“About what?” I imagine him having me followed out of spite, just to check up on me, and I imagine him seeing me with Jude and growing insanely jealous because Jude is exactly the kind of guy who would bring Hunter’s biggest insecurities to the surface.
“His name is Jude, right?” she asks.
I knew it. He’s having me tailed.
“A couple months ago, this guy came in wanting to drop off a demo,” she says. “Happens all the time, but this time Hunter was standing out there. He saw him and brought him back to his office for a meeting. That never happens. You know that. It’s just not how it works.”
“All right.” I cling to her every word.
“Anyway, they were talking and he must have hit the intercom button or something because I could hear everything on my headset, and normally I’d disconnect, but at first, I couldn’t believe what he was saying.”
“What? What was he saying, Marissa?”
“He told Jude,” she says, pulling in a deep breath. “He told him that if he could get you to marry him, he’d give him a record deal and some cash. A lot of cash.”
I think I’m going to be sick.
Ambling toward the living room, I brace myself on the back of a chair.
“Please don’t tell them I told you,” she says. “I signed a non-disclosure with Blue Stream, and I don’t want to lose my job, but I just thought you should know that you’ve been set up.”
The room spins and I manage to find my way into the chair. Eyes closed tight, I imagine all of these moments with Jude … the fountain … the elevator … Brooklyn … the kiss … the jog … the week in West Virginia … all the sweet and wonderful things he said … the way he looked at me like I meant something to him, truly meant something.
“I’m so sorry, Love,” she says, coming to my side and placing her hand on my shoulder.
I don’t even cry. There isn’t so much as a hint of tears brimming in my eyes.
In fact, I feel nothing.
No. I take it back. I feel like a fool.
“How do I know this isn’t a setup?” I ask. I imagine Hunter having me followed, seeing that I’m happy, and then trying to sabotage that. The day the judge ruled in favor of the alimony request, I’d never seen such rage flash in his eyes as he glowered across the courtroom at me. But I only saw it for a moment before my attorney shielded me and his attorney got him the hell out of there.
Marissa shrugs. “I can’t prove anything. I only know what I heard.”
It all seemed so real, felt so real.
“Hunter set him up with apartment close to you. Bought him new clothes. Gave him a credit card and a phone,” she says.
An image of Jude in glasses and a suit fills my mind first. Whenever he was dressed up, he was always so proper, so mysterious. But when he started coming around in jeans and mussed-up hair, he’d let loose a little more. And it makes sense if he’s a musician, because he took me to that Sound Underground place to hear some up-and-coming band.
It all makes sense to me now, why there were two very different sides of Jude Warner.
“Please don’t tell them I told you,” Marissa asks again, hands clasped.
I lift a hand, my head beginning to throb. “I won’t say anything.”
“Jude came by a few weeks ago,” she says. “I didn’t hear the conversation that time, but he had this look on his face when he left … I don’t even know how to describe it other than he looked … worried? But maybe I was reading into it.”
The room won’t stop spinning every time I close my eyes, so I try and focus on the gold paperweight resting on a stack of books on my coffee table. I need to concentrate on something that means nothing to me, something incapable of ripping my beating heart clean out of my chest.
“Do you want some water or something?” she asks. “You look like you’re going to throw up.”
Waving her away, I feel a spasm deep in my belly. “Can you just … can you leave, please?”
I’ve heard enough.
Marissa says nothing as she trots toward the door and shows herself out, and the moment the door slams behind her, I run to the bathroom just in time to empty the contents of my stomach.
Reaching for a towel, I dab at my mouth, the very mouth Jude kissed a million and one times over the past month, and I begin to retch again. Only this time, my stomach is empty. Much like the hole that now resides in the space that once held my heart.
The faint sound of my phone vibrating across my nightstand somehow manages to steal my attention, and I stumble out of the bathroom to grab it.
But I stop cold when I see the name on the screen.
“Are you up?” his text reads.
Falling for him was so easy, so effortless. Now I know that was only because he was doing a job. He was being paid to make me like him. He was paid to be perfect and to say all the right things.
Disgusted doesn’t begin to cover the way I feel about Jude now.
Another text comes through, “Let me know when you get up. Or just head over. I’ll leave the door open for you.”
“Fuck off, you sick bastard,” I say out loud. And then I power down my phone and flip it over.
I need to decide how I’m going to handle this … because I will handle this.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Jude
It’s been twenty-four hours since I texted Love Tuesday morning, and now I’m beginning to worry because she’s never gone more than a few hours before responding. Half of me wants to call the super to check on her, to make sure she didn’t slip in the shower or choke on something, but I was in the hall earlier, and I swore I could hear the TV going in her place.
I was ready to stop this insanity yesterday.
Most of Tuesday was spent pacing my apartment, mentally running over all the things I was going to say to her over and over again—which wasn’t some big long monologue by any stretch of the imagination, but I’d managed to work in some words of comfort.
Maybe the week together was too much? Maybe things were going too well and that scared her off?
Regardless, I grab my phone and call her.
