Chasing Serenity (River Rain 1)

“But you said—”

Jamie interrupted him.

“I did what I did in my life, and I was driven to do it because I had a deep need to prove my father wrong, and then rub his nose in it, and not stop. That got in my way when I finally had a line to you, and I didn’t know how to be your father. That was all I knew. Pushing is not guiding. Judging is not offering wisdom. I learned that when you pulled away. But you don’t have anything to prove to me, Judge. I’ve always been proud of you.”

I’ve always been proud of you.

Jesus shit.

His jaw jerked sideways and up.

And then he and Dad were hugging.

“I’ve always been proud of you,” Jamie whispered in his ear, his voice hoarse.

This time, Judge swallowed.

They held on.

And they did that a long time.

Belinda Oakley lay silent beside them.

But it wasn’t lost on Judge that what she’d threatened happened.

Over her dead body he’d be with his father.

Judge just didn’t know what to do with that.

* * *

“I love this,” Chloe whispered to him.

She was lying on top of him.

It was late by the time they’d had lunch and gone out to Lucas to check in with the funeral home, deal with some of the details (his dad did know what his mom wanted, and after a memorial, she’d be cremated).

They decided to return, have dinner, and chill out before they went back the next day, to the house where Judge grew up. The house Jamie had bought for them. The house Belinda nearly lost countless times and would have if Jamie or AJ hadn’t stepped in to make sure she, but mostly Judge, wasn’t turned out into the street.

After dinner, they all hung in the living room of Chloe, Judge and Rix’s suite, Dru drinking wine, the rest of them sipping bourbon.

Eventually Jamie drifted away. Then Dru followed him. And Rix said he had to hit the sack.

So Chloe and Judge moved into their bedroom, prepared for bed, and that brought them to now.

Judge had just told her about his conversation with his dad.

“You seem okay,” she noted.

He gave her a squeeze with the arms he’d had light around her.

“I told you, I am.”

She was back to whispering, like Jamie was still in the other room. “He’s wrecked.”

“I know,” Judge whispered back.

She lifted a hand and tracked whatever pattern moved her on his cheekbone, temple, along his hairline, jaw.

Then she said, “Love just doesn’t die.”

Duncan and Imogen.

Corey and Imogen…and Duncan.

Tom and Imogen.

Jamie and Rosalind.

And Jamie and Belinda.

No.

Love just didn’t die.

“Baby,” he murmured.

Her gaze went to her finger at his jaw to his.

“Thanks for taking over.”

She assumed a mock severe expression. “You take the fun out of being bossy, because you’re so easy.”

He gave her a small smile.

She pushed up and kissed it.

When she pulled away, she tried to hide the concern that had dug deep in her eyes, and she failed.

So he threw her something.

“Can I ask a favor?”

If it was possible, not even a nanosecond passed before she said, “Anything.”

“I don’t know if they can do things like this, but can you call the funeral home tomorrow? Ask them to dye Mom’s hair so it’s…right. No one’s going to see her before…they finish things for her. I just can’t have her—”

“First thing in the morning, honey,” she said softly.

“Thanks.”

She touched her mouth to his again then moved away, his asking a favor doing nothing to alleviate her worry.

“I’m totally okay,” he said again.

“All right, mon beau,” she whispered.

She didn’t believe him.

He sighed.

Then he rolled her to her back.

And he gave her something she could believe in.

And he gave it to her good.

Chapter 26

The Fury

Chloe

The next morning…Monday…

“Judge’s whole ‘I’m totally cool’ act is fucking creepy as fuck.”

“Hmm,” I hummed to what Rix muttered to me under his breath as, ahead of us, tentatively, Jamie followed Judge, who was not tentative at all in walking up to a highly dilapidated, but obviously it had once been a rather nice, large, ranch-style home.

It was out in the middle of nowhere.

However, I might be wrong, but it seemed like that wasn’t the intention when it was built.

That said, I could see from a property that veritably screamed I don’t give a shit! why no one else would build anywhere nearby.

Looking at some of the siding that had slipped, the peeling paint around the eaves, the yard that had long since given up any hope of being a yard and was a tangle of knee-high weeds and scrub, I grabbed a stranglehold on my temper.

Because Judge grew up here.

My glorious Judge grew up in a home where the woman who owned it, the mother who had charge of him, didn’t even bother to mow the fucking lawn.

“Has he ever talked about her with you?” I asked Rix, also under my breath.