JUDE
For the first time in months, the words pour out of me, a cathartic tsunami sweeping over the page, spilling so fast that my fingers can barely keep up with my head.
The end of the story unfolds naturally, as if it were always meant to be this way and I just couldn’t see it. Too blinded by my fear. By my insecurities. By my inability to move past the massive roadblocks I put up for myself—in life and in the damn book.
All the upheaval of the last few weeks and the continued uncertainty regarding this situation with Roselli and Falco Enterprises should have shut me down creatively, but instead, it feels like adrenaline has been injected straight into my veins.
And it’s been like this since the moment I woke up, still dark outside, with Angelina wrapped in my arms. Her warm, soft body aligned perfectly with mine. Her sweet scent invading every breath. The absolute feeling of rightness that consumed me.
The perfect ending hit. One I hadn’t planned. One I never saw coming when I started the book. One I never could have seen when I was so blinded by all the things clouding my own head. And if I didn’t get it out on paper immediately, it would have eaten me alive.
Even as my fingers fly across the keys, the drastic shift in the narrative continues to shake me to my core.
Everything has changed.
This was never meant to be a love story.
It was always a tragedy.
One man watching the world pass him by and one woman too afraid to fully live in it. But somehow, it has morphed. It has changed as I have. As this life altered so completely, so did the story I thought I knew when I started it months ago.
The first pale light of sunrise starts to creep in through the new windows, but I keep typing, desperately trying to put Rosalie’s journey on the page, ensuring she gets the ending she deserves.
After everything that’s happened, everything she’s lost, I couldn’t let Rosalie’s story end the way I originally saw it. The bleak, dark future filled with loneliness and longing doesn’t have to be her reality anymore.
It doesn’t have to be anyone’s…
At last, I type the final period, and a massive weight I didn’t even realize I was carrying lifts off my shoulders, replaced with a sense of calm I don’t know if I’ve ever felt.
“You know, in twenty years, you’re going to regret sitting like that while you work.”
Angie’s voice breaking through the silence jerks my head toward it. She leans against the doorjamb to the bedroom, my T-shirt hanging off one shoulder and barely reaching mid-thigh.
“How long have you been standing there?”
She offers a little half-shrug and inclines her head toward the windows. “Since before there was any sun coming in those.”
A sudden chill settles over me.
Angie has been watching…
It never bothered me before, when I used to go sit at the Grind at the back corner table and write for hours, but it feels different now—maybe because of the content.
She approaches slowly, her bare feet hardly making a sound on the wood floor, and stares down at me where I sit against the wall near the windows, the same place I’ve always watched her from. “Really, that must be terrible for your back.”
I smirk at her. “I’m still young. My body can handle it.”
A scowl twists her perfect lips, and she raises a dark eyebrow. “You making fun of my age now?”
It’s impossible to fight my grin, and I hold out my hands and tug her toward me, then pull her palm to my lips to press a kiss there. “Absolutely not. You’re a fucking goddess and always have been, when you were twenty-two or now at thirty-seven.”
“Mm-hmm.”
Her little playful hum tells me she really isn’t mad at my joke, and the sudden need to have her pressed against me makes me push my computer onto the floor beside me and urge her to sit on my lap.
She straddles me, her knees on either side of my hips, and takes my face in her palms. “How long have you been sitting out here?”
“I don’t know, four or five hours.”
Her eyes widen slightly. “Good God. Did you sleep at all last night?”
I shake my head and press a kiss to the inside of her wrist. “No, not really. After you fell asleep, I just had to come finish it.”
“You’re done?”
I nod.
Her gaze drifts over to my laptop, and she pulls her bottom lip under her teeth. “Can I read it?”
Acid crawls up my throat, and I swallow it back, my skin getting tight and clammy at the thought of her reading words that weren’t meant for her eyes.
She wasn’t supposed to see it.
Wasn’t supposed to know it was about her.
I never wanted her to know how I’ve always seen her—even when she couldn’t see herself that way—or know about all the things I ever wanted for her in her life and thought I could never give her.
Almost as if she can sense my hesitation, she lowers her hands to my shoulders. “It’s okay if you don’t want me to. I get it.”
The disappointment in her voice fucking kills me.
“It’s not that I don’t want you to. I just…” I drop my head back against the wall and close my eyes, searching for a way to explain it to her.
How do I tell the woman I am madly in love with that I’m afraid she’ll think I’m a fucking stalker if she reads my damn book?
