Chapter 31 Gracie
Two Weeks Before the Wedding
I survive the shower, but barely. Jude is padding toward the kitchen, looking a little too pleased with himself. Meanwhile, I sit on an ice pack.
It’s not the only thing he insisted on. After cleaning us both up and wrapping me in a towel, he convinced me to raid his perfectly curated walk-in closet.
He didn’t have to twist my arm. In my nosey perusal, I found a soft and faded Yale Swim sweatshirt next to a Yale Law shirt and gave him approximately ten solid minutes of shit for it.
(An outraged “You ‘swim a little’?” followed by “I bet breaststroke was your specialty,” and “Do you have a ‘Yale Breathing’ shirt, too?”)
Eventually, he’d shut me up by whipping my towel off and pulling the hooded sweatshirt in question over my head backward. He wrapped his arms around me and kissed me through the hood until I was laughing so hard I threatened to pee in his closet.
But now that we’ve reached a truce, I’ve agreed to trim Taco’s nails if he’ll watch a zombie movie with me.
“Do you want a drink?” he asks, opening a cupboard. “Snacks?”
“Tea sounds great,” I say. Being agreeable comes with the bonus of watching him move around the kitchen shirtless in his gray sweatpants.
He lifts an eyebrow. “Sure you don’t want something stronger for the job ahead? I have some straight vodka around here somewhere.”
I hop off his counter and wander over to where a collection of Judge Judy bobbleheads lines one of the big windowsills.
“Tempting. But I think it’s probably best to keep all my faculties intact, thanks,” I say, picking up one of the figurines.
This one is wearing Judge Judy’s signature robe, but instead of a gavel, she’s holding a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
Guilt flickers through me. “A gift from Henry?” I ask as Jude puts on a kettle.
His hand pauses midreach toward a neatly arranged caddy of tea options, before he finishes the movement.
“He gets one made for me every Christmas,” he says without looking at me. After a moment, he adds, “That, and the most surprising sex toy he can find.”
I can’t help my laugh. “Too bad you don’t display those.”
“You’re more than welcome to my silicone tentacle collection if that’s what you’re into.”
My smile doesn’t last as worry settles in my stomach.
“How do you think he’ll take it?” I ask, carefully placing PB and J Judy back on the sill. “When you tell him about us, I mean.”
“Badly,” he says in a quiet voice, leaning his head back against the cabinets and closing his eyes.
I walk to him, letting my hands rest on his tense stomach. “I can’t help feeling like this is all my fault,” I say. “I went on a date with him. I gave him hope.”
Jude’s eyes open, searching my face. “None of this is your fault. You went on one date and ended things before it went anywhere.” He looks away, his throat moving in a tight swallow.
“After what happened with Sofia’s parents, it makes sense that you got scared.
You had every right to find someone to fuck around with instead of starting something serious.
But if I’d been a better friend to Henry, I wouldn’t have touched you. Not after I told him I wouldn’t.”
My breath feels like glue in my lungs. “So you regret it?”
He looks up at the ceiling, and the exhale he makes sounds helpless. “I should. God knows I should.” He stares back down at me. “But I could never regret you, Gracie. Not for one second.”
A soft ache spreads through my chest. Last week, I ran to him in panic, thinking he’d keep me safe from the lie of Happily Ever After.
When he unearthed all the feelings I’ve been denying for him instead, I tried burying them again in endless work.
But tonight, he dropped everything to help me.
Made my opinions about shower sex do a three-point turn in the opposite direction.
And every new second I’m with him, it gets harder to deny the truth: this doesn’t feel like fucking around at all. It feels like all I’ll ever want again.
“I don’t regret it either,” I whisper.
He pulls me against him, cradling my face against his warm skin, and even though I don’t have any answers, I do know that I want this hug to last until I’m seventy-five.
When the tea is made, he leads me to the big sectional in the living room with cloudlike cushions.
I sink into it with my chamomile tea and let out an involuntary sigh.
The living room, like everywhere else, is neat but welcoming, except for the coffee table.
It’s covered in paperwork and his open laptop.
“Sorry,” he says, shuffling the papers together and closing his screen. “I was working earlier.”
“I thought you were trying to hog-tie Taco before you gave up,” I say, taking a sip from my steaming mug.
“Part of the process,” he says. “Sometimes if I work on the couch, she’ll cuddle me from over there.”
He points at the chaise end of the couch with an enticingly fluffy white blanket.
“I hate to break it to you, but I don’t think it counts as cuddling if there’s more than a football field between you.”
