“How do you even get a fake bank account set up?” I ask, switching the conversation back to get him talking again.
“Declan knows people.”
“What kind of people?”
“Better that you don’t ask.”
“Fine. But tell me this. Does he know the truth about who you are?”
“He knows enough. And what he doesn’t know, he doesn’t ask. It’s how we’ve remained friends.”
“I see.” I wrap my arms around myself, feeling cold suddenly.
“Jude.” Slade places two fingers under my chin and lifts my eyes to his. “I’m sorry I can’t tell you everything you want to know. I don’t even know all the answers myself.”
I nod, trying to ignore the lump that comes to my throat whenever his past comes up. I hate the way he looks so lost because of it. I wish there was a way I could help him.
And I wish he would give me the answers he does know. It would be a start.
“Sometimes we grow the most when we’re uncomfortable,” I say.
His eyes soften and I lose myself in the piercing blue of them, my hearing muffling like I’m underwater as they steal my focus.
“You’re not like other women, are you?”
I roll my eyes, breaking the spell he has me under.
“Don’t tell me that. That’s just shitting on other women. Those are people’s friends, sisters, cousins, you know? They’re all special in their unique ways. Telling a woman she isn’t like the others is like saying there’s something wrong with every other woman in the world. I’ve always hated that phrase.”
“That’s not what I said.”
“It isn’t?”
“No. I said you’re on a mission, aren’t you?”
“A mission?”
“To understand things that might not have a simple explanation.”
“I want to understand you,” I say. “To know more about the man who’s helped me in ways I so badly needed.”
“If it wasn’t me, it’d have been some other guy. You just needed reminding how beautiful and desirable you are, Jude. That’s all. Your ex made you forget.”
My heart sinks as he takes my hand, leading me along. Maybe it really has been just sex to him.
He squeezes my hand.
My stomach flutters at the way he’s looking at me with his signature intensity that makes everything else around us cease to exist.
I smile back and his eyes soften before he pulls me to him for a deep kiss.
No, I’m not imagining it. It’s more than sex for him too. I know it is.
24
JUDE
“It’s so quiet here,”I muse, lifting my head from Slade’s bare chest where we’re lying on a blanket underneath the night sky.