Her lips touch the base of my neck, and a shudder rolls through me, my cock twitching against her warm core settled over it. She kisses her way up my neck again, to my lips. “It’s just what?”
I let my eyes open and meet hers again. “I’m afraid of what you’ll think when you read it.”
Her brow furrows. “What do you mean? What could I possibly read in there that’s going to change anything between us or the way I feel about you?”
“You think you know everything. You think you understand exactly how I feel about you”—I take her face in my palms—“but you have no idea how obsessed with you I am, and I’m worried that once you see it on the page, you’re going to run screaming from me.”
A smile tilts her lips, and she leans in and kisses me again. “If I haven’t run screaming already, do you really think I will now?” Her fingers tangle in the hair at my nape. “I’ve known you since you were ten years old, Jude. And yeah, there have been a lot of surprises, but nothing that would ever make me run. At the end of the day, family is all we have, isn’t it?”
There’s that word again—family.
For so long, I resented being a Hawke, hated the fact that the family took me under their wings, because all I ever did, all I’ve ever done, is disappoint them and hurt them by pushing them away, by acting like I didn’t care about everything they had done for me, because I didn’t know how to show it.
I couldn’t make myself react the way I should when someone tried to hug me, offered me congratulations on something, or tried to strike up a conversation.
Everyone believes what they want about me, most of it probably not good. But after the last few days, I’m finally starting to feel like I am part of the family, like maybe this really is where I belong, even if it does complicate things tremendously for Angelina and me.
She feathers her fingertips over my brow. “What are you thinking about right now?”
How badly I let everything get out of control. How much I fucked up with everyone who tried to care about me. How badly I want to fix it all…
“Family.”
“What about it?”
I meet her inquisitive and concerned gaze. “That some people are family from the instant you meet them. That Christmas at your nana’s house, it was my first day of freedom, but it was also the most terrified I’ve ever been in my life. Until I met Allie…”
Angelina’s eyes soften.
“Allie gave me a safe, quiet place. But you”—I shake my head—“when you opened that door and looked at me, I felt my whole world shift. It was like I was seeing true love, true caring, true understanding in the eyes of another person for the first time. And she promised me that you were cool, remember?”
The corner of her lips twitch. “I am pretty cool.”
“Yeah, you are.” I feather a kiss to her forehead. “And you protected us. You kept that closet locked down. You kept us safe. You made sure we weren’t bothered and that I would have the time and space I needed because you could see I couldn’t handle the Hawkes that night. You’ve always protected me, Angie, even when you didn’t know you were doing it. All those family dinners, all those events that overwhelmed me, I saw the way you redirected people when they came near me. I noticed how you always kept your eye on me, always made sure you knew where I was and that I was okay.”
She pulls that lip under her teeth again and glances down, almost like she’s embarrassed by my realization.
I tip up her chin. “Why are you doing that?”
She lets her lip go. “I don’t know. I didn’t even realize I was doing it most of the time. I just…felt like you were mine to protect.”
Mine to protect.
“Shit, Ang, it should be the other way around. I should be the one protecting you. And that’s what I’m worried about, that you’re going to read this book, you’re going to see how fucking ass-backward all this is, and realize you can do so much better than me.”
She tenses, and her lips press into a hard line. “Fuck you for even saying that, Jude.”
I rock my hips up against hers, so she can feel how hard I am just from her straddling me. “I think you’ve already done that.”
“Very funny.” She slaps at my shoulder playfully, and her eyes dart to the computer again. “Now…can I please read it?”
It’s a losing battle.
If I say no, she’s going to think I don’t trust her and wonder what could be in there that I don’t want her to see, but if I say yes, then she’ll see it all.
The years of watching her. Wanting her. The true depth of my need for her.
I release a heavy sigh and lean forward to press my lips to hers. “Okay, but you have to promise me something.”
“What’s that?”
“That you won’t hate me when you’re done.”
She nuzzles my cheek, releasing a heavy breath as she presses her hand over my heart. “I could never hate you, Jude.”
I hope she’s right.
* * *
ANGELINA
There were only so many ways to say I love you, and Rosalie had tried them all, screaming them into the dark void of her world, hoping someone would hear them and respond.
But all she ever heard was silence. That heavy, deafening sound that weighed down on her, that she carried around on her shoulders every moment of every day. While she cared for everyone else and worked to ensure their happiness, she was suffocating under its weight.
