5. CHAPTER FIVE
I just died and went to hell because only the devil could write a narrative this utterly fucked.
Of all people. Of all places. It had to be Jude fucking Clarke that would walk back into my life at its lowest point, and shine like every light in the universe was flicked on at once.
Sitting beside me, his presence is just as blinding as it always was.
It’s heavy and warm on my shoulders, like a hug.
Like I’m deserving of the world and everything in it, and he’ll go out of his way just to make me smile.
But time has proven to me I deserve nothing, and right now, I don’t feel like talking.
Jude can sit there in silence for all I care.
He can drink his damn drink, then fuck off back into oblivion, because I can handle him there; existing only in my memories.
They may be painful, but they’re predictable, and I don’t have to worry about getting hurt all over again.
Shifting in his chair, he takes another sip of whatever the hell is in his glass, and his elbow brushes mine.
I want to scream.
I want to burn this goddamn pub to the ground.
I want him to do it again.
“I haven’t seen you since…” His voice trails off and I know what he’s thinking. What words he's left unsaid.
“Why did you ignore me?”
“What did I do wrong?”
My heart is beating like a steam engine.
I can’t remember when I last took a breath, because all I want to do is drop to my knees and beg for forgiveness. I want him to punish me for my neglect and selfishness. For being too scared to help him when he needed me to be his hero. And when he needed me to be his friend.
“Juvie was fucked,” he sighs, tracing circles with his glass in the condensation on the tabletop.
“Yeah, no shit.” It’s where hope goes to die. Where the days are long and the nights are longer. We were just kids. Well, I was when I first arrived. Jude was seventeen by the time he showed up—
Somewhere inside my head, a door slams shut and I’m back there again, encased in the sterile white walls of England’s stellar Young Offenders program.
The scent of antiseptic that clung to every surface is a stench that never leaves you.
I hear the echo of heavy boots against linoleum floors, the jangle of keys that sound like chains, and I see Jude seeking me out with hope- tinged eyes, only to be met with the back of my head as I walk away.
As if he really has forgotten, he shakes his head beside me and smirks, drawing me back to him in the present like he’s about to reach out, wipe away my tears, and promise me that everything will be alright.
So much of me wants to hate him right now, but just being beside him makes me feel more alive than I have in years.
“Shit, so how long has it been then?”
“Seventeen years,” I speak without thinking.
“Damn, Curren.” Jude pushes me in the biceps with his forearm. “That makes it sound like you’ve been counting the days.”
Nodding, I exhale quickly through my nose and push my lips to one side of my face, because… so what if I have?
“Do you remember Mr. Baker… Like, old Mr. Baker?”
Leaning back in my chair, I hum. As I close my eyes, I let my head fall back, and the muscles that run down my neck to my chest ache from how tight I’ve been clenching my jaw.
When I straighten back out, I glance from the corner of my eye at Jude, and catch him staring. Smug but steely, I lean forward onto the table and cock my head in his direction. His Adam’s apple bobs with a thick gulp, and he stutters, “A—are you happy to see me?”
“I thought we were talking about Mr. Baker?”
“ You weren’t talking about anything. You’ve had me sitting here scared shitless you might snap.”
My fingers seek my glass to save me from slamming my fist down on the table. “And what the fuck does that mean?”
“It means you need to calm the fuck down,” Jude states matter-of-factly, but also with a light snicker at the end. “You never could keep your emotions in check. I’m not sure if it’s comforting or concerning to see that time hasn’t changed you in that way.”
“You really wanna talk?” I grit out, staring at my glass.
“Yes, I wanna talk. It’s why I came over here. It’s why I’m still here despite your less-than-warm welcome.”
“Fine.” I drape my arm over the back of my chair and stare at him. “Seeing as you brought him up. That little scheme of yours to siphon off the top of Baker’s backyard gin is why I was in Juvie in the first place.”
“Fuck off.”
“It’s true.”
The glare Jude shoots back at me catches me off guard.
“Are you seriously trying to tell me that senile old bastard who didn’t know his ass from his elbow, figured out two kids—of all people—had been nicking booze from him?
You know that for me to believe that, you also need to convince me you kept up the racket after I left. ”
I don’t look away. I don’t even blink.
“Is that true, Curren?” He leans in closer to me. “Did you keep sneaking into his yard on your own?”
“Yeah, I did.”
Jude doesn’t reply straight away; he mulls it over, like he’s deciding whether he wants to play this game or not. Then his fingers twitch on the table as if he wants to reach out, but stops himself.
“You...” He stills a moment. “You kept going back?”
I shrug; “I had my reasons,” but my chest tightens. “—I did once,” I clarify quickly. “I had to. He…” It’s my turn to fade out; to stop myself from digging up more shit I'd buried a long time ago.
