No, he’s not.
For once, Rafe absolutely isn’t lying.
I recall Lainey’s words at the barn party.
I think the only person with the power to hurt Jude is… you.
Bile rises up my throat. Hot, acidic bile. And beneath the nausea, beneath the wall of shock, a flutter of panic flaps its wings.
“All he does is lie,” Jude says.
My eyes burn. The words and illustrations on the page in my hand blur out of focus. Hastily, I swipe at a tear before it can fall.
“Nothing is wrong with me, Selah. I’m fine.”
“Show me, then.” Finally, I look at him.
And he is tortured.
Desperate.
Trapped.
“If you’re fine, if Rafe is lying, then show me the mark.”
He makes no move to show me anything.
I set the page on the counter and take a step toward him.
His Adam’s apple bobs. He is drawn tight as a bow. But he doesn’t object when I close the distance, when I unfasten the buttons of his coat. He just looks away, his nostrils flared, his profile carved in stone.
I slip the coat off his shoulders.
It falls in a heap.
I reach for his henley, but he catches my wrist.
The silence stretches between us—so thin and fraught I can hardly breathe. Then, like he’s reached the end of an argument he’s been having in his head, he takes the hem of his shirt and pulls it off, mussing his hair.
A gasp tumbles from my lips.
The mark climbs over his collarbone. Black tendrils creep across the broad expanse of his shoulders. They snake over his ribs, every line of muscle impossibly taut as he holds himself still. My fingers whisper down the slope of his abdomen, where the mark bleeds like ink.
His breath catches.
My own refuses to come.
There is an elephant sitting on my chest.
I take a step away.
Jude steps with me. “This isn’t because of you.”
I hold up my hand to maintain some distance.
“Selah, please…”
But there’s nothing he can say to erase what Ihave seen, what some faint, repressed part of me suspected. Because didn’t I see it already? In his bathroom, after I went into the well in search of the key. When we kissed, it grew beneath my palm. I saw it with my own eyes. But I ignored it. Dismissed it. A trick of my imagination. Only it wasn’t a trick. And I have been with him ever since. Kissing him. Hugging him. Loving him.