“Hi, it’s Love. Leave a message,” her sweet, gentle character is inherent even in those six little words.
“Love, call me,” I say after the tone. “Please.”
All this time we’ve spent together and not once did she ever seem like the kind of person to hold a grudge or cut someone out of her life for no reason. And the last time I saw her, she kissed me.
She kissed me.
Thumbing through my contacts, I find Lo and give her a call. I need a reality check. A kick in the ass. Something.
“You were right,” I say after she answers.
“Duh,” she laughs. “But right about what, exactly?”
“Everything.” I hook my left hand around the back of my neck as I stand next to my living room window and gaze out at Central Park.
“You fell for her.”
Sighing, I say, “Yeah.”
“Then I think you know what to do,” she says. “Tell her the truth, back out of this, and come home. You made a shit decision, and now you have to man up and deal with the consequences of that.”
“I was going to tell her everything yesterday,” I say. “But she won’t take my calls or return my texts.”
“Seriously?” Lo asks. Ellie babbles in the background mixed with the sound of Paw Patrol blaring on the TV. “Do you think … do you think she found out?”
“God, I hope not.” I wanted to be the one to tell her. Figured I at least owed her that.
“Maybe it’s nothing. Maybe she’s sick or something? Who knows. Just … I guess keep trying her?”
It’s not like I have any other option.
“And Jude,” Lo says, “I know you did this for the girls and me. And I know you’re just a good guy who did a bad thing. But I wish you’d stop feeling so responsible for us. You’d be just fine if you didn’t have us three weighing you down. I’m tired of
being a burden on you, and I can’t help but feel like this whole thing was partly my fault.”
“Lo …”
My entire life, I’ve looked after her without a second thought, and not once have I ever thought of her as a burden. Even as kids, I was always protecting her, making sure she was fed and had clean clothes, walking her to school and chasing off anyone who so much as thought about screwing with her.
All we’ve ever had is each other, and when she had the girls and wound up completely on her own—homeless, essentially—taking them in wasn’t even a question.
“You’re not a burden, you’re family,” I say. “As soon as I get out of here, I’m going to take the first job I get. I’m going to book extra gigs on the weekends. And you’re going to start nursing school.”
In this moment, I can’t help thinking about Love’s charity and her mission to help women become financially independent.
Love … this multi-millionaire who could easily spend her time jet setting around the world and lavishing herself with designer bags and real estate … wants to make it her life mission to help people exactly like my sister.
If that doesn’t tell me what kind of person she is, I don’t know what does.
She’s got a heart of gold.
And I’m about to shatter it into a million fucking pieces.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Love
“Three words,” Tierney says over the phone the next day. “Fake. Pregnancy. Test.”
“T …”
“I’m serious. I can pee on a stick for you, get you a positive, and you can scare the bejeesus out of him,” she says. I can just imagine her pacing her apartment, auburn brows twisted and hand waving wildly as she talks. Everything sets her off lately. I call it her pregnancy rage, but I don’t dare call it that to her face. I’m hopeful that after the baby’s born, she’ll be back to her calm, yoga-and-green tea-loving self. “I hate him, Love. I hate him. What a fucking … ugh.”
I don’t disagree with her.
“What are you going to do? Just keep avoiding him? Ignoring him?” she asks.
“I don’t know.” I hid in my apartment all day yesterday, worried I might run into him before I had a chance to decide how I was going to handle this, but I can’t hole up forever. I thought maybe a good night’s rest would help clear my mind by the morning, but all I did was toss and turn because my mind refused to shut off. All I did was replay every little moment, every hand hold and gentle touch and lingering glance.
I still can’t believe none of it was real.
“You need to beat him at his own game,” she says. “Take karma into your own hands.”
“I don’t know. I don’t think I have it in me to be that cold and calculating.”
“You don’t have a choice, Love. What he did was the most selfish thing I’ve ever heard of. He makes Hunter look like a saint, and that’s no easy feat.”
“Nah. They’re in the same boat as far as I’m concerned. Hunter put him up to this.”
“Still,” she says. “You need to feel vindicated so you can move on from this asshole, and I’d really like to keep the whole fake pregnancy test option on the table.”
I chuckle, almost snorting tea through my nose. “No. That’s psycho girlfriend territory, and that’s a line I refuse to cross.”
Tierney sighs. “Oh, Love. Always keeping it classy.”
Taking a seat in an oversized living room chair, I turn sideways, draping my legs over the arm as I cup my hands around a mug of steaming Earl Grey. Outside, the city is just beginning to come to life. Horns are honking. Birds are soaring. Joggers are jogging.
“You know …” Tierney says, “What if you give him exactly what he wants? Come on strong, pretend to be crazy in love with him, make him think his little scheme is working? And then when he proposes to you, say yes … and then leave him at the altar?”
“You don’t think that’s a bit extreme?” I ask before immediately deciding I’m not touching that with a ten-foot pole.
“Honey, what he’s doing to you is extreme. An eye for an eye.”
I laugh through my nose, covering the phone. She really needs to have this baby.
