Steadfast (True North #2)

by Sarina Bowen

  “Right,” I said brightly. “I’ll fetch the ground beef.”

  I marched my overheated self into the pantry and opened the door to the walk-in cooler. The refrigerated air felt good against my flushed skin. Carrying fifty pounds of ground beef at once was above my pay grade, so I hefted only the top carton and backed out of the walk-in.

  My ass ran straight into Jude.

  “Hey,” he said, catching me and then my box of meat. “Careful.”

  Careful. I was so far past careful that it wasn’t even funny. The woodsy scent of his aftershave enveloped me. I took a deep breath of Jude.

  “Hey there,” he whispered.

  “Hey.” My voice was breathy. Get a grip, Sophie. I turned to face him. “How was your week?”

  “Shitty.” He grinned.

  “Why?”

  He shook his head. “Nothing for you to worry about. Things are looking up, now. Wednesday and Thursday are the best days of the week.”

  “Yeah?”

  Jude set the box down on a stepstool. And before I knew what was happening, he’d pushed me up against the door to the walk-in. Those silver eyes came in at close range. “Yeah.” Then he kissed me.

  Oh, sweet Jesus. His mouth slanted over mine, the pressure bossy and delicious. An angel choir sang a chorus of hallelujahs as his hips pressed against mine. When I parted my lips, he deepened the kiss. Then his tongue made a long, sweet pull against mine. I forgot where we were. I forgot my own name. My hands gripped Jude’s waist, and I gave myself over to him completely.

  It was useless pretending otherwise; I was gone for him. Always had been. He thrust his tongue into my mouth one more time and then eased up, smiling at me. The whole episode lasted maybe thirty seconds before he pulled away.

  I stood there panting. The angel choir in my head had switched over to a dirty, groovy channel. I wanted more, and I was probably doing a bad job of hiding it.

  Jude kissed me on the nose. “I’m leaving my door open tonight in case you feel like swinging by.”

  “Okay.” My knees felt wobbly. But I knew they’d be wobbling right over to Jude’s place after the dinner service was over.

  Jude leaned over and snagged a couple of bulbs of garlic out of their bin. “You need me to carry some meat?”

  “What?” I was busy admiring the muscles in his forearm when he closed his hand around the garlic.

  With an amused glance in my direction, he pointed at the ground beef in the box I’d brought out. “Meat. Do you need me to carry some of it?”

  “Yes, please,” I said. “Thank you.”

  Jude grabbed the box and walked out of the room.

  I went back into the walk-in for another case of ground beef and to cool off my overheated body.

  We served a lot of tacos. Hundreds of them. By eight o’clock I was ragged from constant trips between the serving line and the prep stations.

  “What are we doing with the leftover refried beans?” Denny asked. “Is this enough to take over to the food pantry tomorrow?”

  “No,” I said. “Compost it, or take them home with you.”

  “Woo-hoo!” Denny said. “Nachos for me tomorrow.”

  My eyes tracked across the room, where Jude was slipping on his coat. I watched him leave. And then I cleaned up for another thirty minutes. By that time, I decided it was safe to follow him home. I put the last of the clean dishes in the storage cabinets and closed them for the night.

  In the kitchen, I found Denny waiting for me, my coat in his hands.

  Crap, I thought immediately. And just as quickly I felt guilty for it. Sometimes Denny walked me out to my car, just to be nice. I supposed I could always drive my car around the block and re-park.

  This reminded me of high school, and not in a good way. Hooking up with Jude forced me to sneak around like a teenager.

  Denny held up my coat.

  “Thanks,” I said, slipping my arms into the sleeves one after the other.

  He lifted it onto my shoulders, then gave me a pat. When he spoke, his voice was so low that I almost couldn’t hear it. “Please be careful, Sophie.”

  “What? Why?” When I turned around to check his face, he wore a sober expression. That’s when I realized that he was onto me. “How did you…?”

  He lifted his chin toward the pantry, and I felt my face heat. He must have seen us going at it against the walk-in door. Smooth, Sophie.

