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"I should go," he muttered as he pushed at my shoulders. I released him because I didn't really have a choice.
"Jude, I—"
"Don't, Nikolai. Just don't."
Jude crawled out of the bed and over the foot of the mattress rather than trying to get past me. He yanked his sweats back up as he hurried to the bathroom and slammed the door shut behind him.
I did my best to clean up while Jude was in the bathroom. When he came back out, I said, "Jude, we should talk about this."
"Nothing to talk about," he said. "I need to get home. My phone is there and I need to see what kind of mess the police left behind."
His argument was far too reasonable. I was still reeling from what had happened and he was acting like it had been just a regular morning for him.
I took a step toward him, intent on making him admit he’d felt something, anything, but was interrupted by a knock on the door. I was tempted to ignore it but one look at Jude and I knew he wouldn’t handle it well if I pushed him too far.
I moved to the door and opened it. My sister, Elena, was standing on the other side, a tired-looking Maks in her arms. As soon as my nephew saw me, he held his arms out.
“Hey bud, how you feeling?” I asked as I took him from my sister.
Maks merely dropped his head on my shoulder. I looked at Elena who looked even more tired than her son. “Rough night?”
She nodded but then forced a smile to her lips as she said, “Maks and I are on a mission, aren’t we, Maks?” Elena rested her hand on her son’s arm for a moment. When the little boy made eye contact with her, his expression brightened a bit.
“Lunch,” he announced.
“And?” my sister prodded.
Maks hesitated for a moment, then yelled the same word but this time in Russian. Elena clapped excitedly.
“Good job, buddy,” I praised. I glanced at Jude, all prepared to introduce him to Maks and Elena, when I saw the deer-caught-in-headlights look in his eyes. While my first instinct was to shelter Jude from anyone and anything that made him uncomfortable, I resisted that urge and said to my sister, “We’ll be right down.”
Elena must have noticed Jude’s nervousness because she merely nodded her head. Her eyes shifted to Maks but when I gave her a little shake of my head, she quietly turned on her heel and left the room, shutting the door behind her. I pretended to focus on Maks even as I moved closer to Jude. “My sister is big on teaching the kids Russian in addition to English,” I explained. I went to sit on the couch with Maks. “Our parents were the same with us.”
I kept my eyes on Maks but that didn’t mean I wasn’t aware of Jude’s presence. I was beyond pleased when he moved around the couch and settled on the other end of it. I let my eyes connect with his. He’d relaxed somewhat, though he still held himself in a way that said he was waiting for the other shoe to drop.
“They wanted you to speak Russian and English?” he finally asked.
I nodded. “I mean, obviously there was the convenience factor since my parents didn’t know any English, but despite us leaving Russia, they didn’t want us to entirely lose that connection to where we’d come from.”
“Do you still have family there?” Jude asked.
I hesitated before nodding. “They’re not part of our lives, though.”
“How come?”
My stomach felt like it had twisted into a thousand different knots. How had our conversation ended up here? I’d only meant to give Jude some safe space so he’d feel more comfortable. Jude must have seen something in my expression because he murmured, “I’m sorry, that’s not any of my business—”
Jude made a move to stand up. Fortunately, my couch was small enough that I was able to reach out and grab his wrist before he completely escaped. It was awkward since I had Maks in my arms but thankfully, Jude didn’t pull away. In fact, when I gave his wrist a gentle tug, not only did he sit back down, he ended up sitting even closer to me.
Close enough that our outer thighs brushed up against each other.
“My parents each had big families, so growing up I had lots of uncles and aunts, cousins, second cousins, cousins a few times removed…” I sent Jude a small smile. “You get my drift.”
“Yeah,” Jude said with a grin.
“I guess my parents could tell pretty early on that I was different from the other kids.” I kept my eyes on Maks as I spoke.
A long silence hung in the air between me and Jude until he murmured, “You were gay.”
