But like everything else, I made excuses to myself and pushed it out of my mind when he acted like nothing happened. It didn’t occur to me how weak that incident made me look.
A few days after the baby news erupted, Nathan went completely ballistic. I must’ve pushed too hard. I asked how this baby mama situation was going to affect our plans, and maybe I hadn’t given him enough time to process it himself.
I was worried about our income going to childcare, and what if we disagreed on parenting and discipline? Would he expect me to quit school? Should we just put our relationship on hold?
I was already a live-in babysitter to my siblings most of my life, and I needed some reassurance. Maybe it was self-centered, but I needed to know what he was thinking.
If I can think of all the ways to handle a problem, I can minimize the risks before the problem runs me over like a truck. He wasn’t ready for that discussion, so maybe I brought the whole thing on myself.
Nathan and I had argued the night before, and by that evening at work, though I never said another word about it, he was stoic, pouty, and not speaking.
He was being rude to Lainey—not even responding to work-related questions.
The other cook kept asking me what his problem was, and since he knew we were dating, he assumed I was the problem.
So, when Nathan walked outside with the trash, I followed him to the dumpster.
I didn’t yell or call him names. I didn’t call him out in front of anyone. I only said, “You can stop being a jerk now. Lainey and Mark didn’t do anything to you. Grow up and quit making everyone miserable.”
I know I’m blunt, but it wasn’t anything I wouldn’t have said to a friend. I’m sure I’ve said worse to Jace.
I must’ve triggered something, because he screamed F-bombs, female anatomy, and dog references at me for a solid ten minutes, even following me inside to continue his tirade as he physically backed me across the kitchen into the hard steel door of the walk-in freezer.
He never hit me, but spitting and flailing in a full-blown rage is an image I’ve worked hard to block out. I’d never been spoken to that way before, not even by my dad or the most crackbrained customers, but I held it together.
No one defended me. No one said anything to him. Dave just rolled his eyes, and Mark and Lainey stayed out of it. When I finally escaped, I went to the bathroom to pat my face with a cold, wet paper towel and finished my shift like nothing happened.
I don’t know how long I sat in my car, staring straight ahead like a zombie when I got home.
Jude pulled into the parking lot right behind me.
He said he waited for me to walk with him, but I didn’t move.
I remember getting a text asking if I was okay, but when I didn’t respond, he walked in front of my car and tapped on the hood, giving me a little distance to look up and see him.
I think everyone has experienced getting separated from a parent as a kid.
One minute you’re mesmerized by a Barbie Jeep and the next you’re alone—frozen in panic.
Breaths come quick and shallow, your chest tightens, and there’s a cold, lightheaded sensation of distress that washes over your body from head to toe. It’s a bone-chilling physical fear.
But when you finally spot them and you know you’re safe, that icy panic melts into a warm rush, and the release of emotion comes hard and fast.
That’s the only way I can describe what happened when my eyes focused on Jude that night. One tear escaped, then the whole dam broke.
He was at my door in two strides, calmly but insistently telling me to unlock the door. My blurry eyes found his bracelets—one black, one with colors.
Safe.
“Lu, hey. I’m right here. I got you. What happened?” He reached in and brushed his palm against my cheek, gently urging me to talk to him in the most patient tone I’d ever heard as he scanned me from head to toe looking for injuries. “Is your family okay? Is everyone safe?”
I nodded, unable to speak, and desperately wishing I could collapse into his arms and not talk at all. I could. He’d let me.
“I-I’m sorry, but I have to ask … did Nathan, or anyone, force you to do something you didn’t want to do?”
Nathan tested my boundaries on a regular basis, but that wasn’t the case. I cringed as I shook my head no.
Jude relaxed noticeably. “Would you tell me if that happened?”
I found a crumpled napkin in the center console, nodding as I wiped my eyes and nose.
I wasn’t trying to hide anything, but even if I could get the words out, I didn’t know how to explain what happened. What would I say? Nathan yelled at me and called me bad words while aggressively walking towards me? It sounded so stupid.
I get teary sometimes, but I don’t break down. Not like this.
Someone exploded at me, and no one came to my defense. It certainly wasn’t the first time, but it was the first time it happened here. The first time it was so public … and degrading.
I moved out after high school to get away from working for my dad—to boss up and take charge of my life. Even when I moved back home temporarily, our dynamic was different.
This was the first time I’d been blindsided by a violent outburst in years. I didn’t calculate the risk.
And I never saw it coming.
Back home, I knew most of the triggers. Loud noises, opening and closing doors, crying—there was always a risk. Sometimes words didn’t come out right, or some minor inconvenience would set him off. I was used to it as much as one can be.
But Crappie Branch is my safe place. The people in my circle might get snippy, but they don’t explode.
After a few patient seconds, Jude gently tried again. “Rough night at work?” He hovered, wiping my tears and pushing wet sticky hair off my cheeks. I lifted my chin to meet his hazel eyes, nodding before I quickly looked away. “Okay, if you can’t tell me, then I’m staying with you.”
If he guessed I had a fight with Nathan, he wasn’t going to make me admit it.
I probably looked like a blowfish with a rash since pale skin is a lovely canvas for swollen red splotches.
I needed the dramatic hiccups to stop so I could tell him I was fine and go inside, but my throat was still locked.
Then I remembered Extrovert Annie’s study group was at our house.
I was in no condition to make a joke about my puffy frog eyes and slip past them.
I lifted a trembling finger to point at the silhouettes of people visible in our front window and Jude’s gaze followed. “Let’s go to my house and watch a movie.”
I pulled in a quivering breath, and he leaned closer to swipe a tear from my cheek with his thumb. Why did he have to be so dang sweet? It just made me cry more.
His hat almost hit my face, so he took it off, raking one hand through his shaggy hair as he flipped the familiar Braves cap around with the other. My eyes tripled in size like a cartoon when he reached over me, close enough to smell his wintergreen Tic Tacs.
When he popped my seat belt and grabbed my phone and keys, my stomach bottomed out like I was falling off a cliff. Luckily, my open-mouthed gasp didn’t sound much different than the rest of my sniffling.
He'd been at work, so his normal clean scent mingled with a little sweat, grass, and possibly bleach. How could I be so affected by him in the middle of a total meltdown?
“I know you’re tough, but come home with me and be a princess for a while, okay?
” He pulled me out of the car and led me between the buildings and around back, where their townhouse sits behind ours.
I leaned into his side keeping my face down, as is the custom on hot, sticky, gnat-ridden Tennessee summer nights, but I hesitated the closer we got to his door.