Chapter 33
JUDE
Without Sofia, the days just dragged.
The dead silence in my house was driving me out of my mind.
Waking to an empty bed wrecked me every morning.
Without my wife, my world echoed with isolation.
I missed her sudden bursts of song.
Her soft humming, her smile, her freakin’ perfume.
Her impromptu dances while she stirred pasta sauces.
I craved her laughs when she streamed trashy reality shows, perching her hips on the counter.
I wanted our late-night debates back, and our shared bingeing of cooking shows and lately, gritty crime dramas, on the sofa.
I missed hitting the gym together.
Mostly, I missed my arms around her, nose in her nape, making wild, incandescent love and holding her close after.
I wanted that fire back.
I needed her by my side where she belonged.
Yet against all my instincts, the advice was to let her go.
Bishop called it a wilderness season, a trial of pure loneliness.
‘Letting Sofia go will break you down before it rebuilds you, brother,’ he rasped over lunch one day at the studio.
‘You’re in a fight for your marriage. How this ends depends on your willingness to torch your own ego.
Also on how much of a warrior you decide to be, and you can’t be one without being strong; physically, mentally, so get your shit together, brother. ’
Of all my mates, Bishop’s advice was the most impactful; he’d survived a series of drug overdoses a few years ago and rebuilt his life, so his words were bond.
I thought of them for weeks as I got off my ass and started living again.
I got back into a fitness routine.
I hit the gym every day at five, pumping iron until my shoulders burned, replacing my angst with brutal exhaustion.
I stopped skipping meals. I forced myself to sleep six to eight hours a night instead of three.
It didn’t erase the ache.
It just kept me from driving my truck straight through the doors of her shelter to haul her back.
Maggie laid it out flat one evening while I chewed cold pizza out on the back deck.
‘I’ll be thrilled if you two survive this,’ she said over the phone from Vermont. ‘If you both do the work while you’re apart, there’s a real shot. If you’re just sitting on your hands waiting for her to break, you’re an idiot.’
‘That’s just it. I’m wrecked over her. I didn’t see it until I blew it,’ I muttered, tossing my crust back into the box.
‘Then fix your vision, Jude. Find a therapist. Go deal with the scars your father left on us. Dig deep. Seek the truth. It’s the only way you come out of this in one piece.’
I tossed my crust back into the box as my eyes scanned the Nashville skyline.
I took her words and advice to heart and chewed on them during my early-morning runs and my sixty-mile bike rides on my Fatboy into the Tennessee hills.
I cranked the throttle till the roar of the engine drowned out my doubts, wind blasting through my leather jacket as I carved through the highways.
When I got back to the house, I sat in my studio with my acoustic guitar and wrote new songs that reflected the truth of my failures.
I also got damn tired of cold pizza and went in search of better nourishment, missing Sofia’s delicious meals.
One thing she forgot to take with her was her handwritten recipe binder, its pages stained with oil and vanilla extract.
I forced myself to learn the delicate art of her mother’s chicken cacciatore and her signature pasta alla norma.
I burned the first three attempts, cursing.
By trial five, however, the pasta alla norma sauce came very close to matching her flavors.
I packed the leftovers into containers and hauled them to the studio the next lunchtime.
‘Eat,’ I rumbled to my bandmates, slamming the bag onto the mixing console.
They all fell on it.
Bishop tackled me in a hug of pure gratefulness, enveloping my shoulders and almost cracking my ribs.
‘I freakin’ haven’t eaten since yesterday afternoon,’ he growled.
He ripped the lid off the cacciatore and shoved a spoonful into his mouth, his eyes tearing up as he chewed.
‘You’re a true brother,’ Bishop muttered, thick with emotion, as he cleared half the container in three bites. ‘My stomach was touching my spine, man. This is holy, bro.’
Still, I had to fix my shit if I wanted any shot at keeping Sofia.
So I hired a therapist.
Dr Hill was an unassuming man who wore rimless glasses, a neatly pressed tweed jacket, and charcoal trousers.
He skipped the clinical jargon and soft-spoken bullshit, which was the only reason I didn’t walk out on day one.
‘You’re reacting to old scars, Jude,’ Hill said during our fourth session in his high-rise office.
He leaned forward in his leather armchair.
‘Sofia packing her bags ripped open an old wound. Your psyche equates it to when your father stepped into that taxicab when you were young and vanished.’
I dragged a hand down my face, my jaw tight.
‘He left because he was a coward. Sofia walked because I was a stubborn bastard who didn’t back her up. Huge difference.’
‘The impact to you feels the same,’ Hill said, his voice level.
