“What happened?”he asked again, his concerned gaze coasting over my face.
I sighed.“Blake,” was all I said.
“Oh, fuck.Did he drink and drive again?”
“No, no.That’s the good news,” I said, shaking my head.“One of his party buddies picked him up.He didn’t even drive over there, but he went out to the brewery with him, and then I guess he realized that was a bad choice and called me.”
Jude nodded slowly.“So it’s good, right?Except?—”
I cut in, “I know.Me.Always me, right?”
“I wish you took care of yourself as well as you take care of everybody else,” he said gruffly.
If my heart were a castle, there were those thin slats where they shot arrows through.Only Jude could slide inside them, and he did.He understood me in a way no one else ever had.
“So that was my unexpected afternoon,” I explained.My stomach rumbled.“And, I probably smell like animals and hay.How was your day?”
His palm circled slowly between my shoulder blades, his touch grounding me.
“Just a day.”
He held my gaze, as if trying to read into it, and I could see the worry, the sadness, and the uncertainty, like clouds passing through the blue sky.
“Lincoln called,” he added.“He’s planning to come home.He even called our mom about it.We’ve all missed him.”
This time, I slid my palm up and down Jude’s back, wanting to hold him and protect him.All of them had been through so much, but he was my friend.He was the one I wanted to make sure was okay.
“Don’t look at me like that,” he said.
“I worry about you.You all have been through a lot.”
“I know,” he said simply.
“So we both had an afternoon, huh?”
He chuckled.“I picked up some pizza,” he added.
I leaned in, lifting a hand to slide my thumb across a streak of dirt on his cheek.He startled me when he stepped back, reaching for my hand.
“Let’s shower.”
ChapterTwenty-Six
Jude
My heart felt cracked open.There was a thrum of need, a fierce desire, for Kendall beating like a drum inside my body.And yet, coming here tonight reminded me she was always my touchstone.
She had been ever since we’d become friends.She was the one I turned to, to share everything, good, bad, or mundane.Even though we never explicitly spoke about it, I knew I was that to her as well.
Of course, my family was just as close, but it was different.The messy tangle around Lincoln, and all of us missing him and hurting on his behalf, was almost too heavy to try to process with them.But I could do that with Kendall, just the way she could talk with me about what was happening with her brother.
As we walked across the room with her fingers lacing with mine, being with her felt like the most natural thing.Maybe we should have felt self-conscious, but I didn’t even feel a hint of that.
Kendall paused in front of the mirror and shook her head as she reached up to pull the elastic from her hair.Her curls fell in a tumble, along with a few pieces of hay caught in them.She glanced over at me, a giggle slipping out.
I felt that sound in my soul.I was stuck for a moment, caught in a riptide of emotion and memories.
She started undressing, kicking her jeans off, tossing her shirt on the floor.All the while, I was remembering the sound of her giggle at so many different times—back in high school when she was younger, in college, and now.Over the years, I must have heard a thousand giggles, her cheeks always plumping up with her smile, and those freckles that I wanted to count.
