23. Chapter 23
Chapter twenty-three
EMMA EASTON
My hand is flat against my chest as I try to calm my rioting heart.
I’m standing in the hall just outside Jude’s room, and I’m nervous.
Micah stands a little behind me, arms folded, jaw working like he’s chewing through every possible outcome he doesn’t like.
He’s been extremely protective of me when it comes to Jude.
He probably knows that if Jude hurt me, he’d never forgive himself.
It would likely destroy him for good. So I understand how critical of a moment this is.
Especially when Alexei is close to beating down our door.
He could break in and take Jude now, but he’s waiting for the party to raise the stakes.
It’s such a public event that it would guarantee Jude’s downfall.
He would be a wanted man, with millions of people hating him.
They already kind of do, and it’s breaking my heart.
They just don’t understand the hell he’s been through.
I’ve had to take Micah’s advice and delete all social media from my phone, because I can’t take what people are saying about him.
Heather is on the couch, quiet but ready to support me like always. Rafe leans against the wall by the monitors, where Jude is already awake.
No one speaks for a few seconds as I stare at the door. It’s ridiculous how ordinary it looks with its wooden frame. Nothing about it suggests that, on the other side, is the one person who can destroy me.
I clench my fists at my sides.
I can do this. I can bring him back. I just have to be the woman who loves him with everything she has.
“He’s stable,” Micah says finally, voice low, like he doesn’t want it to carry too far down the hall. “Not calm, per se. But stable.”
Rafe glances at me. “He asked for you earlier.”
I swallow, grounding myself the way I’ve been practicing. Inhale. Exhale. “Okay,” I say softly.
Rafe’s eyes flick toward me. “You don’t have to rush this.”
I let out a breath that almost becomes a laugh. Because the truth is, there’s nothing rushed about it. Not anymore. This has been building in a thousand invisible ways since the moment he looked at me like he wanted to kill me and almost did.
“I’m not rushing,” I say.
My hand lifts toward the handle, then pauses just long enough to feel my heart beating against my ribs.
Behind me, Micah shifts. “Be careful, Em. We’ll be right here.”
I nod. “If I need you, I’ll raise my arms.”
Heather sighs, and Rafe doesn’t move at all.
I take one more deep breath, open the door, and step inside.
Jude is sitting in the chair, hands restrained behind him, positioned so he’s contained without pain. He chose to do this to keep me safe. His hair looks like it’s still damp from his shower. He’s only wearing jeans and a loose black shirt that hangs perfectly on his frame.
My pulse instantly spikes at the beauty in him that never left. If anything, it’s become sharper, honed from years of a difficult life.
His head lifts the moment I step in, and our eyes meet instantly. It catches me so hard I almost stop walking. Because it isn’t avoidance. It isn’t that flicker of panic I’ve been bracing for. It’s direct.
My throat tightens with the realization that he is just as ready as I am.
“Emma,” he says, his voice rough.
I offer a small grin. “Hey,” I manage.
His jaw flexes. “Come closer,” he says.
For a moment, I hesitate. He’s restrained and cannot hurt me. I’ll be okay. I just hope he will be, too. I stop just in front of him, close enough that I can see the tension in his shoulders and the way his breathing has shifted.
His eyes flick down, then back up again, like he’s checking his own limits before he speaks. “Sit with me,” he says. “On my lap.”
My pulse stutters. I glance at his hands again, restrained behind him.
He notices. “That’s why I had them do it,” he adds quietly, almost like he’s trying to reassure both of us at the same time. “So I can’t hurt you.”
A pause.
Then, softer, “You’re safe.”
The words break me just a little, because I know how much it costs him to say them. He was always my safe place whenever I struggled with my anxiety. Knowing that he's a threat to me now must kill him inside.
I nod once. “Okay,” I whisper.
Carefully, I lower myself onto his lap so I’m straddling him.
The second I do, his whole body locks. It doesn’t seem like panic or anger, but restraint.
His head dips slightly, eyes breaking away from mine for a moment.
He’s grounding himself somewhere else so he doesn’t lose control. I’ve seen my patients do this.
My hands rest lightly against his shoulders, unsure at first, then settle when he doesn’t pull away.
He exhales through his nose. It’s slow and controlled.
“You’re okay,” I say softly.