“Shows what you know,” he says, sitting close enough beside me to make my heart start skipping rope. “She has a very large personal bubble.”
I roll my eyes. “Where is she, by the way? Doesn’t she know her manicurist is here?”
“It’s flattering that you think I’m privy to her comings and goings. She could be speaking at the UN for all we know.”
I snort into my mug. “Must be hard leading a less accomplished life than your cat. Is that why you were working so hard on a Saturday night?”
He runs a hand through his damp hair and doesn’t look at me when he says, “I’m working on something pretty urgent. It’s why I couldn’t stay at Larkwood this weekend.”
“Oh,” I say as my mind feels around for those loose puzzle pieces again, thinking of what he did for Maya. “Is it for a regular client or pro bono?” I ask tentatively.
He interlaces his fingers like he can prevent them from fidgeting. “Pro bono.”
I bite my lip. After pushing me away so many times before, now I can practically see when his emotional force fields come up.
But for better or for worse, things have changed between us.
I’ve never been more intimate with anyone in my life, and as a result, he was able to get me to open up at my most vulnerable.
Now I’m wondering if he’s needed the same thing all along.
After a moment, I decide to take a chance and climb onto his lap. He looks surprised but doesn’t argue when I settle and face him like I did in the shower.
He squints at me. “I think I’ve seen you here before.”
I want to roll my eyes, but they get stuck on a tattoo of a sweet little teddy bear next to his hip bone. It might be the most erotic thing I’ve ever seen. I brush my thumb over it, and his stomach muscles contract like I’ve pressed a magic button labeled SIX PACK. It’s disgusting. I hate it.
“Do they mean anything?” I ask, eyes traveling over the collection of seemingly random images. I touch a wasp on his ribs. A small breath shudders out of him.
“Yes.”
I wait patiently, but apparently, that’s all I’m getting. “Seriously?”
His eyes slide away. “It’s stupid.”
“Your fourteen Yale shirts would beg to differ.”
This pulls an exasperated laugh out of him, and my grin can probably be seen from space. “Come on. Tell me.”
His expression sobers as he meets my eyes. In the loaded silence, every tiny hair on my body rises like leaves before a storm.
“They’re cases,” he finally says, like those words are two highly volatile chemicals he’s weighed with the utmost care. “The ones I need to remember.”
My body stills. I look at the tiny diary lock. The roller skates. The iron poker.
My stomach gives a sickening lurch. After a moment, I manage to say, “What you did for Maya… are those the kind of pro bono cases you usually take on?”
Slowly, he exhales, like he knows his answer will open doors he’s been trying to barricade. My eyes dart to the skeleton on his bicep. Its frighteningly unhinged smile as it gleefully leaves its closet. “Yeah,” he says quietly. “DV advocacy is my specialty.”
It takes my brain a second to catch up. DV.
Domestic Violence. My heart slowly sinks to the bottom of my rib cage.
I think of all the times I accused him of being the destroyer of Happily Ever After.
How I assumed he was a divorce lawyer because of some personal grudge against romance.
I think back to what Henry said about Jude on our date.
He’s the most morally solid person I know.
Honorable, even, if such a thing still exists.
“God, I’m such an asshole,” I say, my throat closing up.
He shakes his head. “You’re not. You didn’t know.”
But I’m barely listening because my mind is still looping over what Henry told me on our date. I’ve known him a long time, and I’ve never heard a single story about his childhood. My pulse becomes a drumbeat in my ears.
“Why?” I whisper.
His brows crease. “Why what?”
“Why is it your specialty?”
His hands, which had been rubbing soothing circles on my legs, stop. Something like panic flares in his eyes.
“Don’t ask me that.”
He says it like a plea, and I bite my lips, torn between wanting to respect his privacy and trying to reciprocate the gift he gave me—someone to trust.
“If you want to tell me,” I say softly, without any kind of demand attached to it, “I’m here to listen.”
His careful expression falters for just a second before it’s back in place. “I’m not the victim here. You don’t need to worry about me.”
The way he says it is measured and final. But there’s also a specificity to his tone that feels like a breadcrumb trail to other conclusions. Someone is a victim. Whatever I’ve experienced is incidental. My chest begins to cave in.
“And I’m not Sofia’s mother,” I respond, tears stinging my eyes. “But it doesn’t mean that what she went through doesn’t break my heart,” I say, tracing a small, three-leaf clover on his ribs. “That it hasn’t left a mark on her family.”