Chapter 14. Ford
Glynn said he's coming, and since then, my heart has been going like crazy. I can't wait to talk to him, and I'm sick of pretending I don't want to. I'm going to come clean: I want to pursue something with this boy. I won't lie to myself anymore.
But everything changes when he gets here. He looks incredibly good, as always, wearing a loud neon orange puffer jacket that makes his white hair stand out even more. However, he is, without question, catastrophically drunk.
I'm standing near the bar where Dave left me five minutes ago, a glass of water in my hand because I don't drink in spaces like this, not because of any moral conviction but because I need every faculty I possess just to tolerate the volume and the strobing light and the number of people around.
I was preparing to leave. I had, in fact, already rehearsed the sequence: set the glass down, nod to the bartender, walk to the exit, drive home, never speak of this again. I was thirty seconds from executing it.
And then he enters the dancefloor.
Jude spots me before I can move. His honey eyes are bloodshot, glassy, the pupils blown wide in the dim light. He scans the room until he finds me and locks on. Something crosses his face: recognition, fury, hunger, despair. All of them at once.
He grins. It's the worst smile I've ever seen. He isn't happy at all. He looks murderous.
"Well, well, well!" His voice cuts through the music with a volume that turns heads across the room. A woman adjusting her partner's rope harness pauses mid-knot. "If it isn't Mr. Dom himself! In the flesh! In a kink club! On a Friday night!"
He's weaving toward me now. His shoulder clips a man carrying two drinks. The man stumbles, vodka sloshing over his wrist, and turns with an expression of irritation that Jude doesn't register or doesn't care about. Probably both.
"Jude," I say, and my voice comes out wrong. I want to sound in control but seeing him like this breaks something inside me. I set my water glass on the bar behind me without looking.
He arrives in front of me. Up close, the damage is worse than I assessed from across the room. His cheeks are hollow, genuinely gaunt. That boy hasn't been eating properly, and it shows. The shadows under his eyes are the color of old bruises. He smells like Jameson and sweat.
"You came looking for me," he says, loud, performative, pitched for an audience. "Even went after Glynn. The whole chain of command. Very efficient. Very you."
"You should sit down," I say. "Let me get you some water."
"Water!" He laughs, theatrical, hollow. "That's perfect. That's so fucking perfect. So dominant."
"Jude…"
"No, no, let me explain it to you," he jabs a finger at my chest. His hand is shaking.
"You said we're incompatible. Remember? Fundamentally incompatible.
Big words. Very impressive. And you're right!
You're so right it's almost funny!" His voice climbs another notch, and I can feel the attention of the room shifting toward us.
Glynn is watching from afar and I can see they're considering interrupting.
"Because you, you're the kind of guy who offers someone water at a sex club.
And I'm the kind of guy who shows up wasted and makes a scene.
See? Incompatible! You should put it on a fucking poster or something!
You are right. So, why the fuck are you looking for me? "
My jaw is clenched so tightly I can feel the pressure in my temples. The bass throbs through the floor and into my bones, and the violet light sweeps across Jude's face. He's swaying slightly.
"You've made your point," I say, keeping my voice level through an act of will that costs more than he will ever know. "Now let me take you home."
"Home!" Another laugh, louder this time, theatrical enough to draw a wince from the bartender. "You want to take me home. Yes, I need a responsible adult like you to carry me home."
Something flickers behind the performance, a tremor in his voice. He looks so hurt.
A couple on the nearest leather couch shifts uncomfortably. The man in the rope harness gives me a look that clearly communicates handle this.
Jude is already moving away from me, careening toward the lounge area where a group of people are.
"He said he doesn't do brats!" Jude announces to a man in a leather vest who is trying very hard to pretend this isn't happening. "Isn't that hilarious? He doesn't do brats! And then he comes after me!"
The man in the leather vest gives me a look of strained sympathy. Behind him, I see Glynn pushing through the crowd, definitely coming to intervene. But that's not their problem to handle.
It's mine.
Jude is my problem and has been since the day he entered my life, in this same space.
I move. I get close to him, and he stumbles in my direction with that drunk mocking face, ready to say something else. But I do it first.
"I can't with you, boy," I say, frustrated.
I want to grab him by the nape of his neck and throw him in the back of my car, spank him red and raw, and then take him home, where I can punish him for days for making me look like a clown.
Instead, I take a deep breath, centering myself, and tell him again: "If you don't stop right now, I'm leaving. "
"So fucking GO. I never wanted you here and you definitely don't want to be here, so just GO, it's exactly what you want. LEAVE me ALONE! Get OUT of my life, I never want to see you again," he screams at me, and everybody around us stops what they're doing to watch.
Part of me wants to go, leave him there, make him regret it. The bigger part of me growls: "You fucking wish, boy. Come here, right now."
There it goes. My self-control. Always so fragile when it comes to him.
I grab him by his shirt and then secure the nape of his neck under my arm, just as I planned.
He squeals and tries to break free, but he has no chance.
I'm much stronger than him. "You're going to regret this when you can't sit for a week. I'll make sure of it."
He thrashes against me. Someone nearby gasps. I don't care. I tighten my grip on the back of his neck and half-drag, half-carry him toward the parking lot, his boots scraping uselessly against the ground.
"Let me… go… you fucking…"
And then he goes rigid in my arms. I know the signs before his body does. The way his throat convulses, the way his whole frame shudders like something electric has passed through him. I pivot him just in time.
