Page 25 of His Holy Chaos

I set the tablet down. Then I look at him.

"You passed out in a parking lot last night covered in your own vomit. You nearly choked. So I'd be very careful, Jude, about the tone you take with me this morning."

Something flickers across his face, the real Jude. He pulls out a chair and drops into it, wincing. I pour him coffee without asking and slide it across the counter.

He wraps both hands around the mug. For a moment, neither of us speaks.

"Why didn't you just leave me there?" he asks, quieter now. The bravado has thinned, gone. "I deserved it."

I take a slow sip of my coffee. "Because if I'd left you there, you'd have ended up in a hospital. Or worse. And I'm not interested in reading your obituary, Jude."

He flinches. "You're so dramatic."

"And you're self-destructive to the point of being comical." I set my mug down and lean forward, resting my forearms on the counter, closing the distance between us just enough to make him feel it. His eyes dart to my hands, then back to my face. "What happened last night. That doesn't happen again."

"You don't get to tell me what to do, Mr. Dom," he says, and there's something raw in it that I don't think he meant to let slip.

"No," I agree. "I don't. And that's the problem, isn't it?"

He stares at me. "What are you saying?" he asks, and his voice has gone very still.

I hold his gaze. "I'm saying that if you were mine, last night wouldn't have happened. You wouldn't have been at that club drunk like that. You wouldn't have been drinking yourself into oblivion over Emmett or anyone else. And the stunt you pulled, screaming at me in front of everybody there? Being rude, disrespectful?" I pause. "You wouldn't be able to sit down for a week. Or more. You'd be begging for forgiveness every day until I'm sure you learned your lesson."

The color that rises in his cheeks is immediate. It spreads from his throat to the tips of his ears, and I watch his pupils blow wide. His fingers tighten on the coffee mug. He looks away, his throat bobbing.

"You are the one who keeps saying we're incompatible," he murmurs.

"I know. But you'll never hear that from me again. I promise." I tell him. He looks absolutely lost for a moment, then looks away.

"I need a shower," he says flatly. "And my clothes."

He leaves that afternoon in an Uber I call for him, wearing one of my t-shirts that hangs past his thighs and his own jeans, still faintly stained. He doesn't say goodbye. He doesn't say thank you. He pauses at the front door with his back to me, one hand on the frame, and I think he's going to say something but instead he just shakes his head and walks out into the cold.

Chapter 15. Jude

I've been standing on Ford's stoop for eleven minutes. I know this because I've checked my phone six times, and each time the screen lights up with its accusatory little clock, I think about turning around and walking back down the street and into the nearest bar, or into traffic, whichever presents itself first.

I had texted him. "Is it okay if I come by? I need to talk to you."

He answered not long before with a simple "yes."

Good enough. Maybe better than what I deserve.

The wind finds every gap in my jacket. My fingers are numb. My nose is running. I look like a stray dog who's shown up at the one door in the neighborhood that might feed him or might call animal control, and the odds feel about even.

I was last here semi-conscious and covered in my own vomit. A real Cinderella story.

I ring the intercom.

The wait is horrible, and it feels like forever, but it isn't. Ten seconds, maybe fifteen, and then he answers it.

"Yes?"

I don't know what to say for a second, but I force myself to produce words.

"Hi… Ford… it's… it's me."

"Jude."