by Ella Fields
I was confused, but that confusion didn’t and couldn’t stop my instinctual response when it came to this man.
Even after all he’d done, I was so weak for him that it was disgusting.
That was what confused me the most. The shame and the want were constantly at war with one another, and I found myself so often thinking, just one more time, as though I were an addict swearing I would quit tomorrow.
But tomorrow still hadn’t arrived.
It’d been ten days since I gave him a forever lasting piece of me, and I’d started taking birth control. But although his bruising kisses and the rock-hard erection I so often felt told me he wanted to, he hadn’t been back for seconds.
Leaning down, I inhaled the dizzying scent of mint and cedarwood.
“Are you sniffing my hair?”
Okay, so perhaps he wasn’t asleep after all.
Turning in my lap, he narrowed sleepy eyes on my flaming face.
“Maybe.”
“Fear not, dear Red.” His wicked smirk had my stomach flipping so hard that I thought he’d feel the commotion against the side of his head. “I still haven’t let the housekeeper wash the bedding in the spare room.” His voice lowered as though he was sharing a secret. “Sometimes, I stare at it and grow hard in an instant at the reminder of what I stole from you.”
“That’s probably for the best,” I murmured, my chest crackling. “Bernie might get the wrong idea and wonder what kind of people we’re inviting into our home.”
Bernie was a sixty-year-old legend who stole into our two-story haven once a week while we were in school to clean.
Jude laughed, the sound silent but loud in those jade eyes. “We wouldn’t want to offend his sensibilities.”
“Absolutely not,” I laughed out while Jude grabbed the remote from his stomach and flicked over to the sports channel.
He seemed content to stay exactly where he was, and even though I kind of needed to pee, I didn’t want to move him off me just yet. “Why’d you quit football?”
His tone lost that playful edge. “Heard about that, did you?”
“I heard both you and Silas quit the team.”
Jude turned onto his side, facing the TV. “He didn’t quit. They kicked him off the team, and while our fathers could have him reinstated, he doesn’t want to be, and I’d rather go home and kick the ball around with my brother than add another thing to my to-do list.”
“You’d rather play soccer.” I’d often guessed at that.
“When I was a kid, soccer was everything. Then we moved here, and everything was football, so that’s what I did.” He yawned. “It doesn’t matter. My future isn’t sports, Red. We both know that.”
Saddened, I brushed my finger over the side of his face, tracing his hairline.
“When you touch me, it’s like you’re memorizing me.”
“Don’t change the subject, Judy.” He shook with silent laughter. “I’ll never tell anyway.”
“You don’t need to,” he said softly as though worried I’d snatch the truth away from him.
I was fine with him keeping it.
Silence descended as he stared at the game, and I stared down at him.
Ironic, how his every dream seemed to have been tied up in something that would only squash them in the end. “And here I thought they could give you the world.”
“But of course,” he said dryly. “Just as long as it suits them.”
“Jude,” I said after a couple of minutes had created goose bumps upon his arms from my dancing fingers. “What did they ask you to do? To get in?”
I felt him consider it, the idea of telling me, of setting what plagued him free.
But deep down, I knew what he’d choose to do. That he’d dance around the darkest part of himself.
“What they ask of everyone. To destroy myself,” he murmured, “and so I did.”
I didn’t press for more details. With my fingers still in his hair, I just pieced together what I knew, and within minutes, he had fallen back asleep.
I arrived home late the following night after seeing Ray when I was done with class.
But Jude hadn’t been there anyway. I didn’t call him. I didn’t know if doing so would make whatever it was that we’d been doing seem real, and if he wanted that.
And after having enough space from him to stare at the dark ceiling in my room, wondering what he was doing, I didn’t even know if that was what I wanted.
When I walked into the kitchen the next morning, I was met with, “Henry called me.”
Climbing onto a stool at the counter, I nodded, relief quick to curdle into concern. “A nightmare?”
“He had one the night before, and he was worried he might have another. Dad’s home now.” He pushed a bowl of my favorite cereal toward me and then grabbed the milk.
He rounded the counter. “You didn’t call me.” Turning me and stepping between my thighs, he glared. “You didn’t so much as text me.”
I noticed he was still wearing the same ripped jeans he’d left the house in yesterday morning, his shirt different, gray instead of black. He must have left some things at his dad’s. “You didn’t call or text me, either.”
“I wasn’t sure you’d want me to.”
“I do,” I said, clutching his crinkled T-shirt when he leaned down to plant a lingering kiss on my cheek. “I think I do.”
His mouthed tickled into a grin against my lips, where he kissed me so softly, I felt my eyes flutter. “You think you do?”
I didn’t want to talk. I didn’t want to figure things out for fear of not being able to like them once they were. So I cupped his rough cheek with one hand and his hip with the other, pulling him closer to devour his mouth.
“Fern,” he whispered, sounding pained as he pulled back.
Maybe he was just as confused as I was, just as unready as I was.
The possibility helped me to admit, “I don’t know what I’m doing.”
His teeth scraped his lower lip, his hand at the back of my head holding me still for him to whisper against my mouth, “I know exactly what I’m doing.”
