Chapter 30
JUDE
My brothers were getting impatient with my absence.
I wasn’t showing up to rehearsals or recording sessions, and I was ghosting our shared social media accounts.
The situation turned volatile when the press sharks and hardcore fans clocked my bunking off.
The internet exploded into a viral circus under a single, relentless headline: Where is Jude?
Paparazzi swarmed my gates at Belle Meade, snapping pictures of my empty driveway while thousands of frantic tweets and speculative videos clogged most of our feeds.
I caught the spectacle and shut off my phone, repulsed at the thought of becoming a trending topic.
I didn’t care about the fame.
Outside, autumn was bleeding to winter.
Any snowfall was relatively light and infrequent, and I endured the cold snaps, freezing rain, and icy roads, focused entirely on the only woman who mattered.
One stormy night, Bishop and Levi used our shared location app to track me down.
A series of aggressive raps on the glass jerked me from a doze as I sat parked in the alley with a direct view of Sofia’s workplace.
I found Bishop glaring at me through the window, his face half buried in a black hoodie.
Levi stood right behind him, a cap pulled over his locs.
Bishop gestured for me to get out.
With a snarl, I shoved the door open and stepped out into the pouring rain, with my hands crossed over my chest.
‘Damn,’ Bishop growled, his eyes scanning my wild hair and sunken cheeks. ‘Look at yourself, man! You’re sitting in the dark like a freakin’ stalker. It’s shady as fuck, and I’m sure your wife doesn’t appreciate it!’
Fury erupted in my gut. I lunged forward, shoving Levi back into the wet hood of my car, my hands clawing at his leather jacket.
‘Keep your mouth shut about my wife.’
Bishop stepped between us, wrapping an iron grip around my wrist and twisting it down with lethal force.
‘He’s right, Jude. You’re acting unhinged. This isn’t love, it’s a sickness.’
I growled, my eyes wild, my chest heaving in the downpour as I slammed my shoulder into Bishop to back him off.
Levi stepped in between us, and I shoved at him too.
‘I’ll stay here for as long as it takes to get her back.
I can’t stand it that she’s living in this dump?
I’m wounded brothers, because I’m the cause of her suffering.
It’s killing me that she’s sleeping nights in a tiny cot without my arms around her.
So, get your hands off me before I wipe you out. ’
‘You really think stalking her is what she needs right now?’
Bishop’s growl reminded me that both of them had formed a bond with Sofia since the day they met her.
Their protectiveness of her made me feel even more shitty for what I did to her.
‘She doesn’t need you crowding and suffocating her, you clown.’
Levi’s insult snapped my remaining thread of restraint.
I swung a wild hook toward his chin.
Levi ducked the clumsy aim, pivoted on his heel, and punched me squarely in the jaw with a sickening, solid crack.
The force propelled me backward, knocking me hard into the rusted metal dumpsters.
I dragged myself up using the greasy edge of the garbage bin and wiped a smear of blood from my split lower lip with the back of my hand.
‘Need more straightening out, you idiot?’ Levi growled, his fists still raised.
‘Yes,’ I rasped, speaking from the depths of my agony. ‘Give me more. I deserve every bit of it. Break my ribs if you want.’
‘Stop being a sucker for punishment, Judah,’ Bishop snapped, his eyes flashing with annoyance. ‘This self-pity party sucks. If any pap catches you in this state, you’ve blown up your career. You’re a public figure, you can’t indulge in this risky shit.’
‘Then tell me what to do!’ I roared in pure, unadulterated frustration, the sound tearing from my throat as I slammed my open palm on my car’s front panel. ‘Tell me how to fix the trust I pulverized with Sofia, because I’m out of options!’
‘You’re spiraling,’ Bishop rumbled, his expression hardening. ‘You’re coming with us and we’re taking you home.’
Levi grabbed my left arm as Bishop tightened his grip around my right elbow.
They hauled my exhausted body out of the alleyway, shoving me into the back seat of Bishop’s truck.
They ripped the key fob from my fingers and locked my car.
I slumped into the leather, unable to find the energy to stop them.
Bishop drove me straight back home while Levi followed behind the wheel of my ride.
At the house, they marched me through the front door.
Once they dropped me onto my bed in the primary, Levi strode out and returned.
With a glass of water and two high-dose melatonin tablets from the medicine cabinet.
‘Swallow these, brother,’ Levi commanded, shoving the pills into my palm. ‘Your brain is fried. You’re no use to her like this. Take the hit and go to sleep.’
I obeyed to get them out of my face. My eyelids turned to lead as the chemical exhaustion crushed my remaining resistance.
Collapsing sideways into the pillows, I plunged into a black oblivion, dead to the world as the pair locked up and left.
However, the pharmaceutical peace didn’t last.
The second the clock struck six a.m., my internal alarm clock jolted me awake.
The lingering fog of the sedation cleared within seconds. I swung my boots onto the floorboards, my jaw throbbing in agony where Levi’s knuckles had split the skin.
I grabbed the keys to the Escalade off the kitchen island and headed straight back outside into the early mist.
By six-thirty, I pulled right back into the gravel shoulder across from Sofia’s boarding house, my gaze locked on her second-story window once again.
She was mine, and I wasn’t going anywhere.
One evening, sitting in my Ram outside her shelter, it hit me.
If I wanted her back, I had to lay my soul bare the only way I knew how.
Through music.
The next morning, I locked myself in the studio and bled my regret into a string of tracks.
No bullshit. Just a bare apology and the truth about how much I loved her.
Five days later, I whittled five songs down to two and transferred the files to my phone.
My thumb hovered over the send button on my device.
My jaw clenched as doubt crept in.
