His forehead lined as he unwrapped that philosophical present. He opened his mouth; nothing came out, so he closed it again. Seeing Jude tongue-tied made me smile; it somehow made him less intimidating.

Finally, he said. “That’s some stinkin’ smart shit,” he said, hanging his arms over his knees. “Who said that?”

Folding one leg over the other, I shrugged. “I did.”

“You are one smart little señorita, you know that, Luce?” he said, appraising me with warm eyes. “Not only is your name going to be in lights, you’re going to have, like, three acronyms after your name: Lucy Larson, M.D, P.H.D, and some other smart fill in the blank D.”

“Enough with the flattery, Ryder,” I said, wiping my forehead off with the back of my arm. “You’ve got some explaining to do. Some honest explaining to do,” I edited. “Yeah, I do,” he said, thumping his head against the mirror. “Why is the truth so damn hard to admit?”

“Because it’s honest,” I said.

“So damn smart,” he said under his breath, looking over at me.

This man was the pope, president, and god of dodging the topic. Too bad for him he was dealing with the queen, holy mother, and empress of seeing through a man’s stream of shit.

“Ryder.” I turned his face towards mine. I leveled him with a no nonsense look. “Explanation.” I leaned in, lifting my brows. “Now.”

“Bossy, too,” he muttered.

Since playing nice was getting me nowhere, I elbowed him in the ribs and decided to get this conversation ball rolling. “So you stole a car?” How could I sound so casual talking about this? Only one answer to that riddle. Jude Ryder.

“I prefer the term borrowed,” he said, clasping his hands together.

“I suppose most felons do,” I said, biting my tongue two words too late.

“No, you’re right,” he said, trying to comfort me after my flash of bitchiness. “I am a felon. A repeat felon. And if I was eighteen, I would have been locked away for at least a solid month, not just a few nights. It goes on my record as car theft, but I did, in my mind that night, borrow the car.”

I inhaled a dose of patience. This was new conversation territory for me and I was running low on sympathy. “Explain to me why, in your eyes, you borrowed a stolen car.”

He shifted in his seat. “The Chevelle was parked in a buddy of mine’s garage. Damon is a few years old than me and would have graduated from Southpointe, but he dropped out after his junior year and opened up his own garage. He specializes in rebuilding old cars, like real piecers, and turns them into beauties doctors and lawyers pay a hundred grand for,” he said, getting all animated. “You should have seen this one El Camino that came in once, it was a real hunk of junk, not even good enough for scrap metal, and Damon—”

“Jude,” I stopped him. “It thrills me to see you’ve got a passion in life other than women and being the honorary president of the Bad Boys Club of America, but I’ve got about fifteen minutes before my parents start blowing up my phone if I’m not home.”

“Sorry,” he said, cracking his neck. “So I do side jobs for Damon from time to time. I’ve got a knack for getting underneath the hood of a sexy ass machine and making her purr.”

I bit my lip to keep from laughing. “I bet you do.”

“Ah, Luce,” he said, curling his nose at me. “You have a sick, sick mind. You know that?”

“I learned from the best.”

“Ouch,” he said. “But deserved.”

“Very,” I added.

“So someone had just dropped the Chevelle off last week to have a full body detail job done. Damon left town for the weekend to visit his girl on the east side of the state, so he left me in charge of the garage.”

This is where I began to wince because I began to see the picture in the connect the dots he was drawing for me.

“Saturday came and Damon was gone, the owner wasn’t expecting the car back until Monday, and the keys were still in the ignition,” he said, taking a breath. “And me, being the morally corrupt idiot that I am, saw an opportunity I couldn’t pass up.”

“If Damon was on the opposite side of the state, and the owner wasn’t planning on picking it up for a couple days, how did the cops find out you’d taken it?” I asked, feeling sympathy trickling back into my heart.

“Because I didn’t follow my number one rule of always expecting the worst.” He sighed, rubbing his forearms. “Damon’s girl chose Saturday night to break up with his sorry ass, so when he got back to the garage and saw the Chevelle was missing, he assumed it was stolen and called the cops.”

“Wait,” I said, feeling a little numb. “Why would Damon head to the garage at ten o’clock on a Saturday night?” That was working a 24/7 work week.

“There’s a little loft above the garage he lives in,” Jude answered, staring straight ahead.

“And the cops found the car, and then they found you, and you got arrested.” Oversimplification at its worst, but I wasn’t capable of anything more complicated at the moment.

“Pretty much.”

“But didn’t you get to tell your side of the story?” I asked, taking my time untying my pointe shoes because I needed something else to focus on. “Didn’t they understand that it was all just an honest mistake?”

