Page 156 of Jude

I got to a place where I could relax and welcome genuine happiness into my day.

While agonizing and painful, every single tear I shed during therapy was worth the freedom I found.

I was finally claiming my life back, step by painful step, on my own terms.

Chapter 33

JUDE

Without Sofia, the days just dragged.

The dead silence in my house was driving me out of my mind.

Waking to an empty bed wrecked me every morning.

Without my wife, my world echoed with isolation.

I missed her sudden bursts of song.

Her soft humming, her smile, her freakin’ perfume.

Her impromptu dances while she stirred pasta sauces.

I craved her laughs when she streamed trashy reality shows, perching her hips on the counter.

I wanted our late-night debates back, and our shared bingeing of cooking shows and lately, gritty crime dramas, on the sofa.

I missed hitting the gym together.

Mostly, I missed my arms around her, nose in her nape, making wild, incandescent love and holding her close after.

I wanted that fire back.

I needed her by my side where she belonged.

Yet against all my instincts, the advice was to let her go.

Bishop called it a wilderness season, a trial of pure loneliness.

‘Letting Sofia go will break you down before it rebuilds you, brother,’ he rasped over lunch one day at the studio. ‘You’re in a fight for your marriage. How this ends depends on your willingness to torch your own ego. Also on how much of a warrior you decide to be, and you can’t be one without being strong; physically, mentally, so get your shit together, brother.’

Of all my mates, Bishop’s advice was the most impactful; he’d survived a series of drug overdoses a few years ago and rebuilt his life, so his words were bond.

I thought of them for weeks as I got off my ass and started living again.

I got back into a fitness routine.

I hit the gym every day at five, pumping iron until my shoulders burned, replacing my angst with brutal exhaustion.

I stopped skipping meals. I forced myself to sleep six to eight hours a night instead of three.

It didn’t erase the ache.

It just kept me from driving my truck straight through the doors of her shelter to haul her back.

Maggie laid it out flat one evening while I chewed cold pizza out on the back deck.

‘I’ll be thrilled if you two survive this,’ she said over the phone from Vermont. ‘If you both do the work while you’re apart, there’s a real shot. If you’re just sitting on your hands waiting for her to break, you’re an idiot.’