I smiled even as trepidation set in. “What’s that?”
“Tasting euphoria.”
I leaped up, and he laughed, catching my ass and carrying me to the couch as the stool clattered against the floor.
Pulling him down over me, I lifted his shirt, wanting my hands to comb every inch of his skin. I kissed him with a tenacity I’d never felt before, needing so much more. I wanted his skin on mine, his body connected to mine, his mouth forever on mine.
“Red.” Jude lifted his head, breathing heavily.
I tried to bring him back, but he couldn’t be moved. He just stared at me with that infuriating amusement. Amusement that soon dripped away, revealing something that looked a lot like fear and adoration in its wake. “Red, I…”
The front door opened and slammed closed. Jude groaned.
I bit my lips to keep from laughing when his head dropped to my breasts, rubbing back and forth. “Not home.”
“Don’t care, shithead.” Silas came into view over Jude’s shoulder, his hair tied back at his nape, and his face tinged red from the cool air outside. “No wonder you didn’t wanna come for our run.” He gave me a flat smile. “Hey, Fern.”
“Hi,” I said, then shoved at Jude’s shoulders. “You should probably go get ready.”
He groaned again, but got up, leaving me lying on the couch in a position that suddenly felt way too awkward.
Clearing my throat, I sat up and returned to the kitchen to right the stool and pour milk into my bowl of cereal. “Cory still won’t talk to me.”
Silas got a bottle of water from the fridge. “That makes two of us.”
“I miss her,” I said.
“Yeah.” He stared at the ground. “Miss isn’t exactly the right word, but yeah.”
He drank his water, and I ate half my cereal, unsure what else there was to say.
“So you
and Jude are a thing now?”
My brows jumped, sarcasm drenching my voice. “Um, we’re married.”
Silas chuckled. “Sure, you are.”
I lifted a shoulder. “It’s fun, I guess. I don’t know.”
“You were obsessed with him,” Silas stated, brows low. His nose was still kind of bruised as if maybe it’d been broken. “Finally being with him is just fun?”
“It’s not meant to be more than that.”
“Why’s that?” When I said nothing, he set the bottle on the counter. “Look, you might have been obsessed, but he was fucking terrified.”
“I wasn’t that bad,” I said, feeling that familiar sting return to my chest.
He huffed, scrubbing a hand over his mouth. “Not of your obsessive ways, sweetheart. But because he secretly loved it.”
My mouth fell open, but he only winked before heading upstairs to shower.
I didn’t hang around to say goodbye. I doubted Jude would do that in front of his friend anyway. After quickly rinsing my bowl, I collected my keys and bag and got out of there.
My first class wasn’t until ten forty-five, so I decided to take a drive home.
Mom wasn’t there, as I’d hoped she wouldn’t be. Driving up to the house, I realized this was the first time I’d come back since moving in with Jude.
Everything was the same—silent, sterile, and far too much. Upstairs, I found what I was looking for in my old walk-in, exactly where I’d left it.
Ricky must have moved it into the corner and closed it up. It wasn’t anything he hadn’t seen before, but that red-hot embarrassment still arrived.
Silas was right. I had been obsessed, and the scariest part was that I didn’t think it’d lessened. It had only multiplied and grown into a shapeless, more permanent entity.
That was why I grabbed the box, and that was why I took it into my old room and sat on the bed, which had been dressed in fresh, crisp blue linens to look at the contents inside.
I needed to remember. Perhaps if I remembered how much it’d hurt to be knocked down by Jude Delouxe, I’d be more rational about whatever the hell it was that we were doing.
Thirty minutes later, I was hungry again but resolved to put some distance between the dark prince next door and my heart.
We were only supposed to stay married for a year—in our eyes anyway—and I didn’t want to be the one walking away broken yet again.
Before I reached the stairs, I glanced down the hall. Mom’s bedroom door was open, and I left the box on the landing.
Her favorite color was red, and it showed in the rugs adorning her bedroom floor, the ruffled duvet, the curtains shielding doors that gave way to a balcony overlooking the backyard, and in the throw pillows sitting just so upon the black chaise lounge near a desk on the side of the room.
I rounded the bed and went straight for her nightstand, cringing when I saw a large black box taking up the entirety of the drawer. “Gross.”
Shivering a little, I hurried to the desk and searched there. I found nothing and stopped to gaze around the room, wondering where I’d hide something I didn’t want my daughter to find.
If she’d hidden them. Innocent until proven guilty.
I was about to leave when a bird called outside the window behind her bed. The sparrow took flight, and my eyes bounced to the right. To her walk-in closet.
Inside, I switched on the light and marveled at the size. As a kid, I used to dream of being able to come in here and play dress-up. It was bigger than our downstairs bathroom, gowns and business attire and antique dressers filling the space. Mirrors hung on each wall, and in the center was a huge chest filled with shoes.
I spied her wedding dress, which sat wrapped in a zippered plastic bag behind all her ball gowns. I walked over, staring at it for a moment too long, wondering if she’d been happy when she wore it, and if I really wanted to find the answers I was searching for.
I unzipped the bag and dug around inside but found nothing there save for silk and organza.
