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His lips brush my forehead, an act that I’ve come to think of as far more intimate than any passionate kiss he could place on my lips.
After a moment, he takes me by the hand, threading his fingers through mine as he leads me into the house. Caleb looks up from his bowl of cereal when the front door closes behind us. His gaze shifts from Jude to me then back, a small smile lifting his lips when Jude drops my hand.
“Don’t even fucking start, Caleb,” Jude says, grumpy as ever as he disappears around the corner of the hallway, leaving me alone with Caleb.
Caleb shovels a spoonful of cereal into his mouth, staring at me as the door to the basement bangs closed. “I knew you two were fucking. That’s messed up.”
Heat flashes over my face, not just due to his question, but due to the fact that now I’m imagining what it would be like to be pinned underneath Jude’s naked body, his teeth at my neck while he sinks deep inside of me. “We are not fucking.”
“Come on, Ria. You sleep in his bed. He let you go.” One of his dark brows slowly inches up. “You came back...”
I’m not even going to dignify that, probably because I can’t formulate anything that doesn’t sound insane. “If you recall, I slept in your bed first. Doesn’t mean anything.”
“Let me rephrase it. You came back…”
“Because he faked my death, ruined my life, and I don’t want to be Sarah Jones with her shitty life.” And because some really messed up part of me wants Jude, needs him even.
I’m not sure if it’s the condescending smirk shaping Caleb’s face or the fact that we both know that’s not the only reason that pisses me off. Whatever it is, it sends me over the edge.
I head for the bottle of liquor on the kitchen counter, not caring that it’s not even noon. I need something to make me forget this day ever happened.
Caleb eyes me from the table before he gets up and brings his bowl to the sink. He snatches it from me and brings it to his lips. “You can’t drink alone. That’s just sad.”
A couple of hours later, we’ve moved my pity party from the kitchen to two tattered lawn chairs out by the woods. The nearly empty bottle of Johnny Walker Red lays on its side on the grass—and I tell myself Caleb drank most of it, even though I’m struggling to see straight. “He beat the shit out of the guy for making me cry. He’s always had a temper.”
It isn’t hard to imagine a sixteen-year-old Jude raining hell on someone for making his six-year-old brother cry.
“He was protecting his little brother,” I say.
“Yeah. Just like he’s protecting you…” That makes my chest squeeze. Caleb shoves out of his chair and staggers toward the woods, snatching a pinecone from the ground.
He places it on a moss-covered tree stump, takes several steps back, then pulls the gun from the waist of his jeans and shoots. The little pinecone explodes.
I take a sip of the whiskey in my coffee mug, watching as he grabs another cone and sets it on the trunk. “You know,” I say. “The American obsession with guns confounds me.”
“I learned to shoot a gun when I was five.” Who the hell gives a five-year-old a gun? He pulls the trigger and misses this time, the bullet lodging in a tree and spraying bark everywhere.
“When I was five, I learned how to braid a Barbie’s hair. We had very different childhoods.”
Caleb stumbles sideways with the loaded gun, and I hunch down in my chair like I can hide from a stray bullet. “Wanna shoot it?” he asks, shoving it in my face.
I nearly topple out of my chair, trying to get away from it. “Hell no!”
“Fine. Be like that.” He spins around and fires off several more rounds at the trees, stopping only to reload. In the midst of the abrupt silence, a door slams.
“What in the hell are you doing?” Jude storms across the yard, and in my drunken state, I can’t help but appreciate the way the setting sun plays over the tattoos winding up his muscled arms. Damn him for being all hot and bad.
When he reaches us, his gaze drops to the empty whiskey bottle on the ground. He shoots a disapproving-father-glare at Caleb. “You’ve gotta be shitting me.” He snatches the weapon from his brother’s hand and pops him on the back of the head. “Don’t be stupid. Get in the house.”
“I was just shooting pinecones….”
“You’re drunk!”
On a groan, Caleb staggers toward the house, mumbling about Jude being a dick.
The permanently annoyed expression on Jude’s face deepens when I stand and stumble to the side. “And of course, you’re shitfaced. I’m gonna kill Caleb...” Without warning, he hoists me over his shoulder. The sudden movement makes me feel sick.
