Lacing my fingers with his, I pulled his hand to my mouth. Against his skin, I admitted, “Missed you, too.” We moved from the edge of the bed so we could sit with the wall to our backs. I knew we had a lot to talk about and the side of the bed was no place to figure out what the future held.
After a blip of silence, we both spoke at the same time. He laughed, letting me go first. “I never should have lied to you. I should have told you about them right away.”
The look on his face told me he was still hurting over my mistake. “Why didn’t you?”
“So many reasons. God, so much of my life was so fucked up. Jude—” I choked on his name, knowing the next words to fall from my mouth were ones I’d never told anyone. “I wanted to kill myself. I was miserable and wanted to die.”
He pulled me to his side, wrapping an arm around me. As I rested my head on his shoulder, I heard how shallow and uneven he was breathing. He was fighting back some serious emotion, and that was when I added, “And I knew I had to find you. I had to know if there was still a chance. Even after all those years, you were the only one who made me happy. And since I was in such a dark place, I needed to find you. You were the only answer I could think of.”
His fingers moved through my hair, but he still didn’t speak. So I chose to speak through his silence, telling him everything I should have told him from the beginning. “After I left Texas, I convinced my father to let me attend some no-name school in California. Delilah was in my statistics class. And I was shit at numbers. We were study partners and she was my only friend. I was kind of a loner,” I joked and thanked God when he chuckled softly at it.
“But you never came back,” Jude finally said. “I mean what about Christmas break, or summers? You never came back.”
“I had nothing to come back to,” I admitted. “My parents spent all their time traveling, something they never did while my father was in the service. So rather than trying to work around their schedule, I got a job and saved for my first apartment. He disowned me when I told him I was gay, and my mom, well, she had no choice but to go along with him. And then school wasn’t for me, so I dropped out after that first year. I was miserable. Delilah and I stayed friends. I always knew she wanted more and God, Jude, I was so fucking lonely.” The words stuck in my throat, but I knew if there was ever a chance that Jude was going to believe me ever again, I’d have to tell him everything. “I knew she wanted me. And I figured . . . maybe if I—”
“Gave her a chance, you’d forget me,” he finished my sentence as if it was his own. When he added, “That’s what I did,” I looked up at him, seriously confused. He kissed the top of my head, stifling his laughter. “Well, not with a woman, but I buried myself in my school work, in taking care of Dad. And when I knew you weren’t coming back, in a few random guys. But none of it mattered, because it wasn’t you.”
I felt the need to add “Back then, we were only together once,” as if it would soften the blow of what I had to say next. “When she told me she was pregnant, I enlisted. It was a coward’s way out—”
“What? How is joining the army being a coward?”
“Because it meant I didn’t have to stay. I married her right before being sent away to boot camp. Simon was born as I was being shipped off to war.” The memories of that time in my life came back to me in a flash so fierce I couldn’t shake the visceral reaction to it all. It took me a few minutes to regain control of my breathing, to find the rest of my words. “After I lost my arm, I wished I had died. Dying was better than having to go home.”
“Micah.” He mumbled my name against my temple, pressing a sweet kiss there. “I don’t know what to say.”
“There’s nothing to say.” I pulled away from him, needing to look him right in the eye for the next part. “You have to believe me that I never meant to lie to you. I’m not saying I’m well-adjusted and all that shit right now, I still need a lot of work, but when I ran away from here, when I ran back to you, I was so fucked up. And you made me happy. For the first time in such a long fucking time, I was happy. I just didn’t know how to make sense of it all.”
“So then what happened? What changed that day you came up to the school?”
“Delilah was in a car accident.” He reacted to my words, looking at me with concern written all over his face. “She’s okay now. But I didn’t know if Simon was hurt. I was so scared and I didn’t have anyone to turn to except you. I knew I was going to have to tell you everything, but I was so scared of losing them, of losing you . . . I handled it all wrong.”
“I didn’t make it all that easy on you,” he admitted, letting the remorse color his words. “I’m sorry for that.”
We sat together for a few more minutes and the more I thought about it, the more I knew there was no easy way to say what I had to say next. “She’s pregnant. When they told me they didn’t know how my son was doing, I thought they were talking about Simon, which is why I freaked out. But it wasn’t him. It was the baby.”
All things considered, he handled the news of the baby far better than I would have expected. He simply said, “Okay,” as if I told him the sky was blue. A second later, he added a more resolved, “Okay,” and that was that.
Knowing we’d somehow circle back to the baby later, I pushed forward asking, “How did you find me? What made you even look for me in the first place?”
“Brandon told me.”
“Told you what?” That day happened in such a blur, I didn’t even remember the day-long drive to get back to California.
“He said you told him you loved me. I knew what that must have taken for you to say that to him. Once I heard that I knew I had to get you back. And I found you the same way you found me. I knew you were in Long Beach, so I looked up whatever information I could find online. Made a few calls to fill in some of the gaps, and well, here I am. It’s amazing what kind of information you can get out of the sweet old lady post office worker when you tell her you’re tracking down a long-lost friend.” Jude offered a sweet, crooked smile as the icing on the cake of his explanation.
“But what about school? Football? Your dad?” I rambled, trying to piece it all together.
He took a deep breath, and I could tell from the look on his face, it was going to be as long of a story as mine. But instead, he offered the simplest explanation I could’ve imagined. “None of it mattered without you.” He kissed me, saying so much as our lips moved together. Sealing together the future I hoped had another chance.
“But,” I prodded. “It doesn’t make sense. You just left?”
He sighed, and the rest of the truth came out. “Remember that parent who approached us at dinner that night?” I nodded, feeling my blood boil simply at him mentioning the asshole. “Well, he attacked Brandon and me.”
“What the fuck?” I cut in. “Are you okay? What happened? Is Brandon okay?”
“Yeah, he’s fine. And I’m okay now. Mr. Murphy was drunk as all hell so he didn’t really put up much of a fight. He’s facing charges of attempted murder. Hell, I doubt he’ll even be able to make bail.”
“What about Jackson?” I asked, concern for the boy hanging on my words.
