Chapter Fifteen That’s Just F.I.N.E. By Me
Iturn to Jude, suddenly feeling uncomfortable with him now that the crisis has passed. Especially since the only thing covering his naked torso is the blanket Uncle Carter draped over him, letting his chiseled chest peek out. We stare at each other for a moment before I finally clear my throat and ask, “Do you think you can make it to the healer?”
“I’m fine,” he says again.
I roll my eyes as I brush past him. “There’s a really old Aerosmith song called ‘F.I.N.E.’ You know what they say it stands for?”
“Fabulous, Intelligent, Noble, and Endearing?” His eyes dare me to contradict him.
I won’t give him the satisfaction. “Your knowledge of old music is appalling.”
“Oh, I know the song,” he tells me. “I just don’t agree that I’m insecure or emotional.”
He’s right. Jude is a guy who contains multitudes, but insecurity definitely isn’t one of those multitudes. Even as a child—lost, broken, devastated—he knew who he was. And what he wanted. Or, to be more specific, what he didn’t want. As far as I can tell, none of that has changed in the ensuing years.
I notice he doesn’t say anything about the fucked-up or the neurotic parts of the acronym. Then again, what can he say? He’s pretty much the poster child for both and has been for as long as I’ve known him.
I don’t point that out, though.
Jude doesn’t say anything else as we climb the three flights of stairs to Aunt Claudia’s office, and neither do I. But more thunder booms above us, and a glance out the window shows the nearby trees nearly bending in half with the wind.
A tremor of unease works its way through my body at the sight, and for the first time, I start to wonder if this storm is going to be even worse than I thought.
Even though the door is half open, I think about knocking, but the room itself is dark, and Aunt Claudia is nowhere to be found.
“There’s no one here,” Jude says, whirling around like he can’t get away from the place fast enough. “I’ll come back later.”
But that just brings us face-to-face—or, more accurately, my face to his very large, very powerful, very naked chest. His warm, dark scent—cardamom, leather, and rich, hot honey—overwhelms my senses immediately. It makes my knees tremble and my heart beat way too fast. Even as I tell myself to move back, to get away from him as quickly as I can, I don’t move. I can’t.
Lost in memories, I breathe him in, breathe him deep. In that moment, it’s just like it used to be—when I actually wanted to be close to him.
And for a second that feels like a whole eternity, Jude lets me. He doesn’t move, doesn’t breathe, doesn’t blink—just stands there and lets me remember.
But then he pulls away abruptly, and hot humiliation sweeps through me. I’ve had three years to build my defenses, to forget the ridiculous crush I used to have on him, yet one whiff of him has me all but melting at his feet again. It’s disgusting.
Especially since it’s obvious he has no such problem when it comes to me.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I answer, striving for a normal tone as I pull out my phone and text my aunt Claudia. “Those burns have to be treated before they get infected. Plus, I can’t even imagine how painful they are.”
“I can handle the pain.”
“Stop trying to be stoic,” I tell him.
He shrugs, like there comes a time when a person is in so much pain that more—no matter how small or great—barely registers, let alone matters.
But I’m done caring about his pseudo-martyr attitude. If he wants out of here before he’s taken care of himself, he’s going to have to get through me.
So I position my body directly in front of his, crossing my arms over my chest in a very obvious dare for him to try to get past me.
“Cleaning those burns with some shower gel isn’t going to cut it, and you know it.”
Normally, it wouldn’t work with him—the attitude or the dare—but Jude is swaying on his feet, so I press on.
“You need calendula and probably some aloe elixir. Maybe some curcumin ointment, too.”
He tries to slip past me again, but this time when he moves, his hand brushes against his pants. He lets slip the most infinitesimal flinch at what I know must be excruciating pain, and his voice is strained when he says, “Fine, whatever. But I can get it.”
“It’s cute that you think so.” I shoot a pointed look toward his very messed-up hands before crossing to one of the large, glass-front cabinets straight out of the 1950s that houses the magic-infused herbal remedies.
