Page 50 of Jude

I nodded. ‘That’ll be awesome.’

Babe.

I wondered if it was an Australianism that came so naturally that he wasn’t even aware he was doing it.

Or that he was very good at keeping up appearances.

Still, he used it in private with me, so I dismissed the thought of him calling me babe for show.

My eyes followed him as he sauntered away, stopping to chat with some of the staff and residents before disappearing down the hall.

I turned to find Misty’s eyes on me, warm and knowing.

‘That’s a good man you bagged, honey, never let him go,’ Misty murmured. ‘I can tell how much you two adore each other and that’s money in my book.’

‘I - we,’ I muttered, then shut up, not sure whether to share that we were not a conventional match made in heaven.

The moment passed, and Misty smiled and launched into more of my onboarding.

A routine of sorts emerged between Jude and me as the humid Tennessee summer progressed.

Every morning at seven, we woke, showered, and dressed.

Most times, I went downstairs and found him in the kitchen, by the counter, nursing a mug of black coffee.

He always raised his chin to me in acknowledgment.

Sometimes he continued to eye me over the rim of his mug in silence before rinsing his cup and prowling away; other times, he exited the room without a sound, taking his mug with him.

When we passed in the corridor of his house, he shifted his shoulders just enough to avoid brushing my sleeve.

He sat two seats away from me at the dining table and was always on his phone if he wasn’t in the studio.

He was moody too; sometimes he shared, other times he lapsed into silence.

I got the memo: all professional and polite, no boundaries crossed.

The drive into work on weekdays was much of the same.

Jude was not much of a talker, preferring to keep his eyes locked on the road ahead.

When the silence got suffocating one morning, I reached out to tap on the radio station tab.

Jude hit the display power button, killing the music.

‘Don’t,’ he muttered. ‘I like the quiet.’

I withdrew my hand, staring out the passenger window at the passing view.

Yet, a subtle shift occurred as the days went by.

Jude stopped walking away from me in the kitchen.

He stayed, leaning on the counter, and drank his coffee while I prepared breakfast.

We ate at the marble kitchen island before heading out, the silence between us shifting from cool wariness to a cautious truce.

The Sanctuary sat on the way to the band’s headquarters, so we continued to commute into the city together.