Wrong Kind of Love

A few seconds later, Jude places me amongst his crumpled sheets. I expect him to get undressed then take his spot on the floor like he has the last two nights, but instead, he leaves his clothes on and gets in beside me. I tense, then relax, then think I must be crazy for relaxing.

“When I find him, I’m gonna kill him.”

“Who?”

Jude turns his head on the pillow, his expression hardening as his finger brushes the wound on my throat. “Who the fuck do you think?”

I thought the guy was already dead. Caleb shot him, and he staggered out of the room, but the idea that the asshole is still alive incites an anger that bleeds from my fingertips to my toes. Before I came here, I only wanted to save lives, and now I wish a man dead. The idea of watching him die, of killing him myself, plays out in my mind. “Can you come back from killing someone?”

“No.” He rolls onto his side, his finger continuing to skim the scab at my throat. Soft. Gentle. “But can you come back from this?”

I swallow hard. Undoubtedly, Caleb told him what I did. Jude must see a girl who chose death over her dark fate, and, for some reason, I feel the need to justify myself. “He was going to rape me,” I whisper. I hate the way it sounds out loud even more than how it sounds in my head.

His eyes squeeze shut, and he drops his hand from my throat, fisting the sheets between us. I’m just about to speak when he shoves up from the bed, crosses the room to the bathroom, and slams the door behind. Seconds later, something smashes. I expect to hear a barrage of things breaking and shattering, but instead of more destruction, I’m met only by silence. And I think that’s almost worse.

I don’t know why, but his obvious rage makes me feel like a cracked vase that is one tap away from shattering into something unsalvageable. Sitting up, I swipe at the angry tears trailing down my cheeks but more quickly follow.

The bathroom door opens, and Jude’s shadow cuts across the room before he sinks to the bed beside me. “You shouldn’t be here, and I’m sorry. But goddamn it, believe me when I say, I will kill anyone who tries to hurt you.”

His declaration breaks me wide open, and everything pours out in a torrent of uncontrollable, broken sobs. Jude pulls me into his arms, his scent a soothing balm to my frayed emotions as I cry into his shirt. The irony that I’m crying on Jude, taking comfort in the man who is keeping me here, is not lost on me, and yet, with each calming sweep of his large hand over my hair, I feel a little less fractured. He holds me long enough for me to tape my broken pieces back together, long enough for my sobs to quiet and my tears to dry, and for me to fall asleep in the arms of a man I have no business letting hold me.

11

Jude

Thick steam hangs in the air as I stare at the cracked mirror over the bathroom sink. He was going to rape me. Tor’s declaration played on a loop in my head all night. With every ragged sob she made while I held her, I fantasized about murdering Bob slowly, painfully, and when I finally fell asleep with her in my arms, I dreamed of blood and vengeance.

Thoughts cycle through my mind like a rage-filled cyclone, ripping and roaring, winding my muscles so tight that the hot shower I just took didn’t relax them.

I wipe the fog from the mirror, shifting my frustration to another clusterfuck I’m currently dealing with, one I haven’t been able to focus on because of all the shit going on with Tor—Domingo Garcia, head of the Sinaloa cartel. I have a good mind to tell him to fuck right off. But that’s not how a man handles the cartel.

I stand at the sink and lather my face with shaving cream, playing out how the conversation between us will go as I shave. I’m to the part where I figure he’ll pull out a gun and aim it at my skull when the latch to the door clicks, the sudden interruption causing me to nick my jawline.

“Oh, sorry. I didn’t—” The sound of her voice unwinds me better than a thirty-minute shower could, and the way her cheeks redden when her gaze skates from my bare chest down to my towel winds me right back up—but in a very different way.

Her focus shifts to my jaw, and she skirts around me. “You’re bleeding,” she says, grabbing a piece of toilet paper like this is normal. Like she’s mine and gives a damn.