by Ella Fields
Jude Delouxe, my teenage crush turned high school bully, had done the unthinkable. He’d stolen beneath my skin, and with every encounter, every touch, and every earnest word, he’d crawled closer to my heart. And now I was certain it would be a death sentence to admit he’d sunk inside it.
So I wouldn’t.
Sydney was nothing I was ready or prepared for, its streets bustling with people and traffic in steady streams that never seemed to end. It reminded me of a smaller, less volatile version of New York.
A part of me longed to stay beneath the crystal blue skies, birds flying alongside planes, and listen to the music drifting from every other street corner.
I could see why he chose this place, even if I chose not to run away from my wounds.
A bus ride and an Uber to the outer suburbs later, and that bright sun was beginning to grow tired.
I could relate, but the exhaustion I felt hadn’t yet kicked in enough to warrant stopping. Adrenaline and that overabundant curiosity I’d always harbored for things better left alone dragged my feet from the weed-speckled sidewalk and up a brick-paved garden path.
The house was brick too, covered in a cream layer of concrete that was chipping away at the corners and around the edges of the square windows. Lace curtains covered them, allowing the last vestiges of daylight to creep inside a single-story fortress that shielded my father.
I walked up the two maroon steps and marched straight to the black screen door.
Then I knocked.
A dog growled and snarled inside, barking the entire journey to the door.
The wooden barrier opened, and there he was, dressed in navy sweats and a stained sports jersey. “Hello…” He blinked so hard it opened his eyes wider. “Fern?”
He was nothing like I remembered while being everything I expected. His medium brown hair held streaks of gray, and he’d grown a beard. He kept it tidy and short, his mustache shifting as he scrubbed his cheek.
Large dull blue eyes looked at mine, blinking again. “Holy shit, it is you.” Tears glistened in those eyes, the eyes he’d given me, a couple dropping to his cheeks. “Christ, you’ve grown. But you…” He made a show of looking down the empty street. “You shouldn’t be here.”
I kept looking at him, clutching my backpack tight before me. “I know, but I am. May I come inside?”
He hesitated, and I licked my teeth in an attempt to keep a harsh word at bay.
The dog kept sniffing at the door and shoved its head around Daryl’s legs. A Rottweiler.
He’d need more than that and an ocean to protect him from them, and he knew it.
Still, we all had our comforts.
I wondered what it meant that I wasn’t crying, too.
Grabbing his dog by the black collar around its neck, he opened the door. “Barny, stay.”
“Well trained,” I commented, studying the dog after I’d stepped into the short hallway.
Barny stared at me, and I stepped forward, holding out my hand.
He growled but then sniffed away. Five seconds later, he was licking me. “Good boy,” I said, patting his huge head.
“Are you, um…” Daryl closed the door. “Are you staying or…?”
He was eyeing my bag, which I’d dropped to the floor beneath an entry table covered in mail. Above it, a small wooden plank with a red heart in the middle and two hooks either side of it sat on the wall. One of them hung his keys; the other was awaiting someone else’s.
He didn’t live alone.
“I won’t take up too much of your time.”
“It’s fine. I’ve not long got in from work, and Danni should be home soon.”
“Wife?” I asked.
“Girlfriend.” He gestured down the hall, and I let him take the lead while I took note of the suede sectional in the living room, the flat screen on a glass entertainment unit, and the numerous dog toys littering the tiled floor. “She works at a call center in the city.”
“Where do you work?”
He froze in a stark white kitchen, his back to me as he stared inside his fridge. “Drink?”
“I’m good, thanks.”
He grabbed a beer and shut the door, popping the top.
I followed him to a large brown dining table outside the kitchen. A sliding glass door overlooked a kidney-shaped pool and an outdoor wicker setting.
I lowered to the cushioned suede seat, and he moved to the opposite end with his back to the pool. “I’m a high school gym teacher.” He still had an American accent, though some of his pronunciations were lower, some words rolling into the next as I’d experienced with the few Australians I’d met today.
