Page 147 of Jude

I slumped into the leather, unable to find the energy to stop them.

Bishop drove me straight back home while Levi followed behind the wheel of my ride.

At the house, they marched me through the front door.

Once they dropped me onto my bed in the primary, Levi strode out and returned.

With a glass of water and two high-dose melatonin tablets from the medicine cabinet.

‘Swallow these, brother,’ Levi commanded, shoving the pills into my palm. ‘Your brain is fried. You’re no use to her like this. Take the hit and go to sleep.’

I obeyed to get them out of my face. My eyelids turned to lead as the chemical exhaustion crushed my remaining resistance.

Collapsing sideways into the pillows, I plunged into a black oblivion, dead to the world as the pair locked up and left.

However, the pharmaceutical peace didn’t last.

The second the clock struck six a.m., my internal alarm clock jolted me awake.

The lingering fog of the sedation cleared within seconds. I swung my boots onto the floorboards, my jaw throbbing in agony where Levi’s knuckles had split the skin.

I grabbed the keys to the Escalade off the kitchen island and headed straight back outside into the early mist.

By six-thirty, I pulled right back into the gravel shoulder across from Sofia’s boarding house, my gaze locked on her second-story window once again.

She was mine, and I wasn’t going anywhere.

One evening, sitting in my Ram outside her shelter, it hit me.

If I wanted her back, I had to lay my soul bare the only way I knew how.

Through music.

The next morning, I locked myself in the studio and bled my regret into a string of tracks.

No bullshit. Just a bare apology and the truth about how much I loved her.

Five days later, I whittled five songs down to two and transferred the files to my phone.

My thumb hovered over the send button on my device.

My jaw clenched as doubt crept in.

‘Damn it, Judah,’ I muttered, rubbing my bloodshot eyes. ‘Last thing you want to sound like is a desperate teen with a cheap guitar.’

I spun my chair around, chugged some cold water, and forced myself to play the rough mixes back through the big speakers.

The chords from my fretboard and the rough edge in my rasp stripped away every last fragment of my pride.

The tracks were a pure, honest confessional from a man wrecked by his own arrogance.

Sofia cared about the truth.

These songs were as real as it got.

Maybe she’d listen and feel the pull.

Or she’d throw her phone in the trash.