Chapter 26 #3
Outside, the wind presses against the window, a low, restless hush, like the sea is closer than it is. The room feels alive, breathing with us, sheets twisting, skin warm, everything narrowing down to this small, bright centre where he is and I am and nothing else quite exists.
There’s a moment, just one, where I hesitate. Old ghosts, old fears, the sharp memory of what it is to give and not be chosen. It flickers through me like a draught under a door.
He must feel it, because he stills, his hand gentle at my cheek. ‘Hey,’ he murmurs, eyes searching mine. ‘You okay there?’
I swallow, shake my head. ‘I’m okay,’ I say quietly, heart loud beneath my ribs. ‘I’m more than okay.’
His expression flickers then, softens, deepens, and the way he looks at me makes me ache in that strange, hopeful way I don’t quite trust yet.
‘Then I’m right here,’ he says.
And he is. He stays. In every small pause, every breath, every thrust. There’s no taking, no disappearing. Just this steady, building closeness that feels almost too big for the room.
I hold onto him like he’s real, my eyes stinging as I rush through a wave of an orgasm. ‘Jude, fuck,’ I groan, head pressed into his shoulder.
Two, three more thrusting and wild pumps of his hips and he’s groaning along with me, shuddering slightly as he presses deep inside me, settling himself home as he comes with a tremor. ‘Brynn.’ It’s a sigh and it ends me.
And when we finally fall into the quiet after, tangled and breathless, the world seeps back in slowly.
The faint smell of tomato from downstairs.
The soft creak of the house settling. His hand still resting on my stomach, absent-minded, grounding, his thumb trailing circles that burn across my skin.
I lie there, staring at the ceiling, and feel it settle inside me, not just the want, but the desire I’ve been trying not to name.
Chosen.
It’s a dangerous word. It sits heavy and bright in my chest.
But for now, with his heartbeat steady against my side and the evening light fading into blue, I let myself believe it.
Later, we eat lukewarm pasta in bed, the sheets tangled around our waists. Jude’s head is on my shoulder, his fingers tracing lazy patterns on my stomach, and I feel more at peace than I have in months.
‘This is actually good,’ he says, surprised.
‘Don’t sound so shocked.’
‘I burned the onions.’
‘I salvaged them. It’s a skill.’
He laughs, pressing a kiss to my collarbone. ‘Teach me more things.’
‘Like what?’
‘Everything.’ His voice goes soft. ‘Teach me everything, Brynn.’
We make love again – slower this time, gentler – and fall asleep wrapped around each other, the empty pasta bowls abandoned on the nightstand.
I wake in the dark.
My heart is pounding. My skin is damp with sweat. For a moment I don’t know where I am – the cottage, the unfamiliar shadows, the warm weight of a body beside me.
Jude. Right. Jude is here.
He’s still sleeping, his face peaceful in the moonlight. One arm is thrown across my waist, anchoring me to the bed.
I lie very still, trying to work out what woke me. A dream? I can’t remember. Just this feeling – this creeping sense of a monumental thought hovering just out of reach.
Helen Harding. The woman who couldn’t wait to escape small-town life.
My father’s letters. The ones I’ve been reading. The apologies that never land, the grief that soaked through every page.
Her. Always her. The woman he destroyed himself mourning.
I’ll always love you. H.
I sit bolt upright.
Jude stirs beside me, murmuring incoherently, but I barely hear him. My mind is racing, pieces clicking into place with horrible, inevitable precision.
H.
Helen.
Helen Harding.
My father’s letters were about her. Jude’s mother. The woman who left Sea Salt Bay the same year my family fled in disgrace.
It wasn’t business rivalry. It wasn’t a collapsed deal or wounded pride.
It was an affair.
My father. And Jude’s mother.
That’s why Reuben can’t forgive. That’s why he looks at me like I’m poison. I’m not just a Trelawney – I’m the daughter of the man who destroyed his marriage.
And Jude is lying beside me, peaceful and trusting, with no idea that our families aren’t just tangled by geography and grudges. No idea what his mother did. What my father did.
No idea that the woman who abandoned him might have done it for love.
For my father’s love.
I press my hand to my mouth, trying to hold in the sound that wants to escape. A sob? A scream? I don’t know.
Jude shifts, reaching for me in his sleep. ‘Brynn?’
‘I’m fine.’ My voice doesn’t sound fine. ‘Just need some water. Go back to sleep.’
He mumbles incoherent sounds and settles back into the pillows.
I sit there in the dark, watching him breathe, the weight of the secret crushing my chest.
I’ll have to tell him.
But how? How do you tell someone that your father might have stolen his mother? That the abandonment wound he’s carried for twenty years is somehow tangled up in your own family’s disgrace?
I don’t move. I barely breathe.
Tomorrow, everything changes.
But tonight, I let him sleep.