“He’s with his grandmother. She’d been trying to get him away from his father for so long, but she couldn’t get hard proof that he was unfit. Despite this—” Jude paused, pointing to the wound left behind from the bullet. “—the situation turned out damn fine.”
“Looks like it’s healing nicely,” I added, knowing what it was like to be shot.
“Yeah, hurt like a bitch for a while though. It’s not too bad, now.” There was a moment of silence, before Jude added, “So once the superintendent got wind of me being gay, he asked me to take a leave of absence.”
“That motherfucker.” Jude laughed at my anger. “What’s so funny?”
“That’s why I’m here. It all made me realize what I thought was important in life meant nothing without you.”
“So you just gave up?” I asked, shocked that he’d give up that easily.
“Hell no,” he drawled. “I plan to go down shooting. My lawyer and my union are building a case that I just know we can’t lose. Firing me because I’m gay will be the last thing that man does.”
“So then you’ll be back in Texas?” Dejection settled into my chest. I knew it was too good to be true.
“Only as long as it takes for me to win my case and hand in my resignation,” he promised, lifting my chin for a kiss.
“That means . . .” I didn’t know where to take the rest of that question, but because he knew me better than anyone else, he answered it for me anyway.
“It means we’ll have to figure things out for a few months, maybe a year. Do this whole thing long distance, but once it’s all done, I want to be with you.”
“What about your dad? I can’t leave here. There’s Simon and—”
“I would never ask you to leave your kids. Dad’s in AA now. He even met a lady friend, as he likes to call her.” Of all the things he said in the last few minutes, this made me happier than anything. “So I don’t know where he’s going to be, but he’s getting better. And I’m not scared of leaving him alone, if that’s what he wants. He very well might tag along. You know how he can be.”
As Jude laughed, a vision flashed before my eyes, one of us, as a family—me and Jude, the boys who I knew he would love as his own, his father, grouchy as ever playing the role of grandpa perfectly. Even though it was only in a dream, thoughts of that life becoming a possibility made me curse the nightmares that ever made death look like an escape.
We spent the rest of that night, and the next day, eating pizza and making love. We’d work out all the details soon enough. For right now, it was enough simply to be in his arms, holding onto the steady promises of tomorrow.