Until she finally got her response, but it didn’t come in the words she had anticipated. It came in a single look. Given from across a street. Through a pane of glass that kept them apart as much as life itself did.
The look told her there were no words in existence strong enough to describe the way he felt about her. Nothing deep enough to make her understand how completely she was his world, how she was the glue that held everything together and made life worth living. When their eyes locked, she knew she had finally found her answer.
I stare at the screen for a few seconds, the words blurring through the tears as my mind struggles to grasp what I just spent my day reading.
Holy shit.
This whole time, I thought I understood what was happening with Jude. I thought all the years of wondering, all the time we spent dancing around each other, all the tension and anticipation, and then the adrenaline of everything that’s happened had all culminated in this explosive coming together. Something that might not have ever happened if not for the perfect alignment of events.
Allie’s disappearing game…
Falco moving against us again…
Roselli showing up with his threats…
If none of them occurred, if we hadn’t been pushed together, I’m not sure we ever would have found our way to each other.
But he’s always seen it.
He’s always known.
When he said he sees me. He really means he sees me. He sees past the walls I put up that rival his own. He sees through the smiles that hide my pain. He sees all the things I’ve tried so hard to conceal. And he has been able to since that very first day.
Page after page, a love story unfolded.
A hauntingly beautiful, traumatic, heart-wrenching tragedy of a woman who fought love and a man who only ever wanted it from one person.
He wrote our story, and he did it before we were even together. Almost as if he were writing the future on the page, willing it into existence through each letter and word he typed.
I set down the computer on the couch beside me and swipe at tears streaming from my eyes. The windows overlooking the street make up the entire wall in front of me—Jude’s perch.
Where he apparently saw everything.
I glance behind me to the kitchen, where Jude leans against the counter, rubbing his damp hair with a towel, watching me closely. After lifting weights and then running for what felt like twenty miles while I read today, I was shocked he didn’t collapse. But he seemed to need it. A distraction from his nerves about me reading this.
His gaze meets mine, and one of his blond brows rises. “Well?”
I slowly climb to my feet and approach him. “I literally can’t process what I just read. I need some time.”
“Oh.” His face falls slightly, regret darkening his gaze. “Okay.”
It isn’t the answer he’s looking for, but I can’t even put what I’m thinking into words at this moment. And I don’t want to say the wrong thing.
I turn away from him and walk to the bedroom, stripping off his T-shirt I slept in, intending to take a long, hot shower and try to decompress, but he wraps his arms around me from behind, stopping me in my tracks.
He nuzzles my nape, tugging me against him tightly. “You’re not mad, are you?”
I rest my hands over his on my stomach. “God, no. That’s the furthest from what I am. I’m just kind of…stunned.”
Warm lips flutter against my ear. “Stunned, how?”
I turn my head slightly until I can look at him out of the corner of my eye. “Because that’s the single most beautiful thing I think I’ve ever read.”
His breath catches, and he squeezes his eyes closed and presses his forehead against my temple. “Oh, thank God.”
“Why? What did you think?”
He pulls his head back. “That letting you read that might have ruined this.”
I shake my head. “Nothing could do that.”
“Thank fuck.” Jude pushes my hair over my shoulder and kisses his way down the back of my neck, sending a shiver down my spine. “You have no idea how terrified I’ve been all day. How much I thought I had fucked up everything by letting you see how completely and utterly obsessed I am with you.”
Hell…
Maybe I should be more worried about how wholly fixated the man in that story is on Rosalie. Maybe it isn’t healthy for two human beings to be so completely wrapped up in each other.
It’s the very thing I’ve fought against so hard for so long.
Wanting someone so much.
Needing them so much.
But my body heats at his simple touch, and being in his arms instantly melts away any reservations.
Pressing his hard body against me, Jude nudges me forward. “Climb on the bed. Lie flat. Turn your head to the side.”
What the hell is he doing?
It doesn’t matter. At this moment, after reading that, I’d do anything Jude asks of me.
I climb on the bed and sprawl out, peeking up at him as he tugs off his shirt and shoves down his gray sweatpants, exposing his perfect rippling abs leading down to his already hard cock.
The familiar dull throb starts between my legs, and I press my thighs together to try to ease it. Jude climbs onto the bed, softly dragging his hands from my ankles to my ass as he works his way up.
He nudges my legs wide, and my body vibrates in anticipation. But instead of diving right in, he braces his arms on either side of me and leans down, kissing me softly from my temple all the way down my cheek, across to my lips.