Taking a sip of tea, I mull it over. The numbness waned off late last evening, bringing on a rush of anger and sadness. I thought maybe everything would feel a little less intense when I woke up this morning, but nope. If anything, my anger has intensified, taking shape in the form of a pounding headache and a jaw that won’t unclench.
I still have yet to shed a tear over that bastard, so there’s that.
“It felt so real, Tierney.” I release a soft breath, glancing at the spot on the sofa where we first made love—or rather, when he first fucked me.
I’d burn the stupid thing now if I could.
It’s tainted, only serving as a reminder of what a moron I was.
“Of course it felt real,” she says. “That’s what he was hired to make you believe.”
“I wonder if he ever second-guessed what he was doing? Do you think he ever felt bad about it?”
“Doubtful. If he did, he would’ve stopped.”
“True.” I lift my mug to my lips. I can’t help but wonder if there’s the slightest chance he was catching feelings for me, but I don’t say anything to Tierney because I know what she’ll say. And in the end, it doesn’t matter.
I’ll never be able to believe a word he says ever again.
“I should go,” I say, sliding my legs off the arm of the chair and placing my mug on the coffee table.
“What are you going to do?” she asks.
“I’m going to text Jude and see if he’s home,” I say, “and then I’m going to beat him at his own game.”
Ending the call, I pull up my Messages app and fire off a text. It shows read instantly, like he’s been waiting for me to respond, and within seconds he replies, telling me to come over and that the door is unlocked.
The queasy fuss in my stomach that hasn’t subsided since Marissa gave me the news only intensifies, as if my body is firing off warning signs. But the more I think about this, the more my anger focuses on Hunter just as much.
Jude was a pawn.
A heartless pawn.
But Hunter is the real mastermind behind all of this.
I’d love nothing more than to let him think his clever little plan is working and then pull the rug out from under him. And if I really wanted to go all out, I could get my attorney involved. I’m sure hiring a guy to marry your ex so you can stop paying alimony isn’t one-hundred percent legal, and if there’s a loophole, my legal counsel will find it.
“Give me an hour. XOXO,” I text him before heading to the shower.
My entire life, I’ve always taken the high road.
But screw that.
I think it’s time Jude Warner discovers what it’s like to be a pawn in someone else’s game.
Chapter Thirty
Jude
Securing a towel around my waist and wiping the fog off my bathroom mirror, I think about Love for the millionth time since I woke up this morning. And truthfully, I haven’t stopped thinking about her once since we got back. I’m fixated. Obsessed. Torn and tortured. And I have no one to blame but myself.
My phone buzzes next to the sink and a little white notification pops up.
LOVE: Are you home?
My heart stammers, and my stomach is weighted with that sinking feeling I’ve had since I made my decision.
I want to see her … but seeing her means ending things … which means I’m never going to see her again the second she walks out my door.
I text her back, “Come on over. The door’s unlocked.”
LOVE: Give me an hour. XOXO
I sit the phone aside and stare at my reflection, brows furrowed, forehead lined. How she could go from ignoring me for twenty-four hours to texting me like nothing happened is beyond me, but I’m sure there’s an explanation somewhere. I’ve never wasted my time trying to figure out th
e intricacies of the finer sex, and I’m not about to start now.
My lungs tighten as I finish getting ready. Smooth shave. Crest. Antiperspirant. Cologne. Clean clothes. It’s any other morning … except it’s not.
The threat of a knot builds in my stomach, but I try and focus my attention elsewhere. Grabbing my phone, I play a little Bob Dylan.
Growing up, when Mom and Dad were having one of their knock down drag-out fights, I’d always take Lo and hide in my room, lock the door, and crank some Bob. His music was so otherworldly, so unlike anything else out there, that it always seemed to take us away, somewhere else where our dad didn’t beat our mom and our mom wasn’t drunk twenty-four-seven and our house didn’t have cockroaches and the electricity wasn’t getting shut off every other month.
Wagon Wheel comes on first, which historically has always managed to put some semblance of a smile on my face, only this time it never comes and I don’t find that temporary escape. I’m still here. Still staring at the reflection of a douchebag who sold his soul … for nothing.
The next hour passes in a hazy blur.
I’ve paced my apartment countless times, practicing what I’m going to say to Love and exactly how I’m going to say it. I’ve pictured tears in her honeyed eyes and trembles on those sugared lips, but imagining heartbreak playing out on her face will have nothing to seeing it in person.
The palpitations in my chest quicken when I hear the twist of the door knob and the soft pad of footsteps across my foyer.
“Jude?” she calls.
I make my way from down the hall, breath resting in my chest because it hurts too fucking much to breathe, and when I round the corner, I’m met with the widest smile and brightest hazel eyes I’ve ever seen.
Before I get a chance to say anything, she’s leaping into my arms, wrapping her legs around my waist and pressing her strawberry-flavored mouth against mine. When she pulls away, she’s still grinning.
“Where have you been?” I ask, focused on the killer smile I’m going to miss like hell when it’s gone.
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