“I sent you letters,” I said, folding my hands on the table. “I recently found them all in my mother’s room.”
Something moved over his face, frosting his features a little. “Right. How is she?”
“Fine. Why would she keep them? And why haven’t you ever called, let alone visited?”
His brows furrowed. “You’re one of them now, I assume.”
I lifted the hand wearing my bling. “Married at the tender age of nineteen.”
“Your birthday’s not for another two months.”
Surprised he’d remembered, a jolt traveled through me, straightening my spine. “It’s nice to know you haven’t forgotten that much, at least.”
He sipped his beer, thumbs dragging down the chilled sides for a heavy minute as he stared at it. “I haven’t forgotten anything, Fern. I never will.”
“What happened?” I finally dared to ask.
His head began to shake. “You can’t ask me that, and I can’t tell you. You know that.”
“I don’t know nearly enough,” I said, my voice roughened with anger. “All I know is that one day, you were there, and the next, you were gone. You were my best friend, my only ally, and you left me to rot in the dark.”
“Fern…”
“No,” I said, slamming a fist on the table. “I came all the way here for answers. I don’t want anything from you other than the god damned truth.”
He cupped his mouth with his hand and rubbed. “You’re right. You’re right, but you know what they’ll do to me when they find out I talked?”
“They won’t.”
“You’ve met your mother by now, correct?” His brow arched. “The real January Denane. Ever wonder why you had her last name and not mine?”
I sat back, slouching a little. “Sometimes.”
“Because although my blood runs through your veins, you were never going to be mine.”
Cold brushed over my bare arms, and I blinked at him. “What do you mean?”
“I was plucked from college graduation, working two dead-end jobs with a degree I’d hoped would make all the difference while knowing it would make none.” Leaning forward, he lowered his voice. “Her parents were so meticulous in their selection. I was a fucking orphan through most of elementary school until some wiseass shoved me into the system, and I jumped from home to home. I have no family, Fern. I never have, and I never will. I was a tool for them to fuck their daughter with, nice and hard while they watched on like the sick fucks they were.”
As though remembering who he was talking to—his daughter—his eyes popped, and he drank half his beer, collecting himself.
“I loved her. I won’t lie. She’s incorrigible and insane, but I eventually fell for her.” He licked his lips, cheeks billowing as he set a large exhale free. “January hasn’t loved me a day in her life. She might love women, but I highly doubt she’ll ever truly love any one of them either.” He jabbed a finger at me. “You’re the only exception. The moment you were born, I saw the immediate shift in her. I watched as the snake became the wolf.”
Stunned, I stared, some of the ice in my blood thawing.
“Make many friends at school?” Daryl asked, then huffed when I couldn’t answer that. “Didn’t think so. Had many boyfriends?”
You know the rules… I remembered some of them saying to one anothe
r and struggled to swallow. “You make her sound like a monster,” I rasped. January was many things, but for every fault she never hid was a promise to protect me while surviving this life as best she could.
“She’s not,” my father said, expelling a pained breath. “She’s not. She did it for your own good, but I bet it sucked for you.”
“Enough about me.”
He studied me for a moment, then nodded. “I tried, Fern. They promised me the world when I agreed to marry their daughter for reasons I would soon find out had nothing to do with me, but I knew, shortly after my entire life had changed at their hands, that world they’d promised me? It wasn’t fucking worth it.”
“You were her initiation,” I said.
“Correct. We married right out of school, but they refused to ink her skin and allow her all the way in until she bore them a child.”
My own skin began to tingle at my back, and a muddled sense of disorientation spun me where I sat. “You initiated.”
He nodded. Barny whined at his side, anxious.
“She couldn’t until she had me.”
