Page 134 of Lies Like Love

This might be the weakest I’ve seen him. It’s a stark contrast to the man who fought his way to me with a bullet in his side.

I curl against Jude and hold my hand over his wound, trying to keep in what’s leaking out. It feels like no use as his blood soaks the fabric and squishes between my fingers. Warm, wet. A familiar texture I wish wasn’t.

I’m not ready for him to leave.

“I missed this.” Jude closes his eyes as his breath steadies, while I silently beg his chest to rise with every beat of my heart.

“Me too.”

“Remember those nights you’d climb into this bed when we were younger?”

I bury my forehead against his chest. “Yeah. But you only know about half of them.”

He shakes his head. “I know about all of them.”

“You snuck out all the time, Jude.” I look up. “Half the time I came in here needing you, you were gone.”

Jude turns his face to me, brushing a rogue hair from my cheek. “I was always here for you. Sometimes I didn’t tell you because it was hard pretending being around you wasn’t ripping me up inside, but it doesn’t mean I wasn’t there.”

His finger trails down until he’s wiping a tear from under my lashes.

“Sometimes I’d hear you coming, and I’d slip onto the balcony to hide. Thinking, if you didn’t find me here, you’d leave.”

“I didn’t.”

“I know.” His hand pauses, where he’s cupping my face. “You’d climb into my bed whether I was in it or not.”

“It smelled like you.” Like peace—while everything else was chaos. “Why did you hide?”

“It hurt too much to hold you when I couldn’t have you.”

“You have me now.”

A hint of a smile ghosts his cheeks. The sight so rare it feels like the most beautiful secret he’s ever told me. But almost as quickly as it appears, his body winces and his eyebrows pinch.

Pressing my palm to his side, it’s not enough to keep him in. But I’m not ready to let go.

“What do you think happens when you die, Red?” Jude looks up at the ceiling.

“I don’t want to think about that right now.”

“I don’t think anything happens.” He ignores me trying to brush off his question.

I’m not ready to face a life without him, but the way his jaw clenches, I think maybe he needs my comfort when I want to be selfish.

I sigh. “What do you mean nothing? Like you just disappear?”

“Something like that.” Jude continues running slow circles on my shoulder. “There can’t be anything as good as this out there. Or as bad.”

Maybe he’s right. If heaven and hell are a state of mind, then I’ve already experienced both.

“I don’t know what I believe,” I admit. “But I’d like to think there’s more than nothing after this.”

I curl up against Jude and get lost in the feel of his thumb grazing the back of my shoulder—back and forth. I lose myself in the rise and fall of his chest, and how each exhale breaks a piece of him off like he’s leaving.

Inhaling deep, I fight to hold him here for both of us.

Somewhere in the distance, sirens start to echo. They wail through the neighborhood as they get closer, and it reminds me of the night I found my mother in the bathtub after she slit her wrists.

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