That would be nice if we lived in a perfect world. “If you’re waiting for everything to feel right and perfect, I’ll save you the suspense and tell you that’s never going to happen,” I said, weaving my fingers through his. “But if you can look at me and say you want to be with me and I can look at you and know I want to be with you, then carpe diem, baby. Because that’s as perfect as it will ever get.”

He nodded, giving my fingers a squeeze. “You’re so damn smart, Luce,” he said, kissing my forehead as he stood. “I’ll see you in the morning,”

Now this was just getting absurd.

“Yes,” I said, grabbing his hand, “you will.” I patted the space beside me, throwing the covers down.

Jude studied the bed as if it were an equation.

I guessed what equation he was trying to work out in his mind. “Right or wrong?”

One side of his face lifted. “I’m not sure,” he confessed.

“Well, I am,” I said, tugging his hand.

He stalled one more second, but whether he just gave in to me or decided on his own, he crawled into bed beside me and wound his arms around me so tight I couldn’t breathe quite right.

I hadn’t experienced such peaceful sleep since that day, almost five years back to the day.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

It was early. Like the sun’s just thinking about rising early. On a Sunday morning, I usually slept another three hours, but this one I didn’t want to. I doubted I could have anyways.

I woke up with the same pit in my stomach I had each of the past four years on this day, that feeling that I wasn’t sure if I was going to throw up or pass out. The feeling of that day happening all over again, and then Jude’s arm wound around me a bit tighter in his sleep, and today everything seemed easier to handle.

He’d stayed. All night. He hadn’t let me go once.

He moaned something indecipherable in his sleep, tucking his face into my neck.

His beanie was still on. Topless and asleep, the man still kept that old hat in place. That couldn’t be good for a head; it needed to breathe every few years. Not sure why it felt like I was doing something I shouldn’t, I slid the hat back from his forehead and pulled it off.

His hair was so short and so light it almost looked like he was bald. And then I noticed the puckering and scarring of skin from the crown of his head to the neck that was familiar. Scars I’d been a couple inches of hair away from having. Burn scars. I ran my fingers over them, wishing I could erase them from his skin and the event that made them from his mind.

Trailing my fingers down his neck, I looked down at his back and, in the almost morning light, the maze of scars that scattered all the way down his back glared back at me. White scars protruded down his back, some small, most large, like he’d been torn open in a hundred different ways and closed back up by someone who didn’t know how to use a needle and thread. I doubted cadavers came out with fewer scars.

I felt sick, sicker than I’d felt waking up to this day, as my fingers drew a line over each raised scar, not able or wanting to imagine what had happened to the man sleeping beside me.

Suddenly, he jolted awake. His eyes were peaceful for the shortest second before he noticed the look on my face and what I held in my hand. Grabbing one of my wrists, he shoved it away before bolting out of bed, snatching his grey knit hat at the same time.

“What are you doing?” he cried, adjusting the hat back over his head. He was angry and he was hurt.

“What happened?” I whispered, sitting up in bed.

He lunged across the room, grabbing his long-sleeved gray thermal and tugging it over his head, not answering.

“They did the same thing to you,” I guessed, wishing these conclusions weren’t so easy to draw. “Those boys burnt you too.”

Jude wrapped his hands behind his head, his jaw clenching. “Not the same ones, but a few just like them,” he said, his voice tight.

“When I first moved to the boys’ home,” he said, forcing each word. “About five years ago.”

“Why?” I leaned forward, trying to grab his hand.

He swung it away. “It was a welcome present.”

“Oh my god,” I breathed, wondering if the devastation in Jude’s past ever ran out. “And the scars?”

Jude’s eyes settled on me. They were black. “You don’t want to know.”

He was right, but also wrong. “Yes, I do,” I whispered.

“I don’t want to tell you,” he replied, his chest rising and falling.

“Okay,” I swallowed, accepting Jude had just as many internal scars as he wore on his skin. “I’m sorry, Jude.”

“I don’t want your pity,” he said, “and I don’t want to rehash my whole childhood while you do that girl psychoanalysis bullshit. I’m a cancer, Luce. I told you that from the very beginning. You don’t need to know the nasty details to accept that.”

“Yes, you do,” I said, going against every instinct screaming at me to go embrace him. “You need the details so you know how to cure it. Let me help you,” I said, reaching for him again.

“Dammit, Luce,” he said, pacing around the room. “I’m not one of your pet projects. I’m not some dog you can rescue from being euthanized. I don’t need to be saved and I sure as hell don’t want to be saved.” Pausing, he finally looked at me. “So stop trying so damn hard.”

I knew this was the point I should back off, but I couldn’t.

“No,” I said firmly.

He glared at me. “I don’t want to be saved.”

