“I’ll see you later, then,” Nally said with a tight smile, then got out of the car.
Jude waved to him as he shut the door, then held up his phone as a signal that Nally should text him once he made it home to let him know he was safe.
As Clinton pulled away from the station, Jude flopped back in his seat and buried his face in his hands.
“You two have got it bad,” Clinton laughed.
Jude dropped his hands and glared at him. “Nally is my best friend.”
“Uh-huh,” Clinton said, then continued chuckling and shaking his head.
“There isn’t anything more to it than that, I swear,” Jude sighed, closing his eyes and wishing it were true.
That was the problem, though, wasn’t it? He and Nally were more than just friends. They couldn’t keep dodging the truth, no matter how scary it was.
True to his word, as soon as Jude got home, after Nally’s “I made it home” text came through, he went straight to bed…where he lay all night, staring up at the ceiling, feeling like the whole thing might fall down on him. He cared about Nally and didn’t want some crazy stalker hurting him. That was all. That was what a friend did when another friend had a problem,especially when the one friend had created the problem and was hiding it from the other.
No, Jude hadn’t created the problem. Quentin was just some guy with an unhealthy obsession. Jude couldn’t bring himself to make Nally’s anxiety worse by telling him everything, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t handle the problem himself.
He didn’t wait until morning. In the middle of the night, he got up to check Nally’s socials, and sure enough, there was a DM from Quentin. More than one.
“Why did you run away from me at the club? You know we’re destined to be together.”
“I tried to get in earlier so we could be together, but the bastard at the door said I wasn’t a member and couldn’t come in.”
Thank God for The Chameleon Club. If worse came to worst, Nally would be safe there. Jude made a note to message the club’s manager to tell him all about the situation with Quentin.
There were more messages.
“I keep dreaming of the day we’ll be together without anyone else bothering us. I’ll treat you so good!”
“I turn on your music when I’m wanking and it’s like the two of us are together.”
That one had the hair standing up on the back of Jude’s neck. He couldn’t let things go on like that anymore.
“Quentin, this has to stop. You don’t really know me. It ends here.”
He felt a little bad speaking on Nally’s behalf, but if he could get rid of Quentin without Nally ever finding out how weird the situation was, he would be protecting his friend.
“Please stop contacting me. If you don’t, I’ll have to get the police involved.”
As soon as he sent that message, Jude closed the app and nearly threw his phone on his bedside table. If he was smart, hewould go to the police right now and report Quentin. But what would they do? Tell Nally to get off social media and lay low for a while? Right when his career was taking off?
That couldn’t happen. Jude was convinced he had to handle everything on his own. He could do it. He wasn’t a kid anymore. He knew more about social media than most people out there. And unlike the police, he cared about Nally. He really cared about Nally.
That didn’t make the next few days any easier, though. With only an hour or so of fretful sleep, Jude got up bright and early, showered, dressed, and slapped on a metric ton of make-up, then got to work making a few silly, frothy videos that he scheduled to post across his socials for the next few days.
When that was done, he checked Nally’s socials. Quentin had sent a reply to his middle of the night messages, saying he couldn’t accept no for an answer, not when fate had brought them together.
Jude didn’t reply.
If all that guilt and fear wasn’t bad enough, Nally didn’t contact him at all throughout the day. Not a single call or text, nothing. That hadn’t happened in months.
Finally, after an entire day spent wandering from one part of his parents’ house to the other and going out to ride his scooter around London with no particular destination in mind, after a supper that he only picked at, as he lay restlessly in bed, Jude finally sent a text.
Is everything alright? You’ve been quiet today.
Blessedly, three dots appeared almost right away, followed by a message.