That was probably for the best.
Rehanging the gown, I stepped back to make sure it looked untouched.
And that was when I saw the box I’d given my mother when I was five.
It was covered with painted hearts and flowers, and I borrowed the stool from Mom’s dressing table to stand on and get it down from the shelf sheltering the long line of elegant clothes.
Inside were pictures of her and my dad, but not as many as one would expect for someone who’d been married to and had created life with the man.
My eyes squeezed closed at what I saw beneath them. The reason I’d felt compelled to invade her privacy in the first place.
Letters. Every single letter I’d written to my dad.
They were still in the envelopes I’d made sure to steal from Mom’s office. I remember thinking the less she had to do, then the less she’d make a face at me every time I asked her to send one to him.
That face wasn’t made in annoyance as I’d once thought, though. No, I knew her much better now. Far better than I ever had before.
It had been guilt.
Jude
The island came alive in a way rarely seen unless for important holidays.
Settlers Eve was one of them, and this one was expected to be a blowout to end all others being the hundredth anniversary of Peridot Island.
Carnivals were set up down by the docks and the beaches. The pub and two nightclubs overflowed. The movie theater and bowling alley were open free of charge. Restaurants took their business out into the market square to feed the many people coming and going from one activity to the next.
People came from all over to visit the island every year on its birthday. It wasn’t its real birthday. It’d been here, awaiting our arrival for fuck knows how long. But it didn’t matter. People came home from school, returned from their new lives off the island, and some even visited just for the experience.
We’d loved it as kids—the ability to sneak around the market square and the darker recesses of town virtually unnoticed.
So it was pretty damn inconvenient, for Fern anyway, that I should just so happen to wind up at the same party she was at. Especially after she’d been ignoring me for the past couple of days.
Perhaps I was being paranoid, but I hadn’t realized she’d been a part of any study group when I’d finally cornered her coming down the stairs this morning. “It’s recent,” she’d said.
“You’re the worst liar I’ve ever met,” I’d told her.
She’d just blinked at me before walking straight out the door.
I tipped the bottle of bourbon back, relishing the burn, and watched the stars wink at one another out on the back porch of Tyler’s place.
The party raged on inside, people spilling out of the narrow beachside condo every so often, laughing, singing, or sucking face on their way down to the water.
I froze, the neck of the bottle in my clenching hand, when I saw a flash of red hair and that smile.
Fern was walking back from the water with some guy I didn’t know or give two shits about.
“Well, well.” I drank some more, if only to keep from leaping at the preppy looking prick, and smirked up at my wife. “If it isn’t my wife.”
The guy next to Fern made a comical expression of half disbelief, half shock. “What?”
Fern shot her eyes my way, but there was no guilt, no remorse or fear for being caught. “We were just taking a walk.”
I looked down at the bottle in my hand, then I rose from the deck chair and headed inside.
“Jude,” Fern called, but I wasn’t stopping.
If she searched for me, she didn’t try very hard. I sat in the dining room, talking shit with Gary for the better part of an hour.
It was possible she’d left, and the thought of her leaving with that guy… I kept drinking until the room began to change color. Golden swathed bodies darted around the table, drinks spilling when a chick was lifted over it for some dude
to attack her neck.
They left. Gary left. More drinks were poured. Discarded chip bags were knocked to the floor, many sets of feet crunching the plastic.
“Hey, stranger.”
I looked up to find a blurred yet all-too-familiar face. “Marns,” I slurred.
Her smile wobbled, or maybe I was finally trashed enough not to see straight after all. Mission accomplished.
Standing, I swayed, and she laughed as she grabbed my arm to try to steady me.
She fell into my lap on the chair instead, still reeking of that same perfume, her soft hair a little longer. “I’d ask how you’re doing”—she tapped the bottle in my hand—“but I heard you married the school nobody, so you must be miserable.”
“You’re not entirely wrong.”
Marnie laughed. “I told all my friends it had to be arranged. That maybe she’s pregnant or something.”
I widened my eyes, thinking that’d help me see better. “Sure.”
“So, then maybe you didn’t want to break up with me, and you’ve been missing me as much as I’ve been missing you.”
I belched, and she shoved my face away. “I haven’t missed fighting with you, that’s for damn sure.” Me and my stupid mouth. Though there wasn’t much reason to keep my less than lovely thoughts to myself anymore.
“But we fought so well,” she said, her hand cupping my cheek. When I didn’t say a word, she continued, “I almost didn’t come home for Settlers Eve. But I wanted to see you, to see if this Fern thing was real.”
Fern.
Her name bashed into my skull. The weight in my lap felt wrong, the shape of a hip under my hand too bony. “Okay, I guess.” I blinked, then blinked again, trying to get a clear image of this woman.
Marnie’s soft laughter was all the reminder and warning I had before her face was right in front of mine, and our lips met a second later.
I’d already been ninety-nine point nine percent certain I didn’t need to kiss her to know I was over her, but now I was one hundred and ten thousand percent fucking sure I felt nothing.
Nothing save for a colossal amount of regret.
I tore my mouth away, mumbling, “Don’t want to.”