‘Damn it, Judah,’ I muttered, rubbing my bloodshot eyes. ‘Last thing you want to sound like is a desperate teen with a cheap guitar.’
I spun my chair around, chugged some cold water, and forced myself to play the rough mixes back through the big speakers.
The chords from my fretboard and the rough edge in my rasp stripped away every last fragment of my pride.
The tracks were a pure, honest confessional from a man wrecked by his own arrogance.
Sofia cared about the truth.
These songs were as real as it got.
Maybe she’d listen and feel the pull.
Or she’d throw her phone in the trash.
Either way, this was the only way I knew in this moment to reach her.
I tapped the screen and sent the files.
SOFIA
The springs of the rusty iron cot groaned beneath me as I shifted, trying to find a comfortable position on the thin plastic mattress.
I pulled Jude’s hoodie, which I now slept in all the time, over my head, trying to shut out the light.
The fluorescent light bulb in the hallway flickered through the transom window, keeping me awake.
A sudden chime from my phone shattered the silence of my tiny cubicle.
I picked up the device, my thumb sliding across the glass to reveal a notification with a link to a private video message from Jude.
My heart raced as I tapped the screen.
The video initialized, revealing the interior of his home studio with a chair in front of the camera.
Jude appeared onscreen, and my heart jolted.
His black vest hugged his chest and shoulders, his black jeans hugging his thick thighs.
He was barefoot, but when my gaze fell on his face, I caught the bags under his eyes and the sorrow in his green depths.
Guilt hit hard, but I took an inhale and tamped it down.
I had to remain strong.
Still, intrigued by what he had to share, I kept watching.
He sat down and reached for his Martin.
He strummed a few notes, gazing down at the strings before gazing straight into the camera.
‘This is the only way I can share how shattered I am, babe, for what I did to you. This track’s called ‘A Velvet Kind of Violence.’
The first track was a melancholic arrangement, featuring the stark resonance of his acoustic guitar strings.
Its somber, raw, and intricate fretwork captured a sense of desolation so beautiful and heartbreaking I teared up.
What really caught my attention was how typical the composition was of Jude’s genuine lyrical genius.
His talent showed in the complex chord structure and the words.
‘‘My hands were built for heavy chords and dirty fights, never meant for something as soft as you. I’m sorry for letting you go, but now I’m here for you. So hide your face in my chest, sweetheart, while I show this city a velvet kind of violence.’
He sang with remorse and the deep sorrow woven into every single vocal vibration, his voice cracking on the final cadence.
After a long moment staring down at his guitar, he glanced up into the camera.
‘Next one’s titled ‘Infinity Belongs to Us.’
His rough, gravelly voice rasped out the gritty reality of holding on when everything else turned to ash.
He sang about the sleepless nights without me, and the absolute refusal to let go of the bond we’d forged.
He held the final chord, letting the wood of the guitar body reverberate as the last harmonic faded into the air, his intense eyes locked onto the lens, onto me.
‘If I had to burn through every damn fire in this universe just to hold you again, I’d do it, because infinity belongs to us.’
His gaze dropped; he took an inhale, then leaned into the camera.
‘Come back to me, babe.’
Moments later, the screen went to black.
I sat still, staring at my phone for a long time, heart churning, pulse kicking hard at the lingering poignancy of both melodies.
I fought the need to rush out of this room and out into the night, searching for him.
However, I remained unconvinced by the musical olive branch.
‘No!’ I whispered into the empty room, tossing the device to the foot of my bed at the end of the song.
I was still too bruised from his lack of faith in me.
It was too soon to seek his arms again, even though I ached for them with all of my heart.
The next night, his black sedan idled along the gravel shoulder of the Greyhound bus terminal at the end of my cleaning shift.
I walked toward my Honda, exhausted from scrubbing bays for six hours, when I glanced up to see Jude easing from his Ram and heading toward me.
He stopped my progress by wrapping his sinewed fingers around my upper arm.
His grip was not violent, but it was absolute.
I was not going anywhere.
‘How’re you, babe?’ he growled.
I turned to face him, softening a fraction because he seemed so haggard.
Yet, even with the devastating toll of the past weeks written across his face, his striking features made my breath catch.
An unruly growth of beard shadowed the chiseled line of his jaw, and his high cheekbones appeared more prominent, hollowed out by sleepless nights.
The collar of his printed shirt lay open, exposing the inked column of his throat, and I longed to nestle into him, to press my lips to his pulse.
Damn.
‘I’m OK. You?’
‘Been better, babe,’ Jude muttered, his bloodshot eyes locking onto mine, searching my face with a fierce intensity. ‘Did you listen to the tracks?’
I gave him a single, curt nod.
His arm slid to my waist as he pulled me to him, tight and close, staring down at me with such intensity that I shivered.
‘Sei l’amore della mia vita,’ he rasped.
I jolted, a tremor running through me.
‘Did you just tell me that I’m the love of your life?’
He gave me a chin raise.
‘I’ve been practicing my Italian for you, babe.
I also want to say mi dispiace. I’m sorry, Sofia.
I was a coward. I made assumptions I should not have.
I ruined what we had. While I’m not begging you to forgive me, I need us to talk through what happened and map out how we’re going to move forward together, babe.
You’re my wife. Please, come home to me. ’
I stared up at him, my chest churning with a storm of conflicting emotions.
His confession came close to swaying me, but the memory of his betrayal remained a hard-and-fast wall between us.
My soul screamed to forgive him, to throw myself into his arms.
Yet the deep, agonizing injury of his choosing a criminal’s lie over my truth remained a canyon between us.
I still did not know how to trust a man who made love to me one night and accused me of lying the next.