Chapter 39 Jude
JUDE
I’ve chopped all the wood I have, I’ve worked out hard, and I’m still crawling out of my skin two hours after leaving Olena.
I can’t believe she didn’t tell me about her ex-boyfriend threatening her.
Dishonesty gets deep under my skin. The years of managing Miles as he tried to hide his drinking have burned me, and I can’t handle someone who isn’t honest. It never occurred to me that Olena would lie to me.
Cool your jets, man. This is more about Miles, I realize, and that’s not fair to put on her. We’ve only known each other a few weeks, after all. But still. She pushed me away. Again.
I feel sick. I thought we were…
I don’t know what I thought we were. But it wasn’t this.
I shower and get ready for work in a daze. I barely eat breakfast; my appetite is non-existent, replaced by a nausea I can’t shake. Murphy watches me closely as I dump my untouched food into the trash. He can sense something isn’t right.
Buried under my disappointment and hurt is worry. What if this unhinged asshole does something dangerous? What if he shows up in Lennox and tracks her down? What is he capable of? Would he hurt her?
She’s made it clear she doesn’t want my help protecting her. You’re not my bodyguard, Jude. The sentence echoes in my head.
How can she not see how I feel about her? That I want to care for her and keep her safe?
Because you haven’t told her.
I sit down heavily on the couch and rub my hands over my face. I don’t even know how she feels about me. Everything’s happened so quickly between us. We’ve never even talked about what we wanted from each other. Maybe she’d never intended for this to be anything more than a bit of fun.
The sex has been incredible. Mind-blowing. Is that all she wants?
The thought makes me feel ill. I swear I sense in her that it’s so much more than that… I can feel it in how she looks at me. She even took me to meet her parents.
So why didn’t she tell me about Sean?
Fucking Sean. I don’t even know this guy and I want to punch his face in.
How could anyone scare Olena? Threaten Olena?
Anger simmers and nearly boils over at the thought of anyone hurting her.
The impulse to get into my truck and run back to her—to be there to protect her—is intense, but I shut it down. She doesn’t want me to rescue her.
Unable to sit still any longer, I head outside with Murphy and lock up.
Settling us into the truck, I buckle my seat belt and a small, petty part of my brain reminds me none of this would have happened if Olena and I had managed not to get involved in the first place.
See? You put your heart on the line again, and this is what you get.
I blow out a long breath. This is exactly the kind of complicated mess I was hoping to avoid.
But this thing with Olena… I shake my head and look up at the sky through the dirt-dusted windshield.
I must have been fucking kidding myself for thinking there had ever been a hope in hell of us keeping things professional.
My mind circles around from worry to anger and back again until I can’t put off going to work any longer and I reluctantly start the truck. Knowing I will have to face her at the job-site pulls at me, twisting my stomach into a tight knot.
I drive there in a fog, pulling in only to see that her car—for the first time in a week—isn’t parked in the driveway. I look at the house. Murphy’s dog bed sits neatly at one corner of the porch.
An emptiness I wasn’t expecting descends over me. Where is she?