  “I’m just worried about you,” he said, fishing a pair of gloves out of his pockets. “Do you know the rate of relapse among opiate addicts?”

  I shook my head, because I was suddenly too upset to speak. How dare he imply that Jude would start using again? None of this was any of Denny’s business. And not only was it rude to Jude, it also implied that I was an idiot. I knew Jude’s road was a tough one. But when a man was working so hard to stay clean, it seemed impossibly cruel to say out loud that he wouldn’t make it.

  “Over fifty percent,” he said.

  Stepping backward, I yanked my gloves out of my pockets. “If I ever have a problem with addiction, remind me not to come to you for encouragement.”

  Denny’s mouth fell open, and he wore the startled expression of someone who had just been slapped.

  “Goodnight,” I said through clenched teeth. Then I turned and ran out of there. My shoes clicked on the tiles as I pushed the church’s pretty wooden door open.

  Moving quickly, I headed down the sidewalk toward Jude’s street. The cold air on my face was a relief, and it helped to cool my anger. I knew Denny was a good guy usually. And he had always been a loyal friend. And he’s jealous, my conscience put in. But the real reason that I would be able to put this awful moment aside was that Denny didn’t know Jude. He’d never seen the way that Jude took care of me. He’d calmed me down a million times when I was stressed out over school or mad at my father for belittling me.

  Jude had shored me up in so many ways. The least I could do was show a little faith.

  And what’s more, he’d always told me that I could beat the odds. When I wanted to make music my career, he’d never said, “Do you know the rate of failure for singers is over fifty percent?”

  Life was risky. All of it. And I wasn’t about to give up on Jude just because some medical researcher didn’t like the odds of kicking his habit.

  My feet took me closer to him.

  The streets of Colebury were silent at night. Decorative candle-style lights lit the windows of many of the old wooden houses I passed. That was a thing in Vermont. We left them up all winter, too, not just at Christmas. These days there were solar-powered light-sensitive models—you didn’t even have to remember to turn them on. I’d bought a set at the grocery store last year so that the police chief’s house would look as though somebody cared enough to turn on the holiday lights.

  When I turned onto Jude’s street, the houses got smaller and the porches saggier. But there were candles in many of the windows.

  Not his, though.

  I climbed the stairs as quietly as I could. After a light tap on the door, I tried the knob. It released in my hand. “Jude?”

  The only sound came from the shower.

  Ten seconds later I’d tossed my coat and all my clothes onto his desk chair. Stark naked, I went into the bathroom. Without a word of warning, I pulled the curtain open.

  Jude gave a startled grunt, but then quickly got over his surprise. Big hands pulled me under the spray. Then I was pancaked against a hard, wet man while his hands cupped my ass. “Baby,” he rumbled.

  I raised myself up on tiptoes to press my mouth over his, and received a happy growl for my efforts. Then there was nothing but wet lips and wet tongues. Steam and skin sliding against skin. The world was a small place where it rained warm water and kisses.

  The very hard cock pressing against my belly begged to be touched. I dropped a hand down to stroke him. Jude moaned. “Want you so bad.”

  “What are you waiting for?” I gasped.

  “Hold on to
me,” he ordered.

  When I reached up to grasp his shoulders, Jude lifted me. Pressing my upper back against the shower wall, he lined himself up and slid inside. And once again I was full of Jude. Tipping my head back against the tiles, I sighed. For a moment nothing more happened, and that was fine with me. In music, the silence in between the songs can be as affecting as the most powerful crescendo. This moment was just the same. I opened my eyes to find Jude watching me.

  Then his hips pulsed—the opening bass line of our song. I throbbed against him—adding to our melody. He rocked. I rolled my hips. We were complete right then. There were no naysayers. There was no past, and there certainly was no future.

  Listening to the rhythm of Jude’s increasingly ragged breaths, I gave myself over to this moment. Our song rose to a fevered pitch, and I listened hard to every note while it lasted.

  Afterward, we were two damp and sated people lying on the bed together. His hand wandered mindlessly up and down my back.

  “Jude?”

