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I blinked, then did what he’d ordered me to do.
21
JUDAH
Without thinking, I tossed down my umbrella and slid behind the steering wheel, slamming the door. Tears leaked down Tav’s angular face, and I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen him this way. His distress played hell on my nerves after the terror that had driven me to go on a mad dash looking for him. My hands shook as I cupped his cheeks and dragged him in for a salty kiss. Instead of providing relief, touching him made me consider everything I would be losing if he disappeared again.
My mouth was too rough on his, and the stubble starting to grow in on his face nipped my fingertips, but I didn’t care. I just wanted to taste him and feel him—and the pain reminded me that he hadn’t vanished. Tav whimpered, a desperate, terrible sound, and I knew I should stop and talk to him and discuss whatever the fuck he’d just done at my parents’ house, but I couldn’t.
The kiss went on for a long time, each of us pushing into it physically until it was something else entirely—brutal and necessary. This wasn’t about sex. I had no clue what we were doing except clinging.
“Jude,” Tav said, mumbling against my mouth. “Jude, please.”
“What?” I asked. Anything he needed, I would give him.
He leaned back and shook his head, fingers digging into my forearms.
“Don’t leave me again,” I whispered. The words weren’t a request, they were an urgent order.
He flinched, nodding. The air in the cab was hot and humid and the windows began to fog over from our panting. Panic had settled deep into us, and our eyes were too wide. It was like we were waiting for a bomb to go off.
“Okay,” he sighed out.
“I love you.”
“I love you, too,” he said, that Scottish accent tingeing his words deeply as tears still spilled down his face. His breath was rough. I could see, feel, and hell, even taste Tav’s tears on my lips, but my heart wouldn’t slow down. A terrified part of me was worried I would let go of him and he would fade out of existence. I slid my hands to the back of his neck and held him still so that he was forced to look into my eyes.
“What were you doing at my parents’ house?”
Tav shoved at my chest, so I let him go, but I dropped my hands down to his thighs, unwilling to stop touching him.
He dragged his phone out of his pocket and shook it in my direction. “I can’t believe you think it’s okay to spy on me. Undo whatever the hell you did!”
My hands tensed on his thighs, and it took a monumental force of will to stop myself from holding on as hard as I wanted. I would bruise him if I did. “You were leaving. I needed to know if you were going to disappear again.”
He huffed, but the tears didn’t stop, and my stomach twisted into a knot. “Don’t act innocent. You did it when things were fine because you’re possessive of me. I told you I wasn’t runnin’, and I’m not.” He glanced down at his phone, and the light from a passing car trying to navigate the torrential downpour struck his face. As he shifted nervously in his seat, I noticed a faint redness that seemed to be growing darker on his jaw. I snatched the phone out of his hand and tossed it on the dash, then gently tilted his head to the side.
“What the fuck?” I brushed my finger over what was clearly a bruise that was blooming, and rage was back to bubbling in my gut all over again. “What the hell?” I stared into his eyes, but he wasn’t looking at me. “You weren’t gone that long! Who did this?” I ducked my head until he was staring at my face. Carefully, I stroked my thumb over the bruise, and his brow furrowed.
“It’s....” He sighed and cringed. “Do you really want to know?”
The awful feeling that I’d had since he’d left my office earlier cranked another notch tighter in my chest. Instead of answering out loud, I pressed a kiss to his cheek near the bruise. “Why on Earth wouldn’t I want to know?” I kissed his ear softly. “I want to know everything about you.”
“Some idiot at the trailer park did it.” He swallowed hard enough that I heard the click in the quiet cab. Another car passed outside, blasting us with brilliant headlights. His jaw was tight and with the way he wasn’t meeting my eyes, I got the feeling he was leaving something out of that scenario.
“Some random jerk decided to punch you?” I rested a hand on his shoulder and squeezed. “Please just tell me what happened.”
He tossed up his hands. “Your mum sent a man there to dig through my stuff to try to find anything she could use against me.”
My heart froze, and the tears kept rolling down his face. My mind spun.
“Do you have a headache, or did you get a tooth knocked loose or something? You’re not a crier. What’s going on?” I leaned in and dragged him against my chest, and when he collapsed into my arms, I knew whatever the fuck had happened was bad. “I’ll fucking?—”
“Stop. I don’t want you to say anything rotten about your mum,” he said, then buried his face against my neck.
“Fuck!”
Tav nuzzled my skin, and sweet heat wrapped around my heart.
