Judah’s jaw tightens. In the dim light, the angles of his face look sharper, older. There’s more silver at his temples than there was a year ago, and the lines around his eyes have deepened.
“Nothing happened,” he says. “I saw him. He saw me. Then your new celebrity friend started singing and created enough of a distraction that Mason could slip out the back.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
I study him, reading the things he isn’t saying in the rigid set of his shoulders, the white-knuckle grip on his glass. “Andyou’re up here drinking the good whiskey because… nothing happened?”
“Drop it, Dom.”
“Nope.” I set the bottle down with more force than necessary. “I’m not gonna drop it. I’m not gonna sit here and watch you marinate in misery over someone who walked out on you ten years ago.”
Judah’s eyes snap to mine, suddenly sharp with anger. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t I?” I lean forward, elbows on my knees. “I was there, remember? I saw what it did to you when he left. I watched you turn into a fucking ghost for months. And now he shows up out of nowhere with his fancy clothes and his celebrity boss, and you’re right back where you started.”
“You think I don’t know that?” Judah’s voice rises, cracking at the edges. “You think I don’t know how pathetic this is? How fuckingsadit is that one look at him and I’m—“ He stops, drags a hand down his face. “Christ, Dom. I know.”
The raw pain in his voice hits me like a physical blow. This is Judah—steady, reliable Judah who weathered his father’s death and his mother’s decline and the slow collapse of the family business without breaking. Judah, who never asks for help, who carries everyone else’s burdens along with his own.
Seeing him like this makes something protective and angry rise in my chest.
“Snap out of it,” I say, the words sharper than I intended. “So he’s back in town. So what? He’ll be gone again tomorrow, and you’ll still be here with your boat and your family and your life. The lifeyoubuilt after he left.”
Judah stares at me, something complicated moving across his face. “You make it sound so simple.”
“It is simple. He left. You stayed. End of story.”
“You don’t understand?—“
“Then make me understand!” I’m on my feet now, frustration boiling over. “Because from where I’m standing, you’re throwing yourself a pity party over someone who didn’t even have the decency to say goodbye. Someone who cut you out of his life like you meant nothing.”
“He had his reasons,” Judah says quietly.
“Bullshit.” The word comes out like a whip crack. “There’s no reason good enough for what he did. For the way he just disappeared.”
Judah flinches like I’ve struck him. “It wasn’t like that.”
“Wasn’t it?” I pace the small space, too agitated to sit still. “He was your best friend. Your omega. And the second things got complicated, he bailed. No explanation. No closure. Nothing.”
“You don’t know everything that happened.”
“I know enough.” I stop, forcing myself to take a breath. “I know he hurt you. I know you’ve never really gotten over it. And I know you deserve better than sitting up here getting drunk over someone who didn’t think you were worth sticking around for.”
The silence that follows is heavy, charged with a decade of unspoken grief. Judah looks at me for a long moment, something shifting behind his eyes.
“Not everyone hides their feelings away like you do, Dom,” he says finally, voice soft but cutting. “Some of us actually let ourselves care about people. Even when it hurts.”
I step back, stung.
“I care about people,” I say, the defensiveness in my voice betraying me.
Judah laughs, a sound with no humor in it. “Right. That’s why you keep everyone at arm’s length. Why you’ve never let anyone close enough to see the real you. Why you pretend not to give a shit about anything or anyone.”
“That’s not true.”
“Isn’t it?” He raises an eyebrow. “You’ve been working at that bar for what, five years now? And how many people there know anything real about you? How many of them know where you came from? What happened to you before my parents took you in?”