His throat moves like he swallows something down. “Don’t…don’t move too fast,” he mutters.
“I won’t.”
That seems to steady him just a little. He finally looks at me again, but not all the way at my eyes yet. He’s approaching them in stages, like too much all at once might still do something to him when I’m this close.
“Talk,” he says. “Tell me something that’s good.”
My heart squeezes. “Something good?”
He nods once. “Something I can hold onto while I do this.”
For a second, I just look at him. At the effort.
The way he’s sitting here choosing this, even while everything inside him is still clearly stitched together with the remnants of brutal conditioning.
And I let myself stop being careful in the way I’ve been careful for days.
I let myself just…be with him. How I would be if we were just sitting like this together, as if none of this had happened.
“Okay,” I say quietly. “There’s this memory I have of you…”
His gaze lifts slightly, and it’s encouraging.
I smile faintly at that. “Vanessa was trying to help you cook for me for the first time. You remembered that my favorite food at the time was hot wings and french fries,” I giggle softly at the absurdity of it.
“But when I walked in, Vanessa was spraying the stove and you with the fire extinguisher.”
A sound slips out of him that sounds a little like an amused huff. “That never happened,” he says immediately, but there’s something loosening in his voice now.
“It absolutely happened. You’re just coping with denial, here.”
“I am not—”
“You set off the smoke alarm because you forgot that throwing water on an oil fire is a terrible idea. Your mom ran around like a chicken with her head cut off when she realized what was happening. And your dad? He just stood there and laughed. And then Vanessa accused him of being the worst person present during a crisis.”
His lips twitch. It’s small, but my chest cracks at the sight of it.
“There it is,” I murmur.
His eyes finally lift fully to mine. And for a moment, the room narrows again. But this time, it feels like…peace. “It was Vanessa’s fault,” he says softly.
“Was not.”
A pause. Then, unexpectedly, he lets out a quiet laugh. It’s a little broken, like it isn’t used to existing anymore, but it’s there. And I feel it like a shift in gravity. His shoulders drop, and his breathing steadies. His eyes stay on mine longer than before, testing, learning, and holding.
And when the silence settles again, his gaze drifts, just briefly, to my mouth.
It’s so subtle I almost think I imagined it.
But I didn’t. Because I feel it happening inside me, too.
Something swells, and I don’t think. I just move.
I tilt my head down, slow enough that he could stop me if he needed to, but neither of us does anything except stay exactly where we are as I close the distance between us.
My lips brush against his softly, hesitantly, like neither of us fully trusts that this is going to work. His breath catches immediately against my mouth, and I feel his restraint because he's holding himself still even while everything in him clearly wants to move.
My hands tightens on his shoulders.
His head tilts, his lips pressing against mine so gently that it makes my chest hurt. And when he finally deepens the kiss, it’s like something inside him exhales, and the sound he makes ignites the wildfire in my blood. It’s almost a whimper.
I feel it then.
The moment when the old programming tries to claw its way back up.
His shoulders instinctively tense hard beneath my hands, and his breath stutters.
For half a second, I think he might break away.
But he doesn’t. Instead, he forces it down, his tongue sliding over mine.
And there’s something so wild about the fact that he can’t even touch me.
He’s just sitting beneath my body, his own, rigid and fighting for control.
“Tell me if you need me to stop,” I whisper against his lips.
“Don’t stop, Emma,” he pants. “Don’t ever fucking stop.”
So I don’t. I kiss him deeper, my hips moving on their own, grinding into the hardness that’s pressing against me. And a small whimper leaves me when I feel him grind back, our breaths heavy between kisses.
When we finally separate, it isn’t sudden like before, when he ripped himself away from me. It’s slow, reluctant, like neither of us wants to stop. His forehead rests on my cheek for a moment, his breathing strained, still fighting something that no longer has full control over him.
When he finally pulls back just enough to look at me properly, his eyes don’t drop this time.
They stay. Locked right on mine. My eyes burn with the realization that he’s choosing, again and again, not to let the darkness take him.
And in that victory, I kiss him again, harder this time.
I don’t care if they can see us on those monitors outside, because I cannot stop.
“Em,” he rasps into my mouth. “Wait.”
I pause, pulling away to look at him. As his eyes connect with mine again, I feel his shoulders tense.