It’s only soft, but I feel Jude’s fingertips on the back of my hand through my glove, before I even catch that he’s moved. “What happened?” he asks, his voice pushing me aside and talking to who I used to be.
“He did it again.”
“You’re not talking about Baker, are you?”
With a shake of my head, my eyes unfocus, and the words just fall out of my mouth. Numb. Devoid of any emotion. So matter-of-fact that if it were anyone other than Jude hearing them, they’d call the nearest nuthouse and have me interned for life.
“Harry… It had been ages—I mean, I think… At least a year. I assumed he’d lost interest ‘cause I wasn’t a little kid anymore…
Then, one night when Cheryl wasn’t there, he came into my room.
He didn’t drag me to the shed. There was no camera, no lights, he just…
did it in my bed. He kept telling me that because he couldn’t make money out of me anymore, I needed to make sure I was always ready for him.
Like it was my fucking duty. Like all I was good for was to be his whore ‘cause not even the streets would want me…”
Jude’s hand encases my fist and squeezes.
“…You weren’t there anymore.”
“I’m so sor—”
“I didn’t even cry. I was so proud of myself until I wasn’t. Until it hurt more than all the other times combined… In here.” I tap my chest. “So I snuck into Baker’s yard and drank till it didn’t hurt anymore.”
“Is that when he caught you?”
“He never caught me.”
“I thought you said—”
“I cut his dick off.”
It’s the thickest silence, like a record scratched and everyone in the pub stopped talking at once and all turned to look with bated breath, waiting for me to clarify. To repeat myself. To take it back. To say, I’m joking.
But I don’t.
Because it’s true.
The excessive blood loss and five years in detention, kind of true.
“Harry’s, I mean. With a pair of pruning shears.” With a sigh, I smile. A genuine, proper smile, and I can feel it take over my entire face as my cheeks push up and my eyes squint.
“Fuck.” Just one word; whispered.
“Are you gonna leave now?”
“Not if you’re gonna keep smiling like that.”
My stomach drops and suddenly his hand feels so much heavier than it did before.
Unfurling my fist, I assume he’ll pull back, but he slides his fingers between mine, and grips.
“Part of me wants to tell you that’s just another example of how you let your emotions control you. But all of me wishes I’d been there so I could have cut his balls off, too.”
“Are you telling me you’re jealous?”
He raises his brow and smirks. “Maybe.”
“You? Mr. fucking handsome. Mr. started-fucking-at-fifteen, is jealous of me?”
Jude’s tongue slides out only to be pressed between his lips and quickly sucked back in. He’s staring again, but not the same as before. Now his eyes are asking a different kind of question. And his mouth? Well, that’s an invitation if I’ve ever seen one.
It makes something hot and tight curl in my gut.
I shouldn’t feel like this.
Not about a man.
Not when I like fucking women so much.
“Maybe I am,” he repeats, but draws his hand back from mine so he can cross his arms and lean forward on his elbows.
“Why can’t I wish I were you at that moment?
You got the sort of revenge I never did.
You got to see him in agony because of something you’d done.
You cut the guy’s dick off, for Christ’s sake.
That’s just about the best comeuppance I’ve ever heard. ”
“He deserved it,” I whisper.
“Did it help? Did it make you feel better?”
Having you there would have made me feel better. “It served its purpose.”
“Getting you out of the house?”
I shake my head. “Putting him in the hospital.”
“And how did that help?”
Nervously, my eyes circle his face. They linger on a patch of hair missing from his right eyebrow and travel down to his sharp jaw. Then, while taking in the freckles that dot his neck, I stutter out, “It b—bought me some time.”
“For what?”
“To run.”
“To where?”
“Anywhere. I was thirteen. I didn’t know what the fuck I was doing.”
With a tilt of his head to the side, Jude analyzes my response before leaning back to drape his arm along my seat back. “I don’t think I’d have run. I mean, it didn’t do you any good, anyway. They clearly caught your ass.”
“I didn’t ask for an analysis.”
“Nor am I giving you one. I’m just saying that if it were me, I’d have cut off a few more of his appendages and watched him bleed out until there was no life left in him.”
“You were a foot taller than me, so you probably could have held him down. I got one cut in before he woke up, then bolted.”
“Did he scream?”
“Like a little bitch.”
“You’re so fucking lucky! All things considered, of course. But, God! It must have felt like all your birthdays had come at once.”
“I suppose,” I mutter down at the table, but clearly not quietly enough because now Jude is leaning against the wood, twisting, and craning his neck to look up at me.
“You suppose?”
“I mean, I wouldn’t know.”
“What’s not to know?”
“What it feels like to have a birthday… To have a cake… To blow out a fucking candle.”