He nodded again and finished his beer. “Look,” he said. “She gave me a choice after what happened to your grandparents. She was already second tier. She and Elijah…” He flicked a hand. “They have some weird silent pact. There was no way I’d stand a chance at fighting them. So when she offered me the money, a chance for a normal life if I never returned to hers or yours, a life I could keep if I stayed away and kept quiet, I took it.”
His hands spread as though he’d lost a game of poker and his yearly savings. “I’m sorry. Do I regret leaving?” He shrugged. “Sometimes, yes. But only because of you. You were the only light in that fucked-up world I’d willingly walked into, and I loved you so much.” He sniffed then and wiped beneath his nose before looking at me with wet eyes. “I still do, but this is where we are, and we can’t change that.”
This is where we are…
And I was beginning to think these answers weren’t worth escaping where I needed to be.
Blinking away tears, I nodded once. “How much?”
“Fern,” he warned. “We’re not—”
“How fucking much?” I yelled, and Barny shifted.
“Two mil.”
I glanced around his home, then at the shame disguised as a man in worn comfort attire, and laughed. It was wet, and I coughed. “Wow.” I stood and tucked my chair back in. “I’m sorry, too, because I’m worth more than two million, and I was fucking worth swimming in the dark for.”
“I know,” he said, tears on his cheeks once more. “I know, Cherub.”
Staring at the man who once told me fairy tales before bed, who made me princess bread and dug out splinters from my fingers after playing with driftwood in the sand, I smiled. “Don’t waste time looking over your shoulder. She wouldn’t do that to me.” Then I forced myself down the hall to my bag. “Have a magical life, Dad.”
I was on a return flight five hours later, and I didn’t wake up until it was nearly time to catch the connecting flight.
Feeling the exhaustion and a dire need for a shower, I cleaned up as best I could in the bathroom and then gazed out the window to the world hidden below the clouds until we touched down in New York.
A shower and a steak were at the top of my list of things to accomplish as soon as feasibly possible. Seeing my husband waiting for me in the airport was not.
I halted outside the baggage claim even though I had no baggage to pick up. I’d left most of it behind in Sydney. “Jude.”
“Red.”
Dressed in black jeans and a long-sleeved gray shirt that hugged his biceps, he stepped forward and took my bag. “Hi.”
“Hey,” I said, knowing I had to look like hell but too weary to care. “What are you doing here?”
“That’s not obvious?” His hand slipped over mine, and he led me to the gates that would take us to our plane home. “I’m picking up my wife.”
I couldn’t summon the energy to grill him anymore. In our seats on the small jet, I hugged my bag to my chest and stared up at him.
“Glean anything of use?”
“Enough to move on and close that door.” I was sure he knew enough about my parents, maybe not as much as me, but more than I’d known until these past forty-eight hours. Nevertheless, I didn’t want to talk about it, and we both knew it was not the place to do so anyway.
But there was one thing that refused to stay hidden. “January created some type of invisible bubble around me.” He knew exactly what I was talking about. “With the exception of Coraline, no one ever came near me.”
“My guess is she didn’t want your pure heart tampered with, but she also didn’t want you to hear any rumors, as untrue as they might be. Cory was safe, and she isn’t a spoiled brat, so that explains that.” Jude’s eyes drifted to the window. “And me?” His head tilted, as did his lips. “Well, I am. I wanted you, and so I didn’t care. I still don’t.” His eyes returned with his next statement. “We aren’t a door you can close, Red. I’ll stand there and block it for the rest of my days if need be.” Fingers fluttered over the hair tickling my cheek, shifting it behind my ear.
“The terrifying thing is”—I closed my eyes—“I think I might actually believe you.”
Pushing the armrest up, he pulled me into his side, and I drew what felt like my first full breath since seeing that address he’d given me. “Thank you.” I knew it had to cost him to ask his father for that intel, and that they were both risking a lot by giving it to me.
He squeezed me. “Don’t mention it.”
We landed just under an hour later, but instead of heading straight home, I said, “Please take me to Cory’s.”