“I took a car that wasn’t mine, Luce,” Jude said, his voice quiet. “From where the cops are standing, that’s not an honest mistake. Plus, they called the owner, and the prick is so pissed, he’s threatening to sue Damon. Over nothing more than a few miles on one of his six cars he never even would have known was missing if Damon—” Cutting himself short, he tapped the floor with his fist. “If I hadn’t taken the car in the first place.”

“God, Jude.” Again, I had no other words.

“I know. I know,” he said. “So, not only have I jeopardized a buddy’s business he’s worked his ass off to turn into something, I added another mark on my two page record, and I’m likely out of a job too.”

I didn’t know how to solve any of those problems, and I was the master at problem solving. Throw me a problem and I’ll toss you back an answer, but I was coming up with a whole lot of nothing. “Can’t you get a new job?” I asked finally, a weak attempt at solving Jude’s problems.

He laughed one low note. “I live in a boys’ home and I have the record of a seasoned criminal. I can’t even get hired on as a burger flipper. I worked off the books for Damon because I don’t exactly pass background checks and the state says the boys’ home provides for all of our needs, so we aren’t technically allowed to get income paying jobs until we leave.” Grabbing one of my pointe shoes, he admired the pale ribbons, running them through his fingers.

“If you ever need something, money for whatever,” I said, clearing my throat. “I’ve got some money saved up from waiting tables during summers. You could have some whenever—”

Jude lifted his hand. “Luce, thanks, but no thanks,” he said, closing his eyes. “That’s sweet as hell of you to offer, but I’m not taking money from anyone, you least of all. I’m not a charity case and I don’t take hand-outs.”

“I never said you were.”

“No, you didn’t,” he said, opening his eyes and looking straight into mine. “But everyone else has.”

That put a ball in my throat I couldn’t swallow. Clearing my throat again, I said, “What did you need the money for? Are you saving for college or a car or something?”

He rolled his eyes over college.

“Or are you blowing it all on bubblegum?” I asked, leaning into him.

“That’s more my style, but no. I have responsibilities, you know? Things that need taking care of.”

I didn’t know, but I wasn’t sure I was ready to know what Jude’s responsibilities were. “Things that I need to take care of and, before working for Damon, the only job I was able to work was the drug dealing one.” He looked over at me, watching my reaction.

Outside, I gave him nothing. Inside, I was falling apart. Jude had quite possibly the biggest heart I’d found in a man. He also had the longest rap sheet I had yet to encounter in a peer. He was the classic example of taking good intentions and delivering them poorly. He had so many problems weighing on his shoulders and I had no way to solve them for him. It was the most helpless I’d felt in five years.

I leaned my forehead into my bent knees. “Why did you take the car, Jude?” It wasn’t something I’d meant to say out loud, just an internal why-is-the-universe-so-unfair? musing.

“Come on, Luce,” he said, the mirrors playing games with the shadows of his face when he looked at me. “I couldn’t show up at your front door with nothing more than my two feet to get us to the dance.”

“Why couldn’t we have doubled up with another couple then?” I said, rubbing the arches of my brutalized feet. “Or why couldn’t we have taken my car? I would’ve even let you drive.” I was now even more pissed at the whole situation. One bad choice made with good intentions, followed by a string of unfortunate events that crashed around him like dominos.

“Because I’m sick of being a leech on society, on everyone around me. Because I’m tired of taking hand outs and I’m tired of the pity in the faces of those that give the hand outs. But really, most of all, because the girl I was taking out deserved the best,” he said, sliding down past my legs and pulling the foot out of my hands. “Let me do that,” he said, his hands swallowing up my whole foot as they gently worked the muscles out.

“Jude, I’m not the girl that wants or needs the best. I’d be over the rainbow with above average or meets expectations as long as the guy I had was the best.”

He focused on my feet, handling them like he was capable of breaking them in half. “You kind of drew the short straw on that one.”

I kept quiet because I wasn’t sure if I opened my mouth, I wouldn’t give away everything I still felt for him, despite knowing I shouldn’t. One part of me wanted Jude like I’d never wanted anything before, and the other part assured me if I followed this desire down its course, I would be left in more pieces than when I started.

“And for the record, since I know those shitheads are all saying I left you behind because I was done with you, or I didn’t want you slowing me down, or at least a dozen other BS explanations, the fact of the matter is I left you because I didn’t want you with me if I got caught,” he said, his shoulders tensing beneath his gray thermal. “I didn’t want them to try to label you an accomplice or anything.” He looked up at me with that fervent expression of his. “So that’s it, that’s the truth. Don’t let those jackasses try to twist it around to make you feel bad, okay?”