As I reach for the cupboard handle, my phone buzzes with a series of messages from my aunt.
“Claudia’s in the middle of helping Ember.” Jude immediately looks concerned, so I clarify, “Ember’s okay, but Claudia will be here as soon as she can.” Jude’s shoulders immediately fall with relief as I pull out the long, skinny bottle filled with calendula. “She wants me to soak your hands while we wait for her. She told me what to use to take the pain away and speed up the healing process.”
Jude sighs like my helping him is the biggest inconvenience in the world, but he doesn’t say anything else as I pull out a bowl and fill it with the mixture of water and herbal elixirs my aunt told me to combine for him.
When I’m done, I put the bowl on the old, scarred table in the corner of the room and gesture for him to sit in the battle-worn chair. As he moves to comply, the blanket slips from his shoulders, and I get my first good look at his back. I have to bite back my gasp of surprise. Because his entire back is covered in tattoos.
Like covered covered. Barely any of his skin pokes through the feathery, black, rope-like swirls that twist and turn in every direction as they curve their way over his shoulders and down his biceps.
Like Jude himself, the tattoos are beautiful but sinister, powerful but just as ethereal, and I can’t help staring. Any more than I can help the sudden urge I have to trace a finger over them—over him.
Just the thought has my cheeks burning, and I slide my hands into my pockets. Because they’re cold, obviously, not because I don’t trust myself not to touch Jude Abernathy-Lee.
But not touching him doesn’t stop me from wondering where he got the tattoos—and when. Because unlike most of the students at Calder Academy who come here sometime during their high school years, Jude has been here since he was seven. And—like me—he hasn’t left the island since. Not once.
Yet I’ve never once noticed them before. Not even when he ripped his shirt off in the chaos of the hallway just minutes earlier.
Is this why he always wears long sleeves?
Why he would never go swimming with us in the mermaid pool when we were little?
As far as I know, I’ve never actually seen him shirtless, even when we were kids. Back when I had a crush on him—eons ago—I used to imagine the very sexy washboard abs I was sure he was hiding under his Calder Academy polo. But I never once imagined what else he was hiding.
But how could he have had the tattoos that long? He’s grown a lot since he was seven, and they would be distorted, stretched out, faded even, if they had grown along with him. Yet these are none of those things. In fact, I’ve never seen any tattoo as defined and richly saturated as his are. They don’t look like drawings at all—they look real, like they could come to life at any second.
Again, my fingers itch with the need to trace one. But I keep them where they belong, curling my hands into fists as I very deliberately walk around to the other side of the table.
Of course, once on that side, I’m faced with the sculpted abs that are even better than I ever imagined. Not to mention the implacable, mismatched eyes that always seem to know exactly what I’m thinking.
Jude watches me as he slides into the chair, and it’s obvious he’s figured out that I’ve seen the tattoos. And just as obvious that he has no intention of saying anything about them.
I start to ask, but then he’s slipping his hands into the bowl. His shoulders stiffen the second the raw burns come into contact with the healing elixirs. He doesn’t say a word, though, just sits completely still through what must be a nightmare of agony.
Nervous sweat rolls down my back. I hate seeing other people in pain, hate even more the fact that I can’t do anything to ease it. The fact that it’s Jude in such pain makes it even worse.
I used to think I wanted him to suffer for hurting me the way he did, but this isn’t the kind of suffering I was thinking about.
To combat the nervous energy, I take my time straightening up the rest of the room—there isn’t much to do, but it keeps me from staring at Jude.
I’m sweating by the time that’s done—the incoming storm has turned the already sticky air into glue—so I pull off my hoodie and look around for something, anything, else to do. I pick up the medicine bottles and gather them up to put them away. I’ve barely gotten the cabinet open when a woman comes flying out and fills me with a vicious, terrible pain that slices across every nerve ending.