Jude glanced over at me, but I kept my eyes facing forward. Flicking the turn signal on, he said, “Only if you’ll call me if she doesn’t answer.”
“Deal.”
It was near dark when he dropped me off outside the closed bookstore. I listened for the sound of his car pulling back out onto the road, but it never came.
Then I waited at Coraline’s door after banging the knocker. My legs ached. I was about to slump to the cracked concrete step when I heard a latch clunk and hinges squeak.
“You’d better have something tasty in that bag of yours.”
I smiled and raced inside before she could change her mind.
I ended up spending the night at Cory’s, unable to answer her many questions but hearing her and offering what comfort I could when she talked and cried and cursed.
When I arrived home the following morning, it was to an empty house.
I showered and washed my hair, then tossed the clothes from my bag into the washing machine. I ordered that steak I wanted as well as two extras for Silas and Jude, but neither of them came home.
I wrapped and put their meals in the fridge, then stole Jude’s current read from his nightstand and took it to bed with me. Another thriller. I was hoping he’d gone back to something more fantastical in my short absence. He seemed to binge one genre before needing to change things up again. He’d made a habit of leaving the books he’d finished on the living room coffee table, so if I wanted to read one, then I wouldn’t need to go into his room to steal it.
I didn’t want to wait. I wanted to feel close to him in some way while wishing I didn’t need to.
I was on chapter five when I heard the front door open and close, then footsteps coming up the stairs.
I knew he was staring at me from my doorway without having to look. I could feel him, taste his presence in the crisp night air. “Are you okay?” The question came from nowhere, falling into the world without my approval.
I lowered the book when he said, “You could say you inspired me to do something I should’ve done a long time ago.”
I bookmarked the page. “You saw your mom.”
Jude crossed the room but then paused, toeing off his boots.
I placed the book on my dresser in answer, and he continued be
fore climbing into my bed next to me. “Are you liking it?”
I turned to face him. He tucked his hand beneath his cheek, his eyes a little bloodshot and his hair finger mussed. “Bored. The last one was better.”
He smirked. “You’ve done better than me.”
“I know,” I said, remembering where he’d placed the bookmark.
We stared for a while, his long lashes bobbing and curling up as he studied my face. “She asked how Henry was.”
“Yeah?” I said. “What did you tell her?”
“That he missed her,” he whispered. “That I missed her too, and that I was sorry.”
My teeth caught my lip, and I nodded, waiting.
“I was asked to maim her lover’s hand. I didn’t know who it was, only that he’d be at the location I was sent to, and no one else should’ve been there.”
“What if there had been others there?”
“They said he had a partner, but to continue if she was present. Otherwise, wait to get him alone.”
I felt his breath grow colder as though it were my own, and I reached beneath the duvet to hold his hand.
He lifted our hands to my mouth to tug my lip free of my teeth, then tucked them into his warm chest. “Park paints and is world-renowned. Mom met him during an exhibition here near campus. I don’t know much about what happened with them after that, and I don’t think I want to.”
I squeezed his hand.
“I didn’t know him. I’d only heard the rumors, and I, uh…” He stopped, clearing some of the emotion from his throat. “I stabbed him in the arm and in the hand. I was supposed to…” His eyes closed. “I was supposed to twist the knife, Fern. I was supposed to fucking twist it, but then she screamed, and I knew who it was—who she was—and then I ran away. I almost left her in the street while she had some type of intense panic attack.”
“But you didn’t,” I said.
“No,” he rasped. “I called an ambulance, forgetting I shouldn’t bother, and then I called my dad…”
“Then you were in,” I finished for him.
“I failed. Not only is his hand fucking fine, but I ruined Henry’s life. I took away his mother all because I wanted inside this fucked-up society. I looked up to my dad; I noticed the way people looked at him. I saw the reverence. I overheard the phone calls, the mystery, the power… I was enthralled, drunk, and addicted to the idea of one day getting to be something so coveted and untouchable that people would trip over themselves when they saw me.”