‘You’re reliving the gut-punch of being abandoned.
However, this separation isn’t a death sentence, Jude.
It’s a window. If you two drag each other back together without fixing your internal wiring, you’re just setting the fuse on the next explosion.
If you go back to her as the same man, this whole nightmare was for nothing. ’
Digging through the trash of my past was brutal, but Hill didn’t let me off the hook.
Real growth was supposed to burn.
So I did the work. I tore through the old damage until I could sleep through the night without my blood running cold.
The final move required a different kind of steel.
I called my legal team into the downtown office on a Thursday afternoon.
We sat around a glass conference table while my lead attorney, Brian, slid a heavy stack of white documents toward me.
‘Jude,’ he murmured, tapping his gold pen, his eyes on me with concern. ‘You sure about this?’
‘Never been more certain,’ I growled.
Stripping away every legal tie, prenup, and obligation that bound her to a marriage she never asked for tore right through my chest.
However, I wasn’t going to cage her.
I scrawled my signature at the bottom.
If she ever came back to my bed, it was going to be because she chose to stay, not because a piece of paper forced her hand.
SOFIA
Nashville’s snap cold and storms eased into a series of sunny days that seemed like a tentative promise of easing temperatures.
One evening, before my shift, I took a walk around the block under a breathtaking, bruised lavender sky.
A flock of starlings performed a synchronized, rolling arc above the telephone wires, their tiny wings catching the final rays of daylight.
I paused on the gravel shoulder, monitoring a winged shadow gliding high over the brick warehouses.
A wild thought struck me: an Aquila del Bonelli eagle? Impossible.
Still, I smiled at the sight, eyes on its flight until the bird disappeared, before heading inside toward the shelter’s kitchen.
I was on rubbish duty that night, so I hauled the plastic liners from the inner bins and carried them out the back door.
I trudged in the direction of the side street dumpsters and threw the bags inside the metal bin.
Just as I stepped back, a contour shifted out from the shadow of the fence line.
I almost tripped, and my sneakers skidded in the dirt as my pulse spiked.
The silhouette stepped into the amber glow of the streetlamp, one hand held up to indicate no harm.
‘You scared me,’ I choked out.
‘Sorry, babe, didn’t mean to.’
Jude’s signature hoarse timbre reverberated in the quiet alley with gravitas.
I raked his face, sensing the desperate, shattered emotions from his previous visit were long gone.
He was back to his old self, I thought, as my heart did a treacherous flip.
My pulse hammered as my eyes mapped his features.
His broad shoulders filled out a black army jacket over a charcoal thermal shirt that outlined the ripples of his torso.
Ebony denim trousers disappeared into rugged leather combat boots.
He was leaner than before, but the gaunt, ghostly hollows from the last time I saw him were gone.
He’s sleeping and eating well again, I realized, a wave of relief washing over me.
As did a surge of feeling.
I still loved him, with a ferocity that took my breath away.
He advanced with a folder in his hands that I flicked my eyes to before returning to his face.
His gaze was on me with an intensity that made me hitch, as my throat went dry.
‘How’re you doing, Sofia?’
His hoarse rasp set off arcs of electricity down my spine.
‘I’m managing,’ I whispered.
‘How’s work? How’re you holding up out here?’
I focused my gaze dead center on his chest, fearing I would break down if our eyes met again.
‘I’ve got regular shifts now. I’m finding my footing, Jude.’
He nodded, his rasp softening.
‘That’s good, babe. You deserve peace.’
His expression hardened again, turning somber as he extended the thick leather binder toward me.
‘What’s this?’
‘Inside is my legal will,’ he murmured, eyes on me with such intensity I jolted. ‘It transfers fifteen million dollars to your name, plus half of my future royalties.’
Was he out of his mind? I thought, my sanity spinning.
‘I’ve included divorce papers that I’ve already signed. You’re free, secure, and safe from my mess.’
Shock hit me like a physical blow. ‘The hell?’
‘I love you,’ he rumbled, his timbre cracking on the words. ‘I’m sorry for the pain I caused. I’ve never loved another woman as I do you, babe. If you want me as your husband, I’m yours. If you want me gone, I’m offering you your freedom. You won’t ever have to see me again.’
He held the binder in front of me.
I shook my head, pushing his hands away, rejecting the offering in a surge of emotion.
‘Why are you doing this? I’ve been clear I don’t want your money..’
With a sigh, he searched the small area and set the documents onto a clean bin lid next to me.
‘Do with it what you want.’
I gaped at him as the reality of his total surrender hit me.