He vomits violently all over the curb and the toe of my left shoe.
The sound is awful, wet and guttural, and it keeps coming in waves that rack his body until there's nothing left.
His knees buckle. I catch him before he hits the ground, and he sags against my chest like a marionette whose strings have been cut, his skin the color of curdled milk.
"Jude. Jesus Christ." I tap his cheek. His honey eyes roll, unfocused, the lids fluttering. "Jude, stay with me."
He mumbles something incoherent, might be Emmett, might be sorry, might be nothing at all, and then his head lolls against my shoulder, and he's gone.
Not dead. Breathing. But gone from the world in the way only the truly self-destructive can manage, having drunk themselves past the point of consciousness.
I stand there for a moment in the parking lot, holding his limp body against mine, the smell of vodka and bile sharp in the cool night air, and I feel something crack open in my chest.
I allowed this to happen.
I might even have caused this myself by repeatedly pushing him away. Playing with him, just like everybody else in his life did.
I carry him to my car. He weighs nothing.
I buckle him into the passenger seat, tilting his head to the side in case he vomits again.
I don't drive to the house. Angel is there with Rose, who I called to stay the night when I decided to come to the club.
I won't bring Jude near my daughter like this.
Instead, I drive to the penthouse, the apartment I keep in the city for late work nights and the occasional need to be somewhere that isn't home. I haven't used it in weeks. It'll do.
I carry him up the elevator. I'm grateful no one else is around to see us like this.
I open the door, literally inviting him into my life.
The main living area is one fluid space with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the park, the city spreading out below.
The furniture is minimal: a deep leather couch, a single slab of reclaimed wood serving as a coffee table, a fireplace that's more show than functional.
The art on the walls is black and white photography.
No personal photos anywhere. That's how I used to like things.
Orderly and impersonal. I don't think that's how it is anymore.
I strip off his soiled shirt and his jeans, leaving him in his red boxers, and lay him on his side in the guest bed.
I leave water and two aspirin on the nightstand.
I stand in the doorway for longer than I should, watching the shallow rise and fall of his ribs, the faint scars on his torso.
His body is lean but strong, defined arms, abs, legs.
But I don't want to see him like this. Not in this situation.
I close the door and pour myself a bourbon and sit in the study in the dark, listening to the grandfather clock tick, and I do not sleep.
?
Morning comes, smelling of coffee I've already brewed. I hear him: the creak of the guest room door, the shuffle of bare feet, a groan.
Jude appears in the kitchen doorway looking like a beautiful catastrophe.
His eyes are red and swollen, bloodshot, reduced to thin rings of honey around blown-dark pupils.
He's still wearing nothing but his boxers.
But his face is of absolute regret. He looks as guilty as a puppy who ripped the couch open and is waiting for a scolding.
"Sit down," I say, not looking up from the tablet I'm not actually reading.
He doesn't sit. Of course he doesn't. He leans against the doorframe and crosses his arms over his bare chest, and I can see him constructing his armor in real time.
"Nice place," he says, his voice rough. "You bring all your charity cases here, or am I special?"
I set the tablet down. Then I look at him.
"You passed out in a parking lot last night covered in your own vomit. You nearly choked. So I'd be very careful, Jude, about the tone you take with me this morning."
Something flickers across his face, the real Jude. He pulls out a chair and drops into it, wincing. I pour him coffee without asking and slide it across the counter.
He wraps both hands around the mug. For a moment, neither of us speaks.
"Why didn't you just leave me there?" he asks, quieter now. The bravado has thinned, gone. "I deserved it."
I take a slow sip of my coffee. "Because if I'd left you there, you'd have ended up in a hospital. Or worse. And I'm not interested in reading your obituary, Jude."
He flinches. "You're so dramatic."
"And you're self-destructive to the point of being comical.
" I set my mug down and lean forward, resting my forearms on the counter, closing the distance between us just enough to make him feel it.
His eyes dart to my hands, then back to my face.
"What happened last night. That doesn't happen again. "
"You don't get to tell me what to do, Mr. Dom," he says, and there's something raw in it that I don't think he meant to let slip.
"No," I agree. "I don't. And that's the problem, isn't it?"
He stares at me. "What are you saying?" he asks, and his voice has gone very still.
I hold his gaze. "I'm saying that if you were mine, last night wouldn't have happened.
You wouldn't have been at that club drunk like that.
You wouldn't have been drinking yourself into oblivion over Emmett or anyone else.
And the stunt you pulled, screaming at me in front of everybody there?
Being rude, disrespectful?" I pause. "You wouldn't be able to sit down for a week.
Or more. You'd be begging for forgiveness every day until I'm sure you learned your lesson. "
The color that rises in his cheeks is immediate. It spreads from his throat to the tips of his ears, and I watch his pupils blow wide. His fingers tighten on the coffee mug. He looks away, his throat bobbing.
"You are the one who keeps saying we're incompatible," he murmurs.
"I know. But you'll never hear that from me again. I promise." I tell him. He looks absolutely lost for a moment, then looks away.
"I need a shower," he says flatly. "And my clothes."
He leaves that afternoon in an Uber I call for him, wearing one of my t-shirts that hangs past his thighs and his own jeans, still faintly stained.
He doesn't say goodbye. He doesn't say thank you.
He pauses at the front door with his back to me, one hand on the frame, and I think he's going to say something but instead he just shakes his head and walks out into the cold.