The man this stunning creature that I wanted to know.
“Is that what we are, darlin’， friends? And here I thought you were going to stab me if I touched you.”
“I think I would have stabbed you if you didn’t.”
“And I think I would’ve died if I had to keep tiptoeing around you the way we’ve been doing the last few days. Hated it. The distance.”
“I hated it, too.”
The truth was, I’d gotten used to his friendship, or whatever other lie we wanted to label it.
The muscles in his body flexed. Torment rose to the surface.
“I fucked it up, Salem. Know it. I just…your daughter…”
That grief strobed like a beacon of devastation in the dark chasm of his eyes.
My heart skipped with the secrets I kept locked tight, panged against the ones I knew Jud was hiding, too.
Still, like a fool, I whispered, “What? What is it? You can tell me anything.”
Ominous laughter floated from his mouth, and his head shook against the hard floor where he lay. “No, see, that’s the problem, Salem. I opened up once and confessed who I was. It didn’t turn out so great.”
I swore the tattoo imprinted on his side burned against my chest.
Grim.
I swallowed back the disquiet, and I fell into the potency of those eyes. Into the gulf of darkness that waited below the surface.
“My wife—”
I didn’t mean for the gasp to get free, but it did, a shock in the air.
Jud’s mouth trembled and he curled his arm tighter around my back.
“I tried to be a better man, Salem. I fucking tried to leave the life I was raised in behind.”
Dread pounded through my blood.
His.
Mine.
A thunder that roared between us.
He looked up at me, no teasing left in the tone of his voice. “Our father was the president of a violent MC. I was raised in the life, Salem. He taught us to raid. To destroy. To kill.”
His teeth ground with the last.
Shame sparked across his flesh.
The air locked in my throat.
Fear and hurt and the rush of his pain.
It was like I could physically feel the ooze of the blood that stained his hands where they burned into my lower back.
I should get up and go.
Run.
Hide.
Pack our things and never look back.
This was the last place I should be. Wrapped up in him.
But I was already there.
Sinking into his being.
The man quicksand.
His tongue stroked over his lips before he continued, “We left that life behind when Gage was born. Got free because there was no chance Trent would raise him that way. We all wanted a second chance. To be something better. To offer something good instead of all the bad.”
His voice drifted with regret, then those eyes were pinning me through as he threaded the fingers of his right hand into my hair. “Met this girl…”
His mouth tipped down at the side. I wanted to bury myself in his body. Hold his pain.
“Loved the fuck outta her.” A rough chuckle came out with the admission. Shards of gutted sorrow.
“Jud…”
He shook his head to cut me off, and he moved to gather up my hand. He pressed my knuckles to his lips before he took a deep breath and forced out the admission. “Promised myself that I would never go back, Salem. That I was going to live clean. Be right.”
Everything quivered around him.
Torment radiating from his body.
The laughter that rolled was spite.
“Got sucked into some old shit, Salem. An old debt the owner had come to collect. My brother Logan…” He trailed off, shaking his head. “I had to do it. I had to protect him.”
I couldn’t speak, couldn’t do anything but watch as the agony pinched every line on his face into horror. “But it was fucked, Salem. They asked me to do something I couldn’t. I tried to fix it. Take it back. I tried to stop it, but it was too fuckin’ late. I didn’t mean…”
He choked on that.
Questions whirled through my mind.
My heart wouldn’t let me push him. The only thing I could do was listen. Hold whatever he was willing to give and pray it didn’t destroy me in the end.
He swallowed hard, then forced out, “I confessed it, Salem. I came home and confessed it because I couldn’t stand keeping secrets from her. Couldn’t take any more lies between us. Couldn’t sleep next to her while being riddled with that kind of guilt. But she saw who I really was, Salem. She saw the monster and she packed her things.”
Sympathy crushed my heart. Because I remembered—remembered the words he’d whispered to Eden.
Thank you for seeing him for who he is and not what he’s done.
Grief swam in my spirit.
His wife hadn’t seen that in him. And God, I could feel myself slipping into places I couldn’t go.
Jud’s hand curled over mine, and he ran his palm up and down the back of my hand, as if the motion offered comfort.
Respite.
Reprieve.
I wanted to be that for him.
Then he clamped it down tight as if I could keep him from floating away while the brittle words crumbled from his mouth. “She took our one-year-old daughter with her, Salem. She took her, and I never saw her again.”
Air streaked into my lungs.
Hot and thin.
Agony crushed down. A pain I knew all too well. I fought it. Refused it. The rush of tears that wanted to flee. But this wasn’t about me.
I hugged him tighter like I could be his rock when I’d never been so certain I could be a stumbling stone.
“That’s why I freaked out when I saw Juni. It just…hurt so fuckin’ much. Here was this little girl who’s so close to the same age as my daughter. My daughter who I don’t know. All I know is she’s got black hair and the cutest damned laugh, and she left a crater in me so deep and wide that it can’t ever be filled. I shouldn’t even have you here, Salem. Not for a fuckin’ minute should I get the grace of touching you. But I need you to understand why. It isn’t you or your kid. It’s me. It’s always me.”
“I’m so sorry, Jud.”
He kind of shrugged, attempted a smile that didn’t land. “And I’m just the fool who keeps trying to be better. Doing what’s right. Hoping one day…”
He trailed off at the very second we both realized what he was getting ready to say.
He was waiting for them to come back.
Who said anything about love?
Rejection burned a hole through the middle of me.
God, I was such a fool. So reckless.
But that’s the way he made me, and I didn’t know how to stop it.
I eased off him, no chance of hiding the way I shook.
I turned my face away as I reached for where my underwear and skirt were pooled on the floor, held back the hysterical laughter that wanted to burst from my throat.
The incredulous disbelief that was fully directed at myself.
Because how could I blame him for that?
I couldn’t.
I couldn’t.
And still, this stupid want burned. My body alive and my heart invested.
I slipped my clothes on while I felt Jud climb to stand behind me.
His presence powerful.
His pants rustled as he resituated them on his hips and zipped them up. Warily, I peeked at him.
He was standing facing away, and I clipped off a gasp when I saw the expanse of his back for the first time.