Page 171 of Deacon

“Do it, Mason.” He still didn’t move, so I closed some of the distance between us. “If you want me to believe for one second that you didn’t know he used my daughter to bait me here, then call him.”

The muscles in Mason’s jaw jumped. His hand finally moved toward his pocket.

Before he could pull out the phone, the front doorknob turned. Mason froze, and the alarm crossing his face told me more than relief would have.

The door opened, and Jude stepped inside.

45

Lila

Jude came through the door carrying two plain store bags, looking so ordinary that for one disorienting second my brain tried to reject everything I already knew. He kicked the door shut behind him and took in the room with that same pleasant, open face I had seen since we were kids. Only now I could see what had always been underneath it. He wasn’t surprised to find me there. He was checking what had changed while he was gone.

He set the bags beside the door with maddening calm. “I can see we’re already having problems.”

Mason went rigid beside me. “Jude?” Confusion came first, then something sharper as he looked from Jude to me.

“What the fuck is going on?” I asked, but my voice had thinned. Something was settling into place around us, and every piece made the room feel smaller.

Mason turned fully toward him. “She’s asking about Jade.” Jude said nothing, and Mason took one step forward, disbelief stripping the color from his face. “You told her we had Jade?” His voice sharpened. “Why would you say that?”

Jude tilted his head as if the answer should have been obvious. “Because it worked.”

Mason stared at him while Jude’s eyes slid briefly to me. “She came,” he said. “That was the point.”

My stomach dropped. Mason shook his head once, hard. “No. No, that wasn’t the plan.”

Plan. One word, and suddenly every reassurance Mason had tried to give me before Jude walked in looked different.

Jude’s expression barely shifted. “Plans evolve.”

Mason moved another step closer, putting more of himself between Jude and me without seeming to notice. “You told me she was coming because she finally saw her past mistake for what he was. You told me she needed us. You said if we were patient, she would come on her own.”

Jude let out a soft breath. “And now she’s here.”

“Because you used her daughter.” Mason’s voice cracked on daughter. Whatever fantasy had brought him this far was finally colliding with something he could not dress up. “You lied to me. You told me this was about helping her, about getting her away from bad choices, about showing her who actually loved her.” He looked at me, horror replacing the hope he had worn when he opened the door. “This wasn’t the plan. This is too far. I’m not doing this. We need to let her go.”

Jude studied him in silence long enough that I felt the calculation in it. Then his gaze moved to me, colder now. “You really should stop saying that, like she belongs anywhere but with us.”

A chill crawled over my skin. “I do not belong to anyone.” I stepped back, putting space between myself and both men. “And you are out of your mind if you think you can kidnap me and keep me here.”

A small smile touched Jude’s mouth. “There it is,” he said softly. “That temper. That fire. You always did save the best of yourself for the worst possible men, then hand the scraps to the ones who would’ve worshiped you.”

The familiarity of it made me sick. Years of looks, invitations, helpfulness, all of it rewritten in his head as devotion I had somehow failed to reward.

Mason was still staring at him. “No. No, Jude, Babe, answer me. Why would you use Jade?”

Jude sighed like Mason had become tiresome. “Because you were taking too long. Then an opportunity presented itself.”

Mason flinched, and Jude spread his hands. “Come on, Mase. Be honest with yourself. She was never going to come to me first. Not after all those years of turning me into the wrong kind of man in her head.” His gaze drifted toward me. “Too rigid. Too obvious. Too much like a man already waiting at her feet.” Then he looked back at Mason. “You, though. You had the right face for it. Safe enough to get close. You looked like the kind of man she could almost convince herself was the smart choice.”

Mason’s face broke open, but Jude kept going. “She’d already let you close once. You had the right job, the right polish, the kind of face her father could approve of without losing sleep.”

“You used me.” Mason’s voice came out hollow.

Jude actually looked offended. “Don’t be dramatic. We used each other.”

“No.” Mason’s breathing had gone shallow. “No, that’s not what this was.”