Chapter 15 Jude
Five Weeks Before the Wedding
Feet pounding the dirt, I round a corner of the woodland path that cuts through Larkwood’s carefully contained wild acreage and catch a glimpse of the ivy-covered house I’ll be sorting antiques in for the rest of the weekend.
Its dark windows glare back, reminding me that what I’m not here to do is trade my preferred workout of swimming for running, just because Gracie happened to jog on these trails that one time.
And yet, here I am, sweating it out in woods I haven’t entered in years.
I take a deep breath as Henry catches up. I’ve been pushing us harder than usual to keep thoughts exactly like this out of my head and to stave off his interrogation.
“Jesus, Judy, there isn’t a bear chasing us.” He slows his pace to a jog.
So much for that plan.
“Those Bagel Bites finally catching up to you?” I ask breathlessly, slowing my pace to match his.
“Fuck”—he pants—“off.” He wipes sweat-dampened curls off his forehead. “I know what you’re doing, and you’re not getting out of this. Tell me about your mystery date.”
“It wasn’t a date,” I say.
“Astrid said you specifically used the word date.”
“That’s because Astrid was trying to burn my clothes off with her retinas.”
“Oh, to have your problems, ye of perfect face and stick-up ass.”
“I don’t have—”
“Who were you with, then?”
I pause, not sure why I’m hesitant to admit the truth. “Gracie.”
The astonished look on Henry’s face would be comical if it didn’t reveal exactly how low his confidence in me is.
“You’re telling me you managed to unsink the Titanic and get her to grab a drink with you? Was it bribery or kidnapping?”
“Neither,” I say, pushing sweaty hair back from my face. “It was her idea.”
“Explain.”
We keep jogging, and I tell him about the night I apologized and told her about Nana’s will. How Gracie used her newfound upper hand to make the absurd proposal I found myself agreeing to.
“So let me get this straight. Gracie thinks she can convince you—the founding father of fuck boys—to keep the place you hate most in the world by forcing you to plan a wedding with her? I feel like I should tell her she’d have a better chance if she just ransomed Taco.”
I snort. “Are you kidding me? Taco would ransom her if she got too close. Also, Gracie doesn’t know me like you do.” Guilt slinks through my stomach. “She thinks she has a chance.”
“Does she also think you have an entirely different personality? Have you taken up method acting?”
“She knows it’s a long shot. But she also knows I’m selling it no matter what, so she figures she may as well put all her chips on the table.”
“So now you’re planning a wedding. You are planning a wedding.”
I wipe my brow, squinting as the sun breaks through the trees. “I’m happy to jump through whatever hoops she’s got for me as long as I get that cottage by August.”
I don’t mention that those hoops have been flaming with guilt. Meeting with each new vendor has felt like stomping on a butterfly.
“And you’re willing to go through this for the all-important mystery buyer you won’t give me a single hint about,” Henry says.
When I let silence stretch between us, he says, “It’s Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson, isn’t it? Did he threaten to crush you between his pecs if you tell anyone? Blink twice if I’m right.”
My laugh is half groan as I shake my head. “Please stop asking me.”
“Okay, fine. I get it,” he says, slapping a bug off his shoulder. “Confidential. How does your mom feel about all this, by the way? She must be pissed Agatha skipped over her in the will. She hardly left her anything at all.”
The question, which I’m only surprised he hasn’t asked sooner, is another one I don’t want to answer. Because my mom isn’t pissed—she’s heartbroken. Nana understood that anything she gave to my mom would inevitably benefit him, too. My father. And that was simply out of the fucking question.
“It’s complicated,” I grunt.
Henry sighs. “Ah, yes. The hallowed words from your family’s crest.”
“Every family is complicated.”
“Yeah, except yours could be the inspo for a BBC miniseries.”
“Why do you think I’m trying so hard to get rid of this place?”
“Getting cocktails with a gorgeous woman doesn’t seem like too much of a hardship, if I’m being honest.”
No. It wasn’t. In fact, I’ve spent most of the last thirty-six hours replaying every moment in that bar with the feverish intensity of a horny teenager who’s just discovered new uses for soap.
Every time I close my eyes, I see her dark cat eyes tracing my tattoos like a fingertip.
Feel her unwavering conviction in love-everlasting tighten its chokehold on me.
It’s as incomprehensible and irresistible to me as any villain who secretly craves the one thing he claims to despise.
I pick up my pace like I have a hope of outrunning my own thoughts, but they just snarl beside me.
How could I have let myself almost kiss her?
It’s bad enough that I’m stringing her along, letting her think she has a chance of winning me over, when I know there’s only one way this is going to end—with zero chance of her not hating me.
By the time Henry catches up again, our exhalations are harsh as we adjust to the faster cadence I’ve set. He glances at me. “So, on the topic of drinking with beautiful women, I was thinking of asking her out. Gracie, I mean.”
At this, my head snaps to look at him. He flashes that stupid dimple at me, and I don’t see the tree root but feel it against the toe of my running shoe. Fuck.
Arms pinwheeling in a way that should come with a slipped-on-a-banana-peel sound effect, every prepubescent year of my youth flashes before my eyes in a kaleidoscope of too-long limbs and sweaty humiliation.
I fall fast and I fall hard, barely saving myself from a mouthful of dirt with my outstretched hands.
Head pounding and still panting, it’s a moment before the sting hits my palms and ego.
“Shit!” Henry shouts, skidding to a stop next to me. He crouches down in the rising dust, shouting at top volume, “Judy! Judy, speak to me!”