  “Mmm?”

  “Why did you give my brother a ride that night?”

  I expected him to protest at the question, but he didn’t. “I don’t remember. Guess he needed a ride, that’s all.”

  “Really? You two weren’t friends.”

  “Nope.”

  “Then why did he ask you?”

  “Don’t know,” he said quickly. Too quickly. “And I guess we can’t ask him.”

  There was something tight about his voice that put me on edge. “After the accident, I asked a lot of questions that nobody answered.”

  “I’m sorry.” Jude rolled onto his stomach, propping his chin into the crook of his elbow. “I’m sorry for everything that happened to you after I fucked up.”

  “I know you are. But it bothers me that I don’t really understand what happened that night.”

  Jude sighed. “The problem is that I don’t either. I don’t remember the accident at all. I don’t remember getting into the car, and I don’t remember getting cut out of it. First thing I remember is getting smacked around in an interrogation room.”

  Wait. “They hit you?”

  He made an unhappy sound in the back of his throat. “I killed the chief’s son. There wasn’t a cop in the state who could get in trouble for roughing me up. Of course they hit me.”

  “Why did they interrogate you at all?”

  His gray eyes softened. “Same reason you are, baby. You have questions with no answers.”

  Still. I’d always assumed that Jude was taken to a hospital after the accident, because that’s where people who’d been in accidents went. Didn’t they? “Who hit you?”

  Jude pinched the bridge of his nose. I’d officially killed the mood, that was for sure. “I don’t know his name. The same guy who busted us that time for making out in my car at Pigeon Pond. Younger guy with the receding hairline?”

  “Newcombe. I remember him. He moved to Arizona, or somewhere.”

  “Good riddance.” Jude rolled onto his side and hauled me into his arms. “Why do you get to ask all the questions, anyway? I got one for you.”

  “Hit me.”

  “Why aren’t you at Juilliard?”

  Ah. “I changed my mind. That’s all.”

  “What? Challenge. You used to practice every day for two hours, Soph. I may be the dumbest guy you know, but you’re going to have to do a little better than ‘I changed my mind.’”

  I craned my neck to look at him. “You’re not the dumbest guy I know. Not by a long mile.”

  “That’s nice of you to say, baby. But you didn’t answer my question. Do you still sing?”

  “In the car on the way to work.” I put my head on Jude’s bare chest. “And in college I started learning to play the guitar and accompanying myself. But there hasn’t been time for that lately.”

  Jude grunted, and I felt the vibration under my ear. “What a waste.”

  Maybe. But it wasn’t the tragedy that he thought it was. “Do you remember how I used to make you listen to the original-cast recording of Flying For You?”

  Jude’s chest rose and fell as he chuckled. “Even after three years, I’m pretty sure I could sing the whole thing from start to finish right now.”

  “The soprano’s name was Penny Lovejoy, and I worshipped her.”

  “I remember.”

  “Do you know what she does now? She’s a realtor of fine homes in New Jersey.”

  A big, warm palm landed on the back of my neck. “Okay. And that’s why you didn’t go to Juilliard?”

  “Partly. There were a lot of reasons. But I didn’t change my plans on a whim. I did a lot of recon. My voice teacher hooked me up with some of her old students in New York, and I went down to visit them. It was kind of horrifying.”

  “Why?”

  “These girls were successful by any measure—they had small parts on Broadway or on tour. They were working singers, which is amazing. But none of them felt even a little bit secure. And they auditioned like crazy. One of these girls said to me, ‘A professional singer is a professional auditioner. If that doesn’t appeal to you, do something else with your life.’”

  Jude was silent for a minute. “You hate auditioning.”

  “Yep. I really do.”

  “But what if she was wrong?”

  I shook my head. “She wasn’t. I tagged along with her to an open call for an off-Broadway musical, and there were girls in line around the fucking block. They were singing scales to stay warm, and every one of them had amazing pipes. And I just saw that and started to wonder whether I wanted it badly enough. I love music. But I didn’t want to show up for cattle calls and get excited just because the director tugged on his ear or scribbled on his pad while I was singing.”