His tongue glides along the seam, demanding entrance, and I open for him, groaning into his mouth and clutching the comforter under me.
“Lie still.”
Oh geez. What the hell is he going to do?
He moves his lips down the column of my neck before concentrating on each shoulder blade. Soft, sensual kisses of pure reverence move down my spine. Alternating with little flicks of his tongue that explore every dip and valley.
Fire scorches across my skin, followed immediately by goosebumps as he drags his fingertips over the places his lips just left. I twitch under him, and my clit throbs hard enough to make me groan in frustration.
Moisture pools between my legs, but with Jude straddling the back of my knees, I’m pinned to the mattress, helpless to do anything about the need surging through my entire being.
“I would do this every day, you know.” His murmur buzzes against my skin. “Spend all day worshiping you, kissing you, adoring your body.”
“That doesn’t sound too bad.”
He chuckles, the vibration sending a little zing straight between my legs, making me groan again. “I would hope not.”
His lips reach the little divot above my ass, and he slowly spreads the cheeks apart and kisses all over them, then nudges my legs open even wider and works his way down my inner thighs, avoiding the spot I want him the most.
I twitch, my back arching to try to get him to my pussy, and he presses a palm against my spine, holding me in place. Making his way up and down my legs, he drags his tongue in the most sensitive spots, kissing softly in others until my entire body vibrates like a goddamn drum.
He finally starts to work his way back up, and I’m a quivering mess.
Then it’s there, the flick of his tongue across my wet cunt, and my whole body bucks back, bowing toward him. He pushes me down again, keeping me prone so he can eat at me relentlessly.
His tongue probes in and out, like he’s trying to devour all of me all at once, then it slips up around my asshole.
“Fuck!” I clench instinctively, and he groans and slides a finger inside my cunt. Thrusting in and out softly, he uses his mouth to explore a place no one else ever has.
Jesus Christ.
Jude is full of surprises, more than any man I’ve ever met in my entire life. Some bad, some good, some undefinable.
If this is the result of his obsession. If this is what it feels like to be loved by Jude Abello-Harris, then I have zero complaints.
He drags his head back and presses his entire body along mine. Hard and warm. Soft and strong. He aligns his cock with my slick opening and pushes in slowly, so I can feel every exquisite inch.
Fuuuuck.
His hands settle over mine on the mattress, and he twines our fingers as he rolls back his hips and plunges in softly again. “Christ, Ang, your cunt is my favorite place on the fucking planet.”
I groan at the weight of his body on top of me. The feel of his cock stretching me wide, completing me. Of him filling that void I’ve always felt in my life. The one I never let myself even acknowledge before. Where I let a man become something to me, let him mean everything. To actually love another human being enough to know that if I lost him, it would destroy me.
Tears leak from my eyes, and he stills, dragging his tongue along the path they left on my cheek.
“What’s wrong?”
I shake my head. “Nothing. I’m just really fucking happy.”
He grins against my damp skin and starts his slow rhythm again. “Good. Me too.”
Every thrust cements him farther inside my body and heart, ensuring that no matter who or what may try to separate us, may try to attack our relationship or the family, nothing will ever drive us apart.
Not again.
We’ve wasted so much time dancing around each other, worrying so much about what everyone else would think, how everyone else would feel, talking ourselves out of doing what we want without giving any credence to how we felt about each other.
But now that we have, there’s no going back.
We’re a runaway train, and until the track ends, we’re going to keep rushing toward our future.
I roll my hips back to meet each one of his thrusts, and the slow, sweet glide starts to build the orgasm deep in my belly quickly. Sensing how close I am, he slides his hand under my body to let his fingers find my clit. The first contact makes me buck and clench around him, and when he swirls his fingertips around it, my release washes over me.
My body twitches as he pumps into my cunt, his hand tightening on mine in the comforter, the other continuing to work over my clit to drag out my ecstasy. He groans against my ear and empties himself inside me quietly before completely collapsing onto his side and rolling me with him.
His arms wrap around me, and he holds me tight.
Jude says I protect him and that it should be the other way around, but he has no idea what he’s done for me. I’m finally starting to believe what he said, that everything will be okay.
We’ll fix the Grind.
We’ll deal with the situation with Falco Enterprises and Roselli.
We’ll help Allie raise that child.
Anything that comes at us, we’ll face it together.
And he doesn’t even have to say the words because I see it in his eyes, just like I always could, even through those panes of glass.