He grabs my shoulders, but by now, I’m pushing myself off the ground, sucking in gulps of air. I wave him off, sitting back on my heels and closing my eyes. Jesus. Why the hell didn’t I see—
And then it comes back to me. Henry wants to ask Gracie out.
“You’re bleeding,” he says, grabbing my wrist to look at the mess I’ve made of my palms.
I snatch my hand back. “I’m fine,” I say, forcing my legs to stand me back up.
“Man, I haven’t seen someone bite the dust that hard since… ever. Are you okay?”
I brush myself off and try not to feel as shaken as I am. “Yeah. I’m okay, thanks.”
He looks at me for a long moment, biting the inside of his cheek.
“You don’t look okay. This isn’t about what I said about Gracie, is it?”
Slowly, I limp back into a jog, unable to look at him. “You only met her the one time, right? How do you know if you’d even like her?”
At this, Henry hesitates. “Actually, I came to see her the other day to discuss the transfer of the cottage and sign paperwork.”
“You visited her? Here? Why didn’t you tell me?” I ask, feeling inexplicably affronted.
Henry shrugs. “I was doing my job. You don’t tell me about every meeting you have, do you?”
I have nothing to say to this, because he’s absolutely right. “I’ve never heard of the probate process finishing so quickly,” I point out instead. “You must have set a record.”
At this, he looks a little abashed. “I may have prioritized her case.”
No need to ask why. Henry wouldn’t dream of asking a client out because of ethical reasons, but with the cottage officially transferred to Gracie, he’s technically in the clear. Suddenly, I feel completely winded.
“So, you like her,” I manage, even though it’s a foregone conclusion. Who the hell wouldn’t like Gracie? But Henry—who openly talks about his desire to find “the one”—has a habit of testing the waters with most, if not all, of his female acquaintances.
“There’s something about her, man,” he says, shaking his head.
“After she stood up to you in the garden, I couldn’t stop thinking that I’d like to get to know her better—no offense.
Then when I stopped by, she was just so…
I don’t know. Lovely.” He laughs at himself.
“You know what I mean, though? She’s fucking lovely. ”
Yes, I do know. I know she smells like flowers drowned in honey and is the only reason my grief over losing Nana hasn’t suffocated me. I know I’ve never felt this way about anyone, and unless I’m wildly mistaken, neither will my best friend.
“So what do you think?” he asks, punching my shoulder lightly. “Should I ask her out?”
I bite my tongue as my entire brain vibrates with a resounding, illogical NO.
I’m not okay with Henry asking Gracie out, even though I should be.
She already told me she thinks he’s handsome, and I know better than anyone that he’s the whole package.
Smart, successful, funny, relentlessly kind.
On top of all this, he’s looking for exactly the same thing she is—Happily Ever After.
They’d be perfect for each other, and if I were a decent friend and human being, I would have already suggested the match.
But I’m not a decent friend or human being. I’m a greedy, possessive asshole, hung up over someone who doesn’t and will never belong to me. The simple truth is, I’m not capable of giving her a fraction of what she needs or deserves.
It’s this depressing thought that finally makes me say, “You don’t need to ask me for permission, Hen. You should go for it if you like her.”
“I know I don’t need your blessing.” He keeps his eyes ahead on the trail as he says, “Just making sure all the I-Hate-You energy between you two isn’t more like I-Hate-You-Let’s-Fuck-It-Out energy.”
I will my feet not to stumble again because suddenly, I’m back in that bar with the warmth of her citrus exhale on my lips.
One inch and one bad decision away from sinking my fingers into the flare of her hips in that fucking dress and ruining the tentative truce we’ve established.
But I know she was just caught up in the moment.
She might be attracted to me, but there are about ten thousand good reasons why she should stay away from me.
So I say, “Absolutely not. Don’t let me get in your way. ”
“Well, it wouldn’t be the first time, would it?” Henry’s voice is deceptively light, and he’s still not looking at me.
“What are you talking about?”
“Oh, come on. Every time we go out, I may as well be a coatrack next to you.”
“Bullshit,” I argue. “That’s not true.”
He shoots a flat look over at me. “Jude, I’ve been trying to get out of the friend zone with Astrid for months.
Then you sit down at her bar once, and the next thing I know, she’s texting me, asking if the buddy I always mention, Jude Larkwood, is taken or just casually dating, and would I give her your number just in case. ”
For a moment, I’m at a loss for words. “Shit, I’m sorry, Hen. I didn’t realize.”
He waves my apology away. “You never do, but as your shorter, less-chiseled best friend, let me assure you that it’s a pattern.”
I hardly know what to say to this, partly because I feel like a dick, and partly because in my own mind, I’m still the gangly kid with dental headgear and glasses on my nana’s refrigerator.
“I’ll try to be more self-aware,” I promise him. “And I won’t stand in your way with Gracie. You’re both sickeningly romantic and stunningly naive—a perfect match.”
Henry grins at me. “Then let’s head toward her cottage. Never know if we’ll run into her.”
“You go ahead,” I tell him, knowing I won’t be able to safely watch him ask Gracie out to dinner without risking a burst blood vessel. “I need to shower before the plaster-repair person gets here.”
“Okay,” he says. With a nervous grin, he adjusts an invisible bow tie. “Wish me luck.”
I give him a weak salute before he turns away, running down the path toward the kind of woman he deserves. A woman who deserves him, too. Chest aching, I tell myself it’s from the run. The fall. Anything but the pain of losing something I never had in the first place.