  “Juilliard would have been fun, though.”

  “Yeah.” I sighed. “Sure. But now I’m getting a degree in a field that has actual jobs. Also, it allowed me to stay here in Vermont when my mother needed me.”

  “What are you going to do when she doesn’t anymore?”

  As if. “I’ll figure something out.”

  Jude and I cuddled and kissed until I had to go. It was torture climbing out of his warm arms and putting on my clothes. “I count down the days until Wednesday,” he whispered. “Keeps me sane, knowing that if I stay strong all week I get to see you.”

  I leaned over the bed and kissed him one more time so that I didn’t have to answer. For the next six days I’d look for Jude on every street corner, just hoping for a glimpse. He didn’t keep me sane—he made me crazy. Until he’d showed up again I hadn’t realized how lonely I was.

  My life seemed more impossible now than it had at any other point these three years.

  His strong fingers stroked my back as I leaned down to put on my socks. “Have a good week. I’ll be thinking about you.”

  “I’ll be thinking about you, too. Every day,” I confessed. Every hour, when I’m supposed to be writing my last exam and trying to figure out how to fund treatments for a deaf toddler.

  One more kiss. One more sweet hug against his firm chest.

  Then I got the heck out of there, hurrying down the steps outside his room. Running off into the lonely night.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Sophie

  Internal DJ tuned to: “Blue Christmas” Elvis version

  “Come on in, the kitchen is this way,” I said to the caterer, holding open our back door.

  “I got it,” the woman said, her arms wrapped around a tray. “I remember from last year.”

  Of course she did. My father’s annual holiday party was just another reminder that my life had been in the same rut for a while now. Next year, I vowed to myself. This won’t be my life.

  I had to get out of here.

  But tonight I was trapped. I held the door three more times for the caterer and her assistants, and then for my father. “Evening,” he grunted as he passed me. We were barely speaking these days. “Food’s here, huh? What did your moth
er order this time?”

  Ouch. I’d done the ordering, of course. Because calling in the menu would require ten minutes of focus, which was ten more than she could spare us. “Pigs in blankets, of course, because there would be a riot if we cut those off the menu. Pulled-pork sliders. Potato salad. Cheese quiche for anyone who doesn’t eat meat.” Hopefully no vegans had joined my father’s police force since last Christmas. Because they were going to go hungry.

  My father made no comment. He just kept right on going through the house, past the rooms I’d spent all day cleaning. Every year he threw this shindig for the cops who worked for him and their wives. Departmental money was tight, so we hosted the party. Which meant that I spent hours cleaning our house and trying to make the place look festive.

  Today, instead of hitting the books, I’d picked out a Christmas tree and decorated it myself. I put a wreath on the front door and candles and pine boughs on the mantel. By five o’clock I’d been tired, dusty and covered in pine sap.

  And all the while I asked myself why. My life-long good-girl streak was partly to blame. But if I blew off the party, my father would scream at my mother and possibly at me. And there were guests coming. Our dysfunction wasn’t their fault or their problem.

  Leaving the caterers to their work, I climbed the stairs.

  “Mom?” I found her in the bedroom, staring at the television mounted on the wall. She was watching a cooking show. Oh, the irony. This woman used to be so busy cooking that she didn’t watch TV. “Mom? Let’s go. You have to get dressed for the party.”

  She clicked mute. “What shall I wear?”

  I didn’t bother withholding my sigh. My mother remained just functional enough to fake it. If she drooled on herself or spoke in tongues, it would be easier to force her to get some professional help. “The green Christmas sweater and black slacks?” I went over to her closet and found the sweater in question. “You have thirty minutes.” After thrusting the sweater into her hands, I left her alone.

  Showering left me with just fifteen minutes until the guests would arrive. So my big act of rebellion was to don my favorite pair of jeans. Usually I’d put on tights and a dress, but tonight I just didn’t fucking feel like it. As a compromise, I pulled on a pretty sweater and shimmery earrings. And then I slicked on some red lip gloss and a generous coat of black mascara.