I bit my tongue to keep any signs of tears away. “Yes, you do.”

His eyes flamed. “No,” his voice shook, “I don’t.” Backing away from me, he hit the edge of my dresser, knocking over a storage box I’d pulled down from the attic yesterday.

It crashed to the floor, its contents spreading across the carpet. I was out of bed and collecting the items before he turned around.

Jude’s head fell back to glare at the ceiling before crouching down to help me. His eyes latched onto something in my hand, his face falling. Snatching the photo from my fingers, he rose, looking at the photo like it wasn’t real.

“How do you know this guy?”

A deep breath. “He was my brother.”

“Your brother was John Larson?” he said, not blinking.

Now I was crying. This morning had just become too much for the woman of steel to keep the tears at bay. I looked up at the picture between Jude’s fingers. My brother’s senior year football photo. Only seven months before he’d been murdered. Five years ago today.

“Yes,” I said, wiping my face.

The photo dropped from Jude’s hand, his face blanching. “And your dad’s first name is Wyatt?”

I nodded, grabbing the photo that had fallen to the floor.

Jude spun around, throwing his fist into the wall. It shattered through the drywall, as a cloud of white dust erupted. “How could you keep something like this from me?” he shouted, turning on me, his whole body trembling.

I was so confused, so upset, I didn’t know which one I felt more. “I told you my brother died,” I said, settling John’s picture in my lap. “Sorry if I didn’t provide the gory details.”

Pacing over to the window, Jude stared out it, his shoulders rising and falling with his breath. “Details would have been nice in this situation,” he said, his voice about to break.

“What the hell are you talking about, Jude?” I whispered. Everything was falling apart, unraveling around me, and I didn’t know what had pulled the thread.

“My full name is Jude Ryder Jamieson,” he said, turning to look at me.

That name hit me like a train. The impact was so sudden, so powerful, I couldn’t speak.

“My dad,” he said, gripping the window sill, “went to jail for shooting and killing a young man.”

I shook my head, whipping my hair back and forth. “Stop,” I said, choking on the word. Everything was spinning out of control and I wanted off this ride.

“My dad’s name is Henry Jamieson.” He paused, looking through the window like he was either going to escape out it or drive his fist through it. “My father murdered your brother.”

The picture I held slid from my hands, flipping face down on the carpet. I felt like sobbing, my body needed the release of sobbing, but I was too numb to move. I kept repeating to myself that this wasn’t real, it wasn’t possible. I had not fallen in love with the man whose father had killed my brother. God wasn’t that cruel.

“Your dad,” I began, not sure if I could get it out, “ruined my family.”

Jude pounded the window sill. “And your dad is the one to blame for setting in motion the whole damn string of events!” he shouted, turning around. “After working for one of your dad’s companies for ten years, my dad got randomly selected for a drug test, failed it, and big Mr. Wyatt Larson got the final call. He fired him.”

“Jude, he had coke and meth in him. He almost killed a man on the job site,” I said, remembering every word that was spoken, every image portrayed during the trial. My parents were too gone in their loss to reason that letting their thirteen-year-old daughter sit in on her brother’s murder trial wasn’t the best thing to allow, but I wouldn’t stay home. Hiding beneath a blanket when my brother’s murderer was being tried felt wrong. I had been there for him, even in death.

“Because my mom had just bailed!” he shouted, the sinews of his neck popping to the surface. “He was going through a rough patch, but he would have come out of it, and as a reward for a decade of service, your dad fired him. The bank foreclosed on the house two months later and we were homeless. He dropped me off at the boys’ home the same day he shot your brother.”

I wanted to run away, but I couldn’t. I was still waiting to wake up from this nightmare to Jude’s sleeping body draped over mine. “He murdered my brother,” I repeated, the words acrid and wrong in my mouth.

“It was supposed to be your dad!” he exploded, everything draining from him. His shoulders rolled forward, his head falling. “It was supposed to be your dad,” he said in a whisper.

“No,”—my tip trembled—“it was supposed to be me.”

Jude froze, looking down at me like I was his enemy. “What the hell do you mean?”

I scooted against the wall, needing its support. “Mom had asked me to take Dad’s lunch down to him that Sunday—he was working around the clock to get that project done on time—but I was being difficult and said I didn’t want to. The job-site was close to our home and I could have biked.” I closed my eyes as everything played back in my mind. “So John said he would, and that was the last time I saw him alive. That’s who your dad put three bullets into when he showed up at the worksite that day. It should have been me, waiting inside dad’s mobile office, twirling the chair, when Henry Jamieson—who was so high on meth he wasn’t able to make out who was in that chair—shot and killed my brother.” Everything inside me deflated. I was nothing but the shell of a balloon, falling to the ground. “It was supposed to be me.”