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I sneered. “Moral grounds. We’re not doing anything immoral.”
“I agree,” Jude said firmly. “I don’t want you to think that I feel there’s anything wrong with… us. Because I don’t. It’s our business, and it’s… perfect. We just live in a conservative area, and I’m really worried about the wrong people finding out. If the school were to find out, for example, I could lose this grant. I could lose my scholarship.”
We all exchanged looks. “So, basically, we need to keep this really quiet,” I concluded.
Jude nodded, lower lip trembling. “I’m not ashamed of you. I’m not embarrassed, or—”
“Shhh.” Baron stood and walked around to her chair, squatting down beside it and putting his arms around her. “We get it. I want to shout from the rooftops that you’re my girl, but I can wait. The others, too, right, guys?” Gale and I murmured agreement. “So no more worrying, okay? We take it one day at a time, figure things out as we go.”
She nodded. “I was so worried—”
I rose and walked to her. “You don’t have to worry, babe. There are now four minds working on your problem, instead of just one. We’ll figure it all out in due time.” Standing behind her, I trailed a finger down the nape of her neck and bent to whisper in her ear. “Currently the only thing we need to figure out is whose bed you’re sleeping in tonight.”
Her pale skin flushed pink. “I hadn’t really thought about it.”
“Well, start thinking. You’re ours, now. I, for one, intend to take full advantage of every closed door and keep you close.”
Chapter 37: Jude
Iended up sleeping with Galen that night. I felt weird about going from sex with one guy to bed with another, especially when I still felt like we had work to do to move beyond our past. Galen and I, in comparison to my relationships with Baron and Ezra, had been all spark and fiery flame, with none of the kindling warmth to build a foundation.
That was changing.
I wanted to know him. I wanted to know all of them, but Galen, in particular, had been so closed for so long. I needed to understand all the things that made him Gale to his friends.
So we lay in his bed, a narrow twin that created all sorts of opportunities for touching, on our sides. Our faces separated by inches with my head resting on the bicep he had folded near his head, we talked until sleep slurred our voices and pulled us under.
“Tell me about your mother,” I demanded.
He swallowed. “She was petite and dark-haired, with these incredible blue eyes.”
“So like yours.”
He smiled, but it was sad. “She used to cook. I remember these chocolate oatmeal cookies she made all the time, because they were fast. She’d let me stir the oatmeal into the chocolate sauce.”
“What happened to her?”
“My dad died when I was seven. He had an aneurysm, lost control of the vehicle they were in. The crash messed up part of Mom’s spine and they put her on pain meds.”
“Oxy?”
“Yeah.” His voice was grim. “She changed. It’s difficult to pin it to a moment when I knew she’d never be the same, but years later, when the doctors started refusing the oxy, she went to heroin.” I nodded. It was a familiar epidemic. “I was in and out of foster care until she finally OD’d for the fifth and final time when I was sixteen. After that I went to live with Baron.”
Galen’s other hand was resting on the bed between us, and I covered it with my own. “I’m sorry, Galen.”
Bending forward, he kissed me, our lips clinging together for several long seconds.
“What about your mom?”
I frowned. “What about her?”
“I noticed you left her out of your story earlier. Where is she? Why isn’t your younger sister with her?”
A groan escaped me. “I hate talking about her. Hate… her.” I’d never said that before. It boiled up out of me, the rage I felt at her disappearance, at her choice to leave her daughters to just fend for themselves. As soon as I said it, though, I knew it wasn’t true. “I didn’t mean that.”
“I know, baby. Believe me, I know.”
He waited patiently, and eventually the story came. “She left us. The day of Dad’s conviction, she walked out of the courtroom and just...walked away. We have no idea where she went. The police said they couldn’t find where she had been taken or coerced or anything, so for all intents and purposes, the… child abandonment... was of her own free will.” It was an ugly term, one I’d fought against using for a long time. But what was it, if not abandonment?
