And I gave it.
“Fine.”
He went still a moment.
He came out of that stillness when he burst out laughing.
The richness of that washed over me, and I basked in it gleefully.
For a second.
And then Judge lowered his head and kissed me.
I enjoyed basking in that a whole lot more.
Chapter 19
The Wildcat
Judge
He was expecting it.
The soft knock that came at his door after he and Chloe made out, then he’d made her comfortable and got them a couple of beers. They snuggled in his couch and discussed the totality of the shit she’d been facing with her brother, her sister, her mother, Duncan, her dad and her Uncle Corey.
She went to clean up, came back, snuggled again, and they got into what to do for dinner.
A conversation she fell asleep during, passed out so bad, if she wasn’t curled into him, she would have spilled her beer.
He was used to witnessing emotion draining a woman, grew up with it, so he’d been ready to set her up, make her comfortable.
And after he tucked her under a blanket on his couch, he made the decision to throw together some tacos, which were quick and good.
He’d gone to the kitchen to get that going in order that it’d be ready to finish up when Chloe was ready to eat when the knock sounded.
Now, he went to the door and opened it to who he expected to see.
Duncan was standing there.
After he gave a chin lift to Judge, he inclined his head to see in as Judge pushed him back and stepped out.
He wasn’t holding Duncan back.
He was letting Chloe sleep.
Duncan probably sensed this, wanted it for her too, and therefore didn’t fight it.
Before Duncan could ask, quickly, Judge said, “She’s fine. She’s good. She cried a lot and she’d been holding too much in. She let it out. She’s sleeping it off now. When she gets up, I’ll get her fed. Take care of her. You can tell her mom I’ve got her covered.”
Duncan nodded, and it felt good he didn’t even give a hint he questioned Judge’s last.
He said instead, “Everyone’s been calling.”
“Rix turned off her sound.”
Another nod and, “By everyone I mean my boys, Hale—”
Judge was confused at that name, confused and alert.
Who the fuck was Hale?
“Hale?”
“Another adoptee of the Pierce family. Corey’s son. Chloe grew up with him. Treats him like a brother.”
Judge relaxed.
“In between her mother sharing how furious she was, trying to get Coco on the phone, and then digging into Sash again, Sasha sent some texts,” Duncan continued. “And my guess is, those she texted sent some of their own.”
“Good your woman had words,” Judge said angrily.
“I think you understand, but I gotta be sure you do, this is rocking my family, Judge.” Duncan jerked his chin to Judge’s house. “She’s their pillar. She crumbles, it’s all gonna go to shit.”
“Then it’s gonna go to shit,” Judge stated, his voice filled with shards. “She thinks the world of you, do you know that?”
It was gruff when Duncan answered, “Yeah.”
He thought the world of Chloe too.
Good.
“So her sister saying that shit about that married guy in front of you tore her apart.”
“Sasha explained that wasn’t what—”
“Yeah, she knew it wasn’t what she was making it out to be and it still came out of her mouth. In front of her mother. You. Me. And that woman saw me and Rix walking up to the door. She lashed out in her own pain knowing just how deep that blow would go, and she still fuckin’ dealt it.”
Now, Judge’s voice was rocky, that was how pissed he was at the memory.
“Again, Genny is on that,” Duncan reminded him. “And I’m not at that point with them, Judge, I’ve been in their lives mere months, but I had a few things to say to Sasha too.”
Excellent.
“I didn’t need to say them, though,” Duncan went on. “She feels like hell she did that.”
He didn’t give that first fuck.
“Chloe’s tenure of holding them all up is done, Duncan.”
Duncan sighed.
After hearing that, Judge remarked, “I think I’m understood.”
“You are. But she’s a part of this family, and we all need to rebuild with what we have now. And it goes without saying, she’s a big part of that, it’s just the way it is, the way they are, but it’s also the way Chloe plays it.”
Maybe so.
However…
“She’s worn herself out with that effort while they all wallowed in their own issues. It’s time for the rest of them to boss the fuck up.”
“Those are almost Sully’s exact words,” Duncan muttered, and Judge wasn’t surprised.
He liked Sullivan Holloway unreservedly. He was a solid guy and always had been for as long as Judge had known him. Even when he was a lot younger.
Duncan focused more fully on Judge and went on, “You and her—”
“We’re happening.”
Duncan’s lips twitched before he pressed them together.
“Do you get that, Duncan?” he asked.
“I don’t think I need it explained, bud,” Duncan answered.
“No, what I mean is, for her,” he jerked his own head back toward the house, “she needs this family rebuilt too. It’s everything to her. It being fractured has torn her apart. She’s been suffering a lot of blows for a long time and keeping her chin up through them so everyone else can have their shit. And no shade on Genny, or Tom, they had their own issues they were dealing with. But it doesn’t negate the fact Chloe’s been swinging in the breeze with this, alone, no backup, making it easy on them to deal with their own shit. What you need to get is, she’s got backup now.”
“Thank fuck.”
At this response, the tension ebbed out of Judge.
Duncan’s voice was quiet when he said, “It is not lost on her mother that she’s suffering. And Chloe confided that directly to me. We’ve been worried. I cannot tell you…” He lifted a hand, pulled it through his hair, dropped it. “This brings relief.”
Judge didn’t want that for them, any of them, but all the same, he was glad to hear they’d not been entirely clueless.
The door behind him opened.
He twisted and watched Chloe slip out.
After she’d hit the bathroom to clean up the mess her crying jag had made of her makeup, she’d come out and most of it was gone.
She was as gorgeous as ever.
Now, a little puffy-eyed from the weeping and the sleeping, she was the same.
He knew she would be, puffy eyes and all.
Even so, his tension came back at her appearance, only to slide away again immediately as she sidled up to Judge then pressed against his side, wrapping her arms around his middle.
Jesus.
It felt like his fucking soul let out a breath.
He glided an arm around her shoulders.
Duncan took them in, his mouth curved.
“Hey, Bowie,” Chloe murmured shyly.
“You okay, honey?” Duncan asked.
She nodded, her cheek moving against Judge’s pec.
“Your mom’s worried. Sasha is—”
Judge cleared his throat.
Duncan’s chest heaved with a held back laugh before he kept on, “Everyone’s worried.”
“I’ll call Mom.”
“By everyone I mean Sully, Gage, Hale…and Matt.”
Fuck.
“I’ll connect with Sullivan, Gage, Hale. I’ll do that soon,” she promised. “But I need space, Bowie.”
In other words, Matt could fester in the situation he’d wrought by dragging Chloe through his shit and then blaming it on her.
Yes.
&nbs
p; She’d been thorough when she pulled it together and then gave it all to Judge.
And he liked Sully and Gage more than he already did, and he’d liked them both a lot.
For his part, Gage had driven up from Tucson to “show her a good time” last night. He did this by taking her out to some club he could only get into because he had a fake ID, and then he used his allowance to buy her drinks and watched her purse while she danced.
But her blood siblings, they were another story.
“I’ll see to that,” Duncan promised.
“Tell Mom I’m okay, though, yes?”
“Of course, honey.” Then he looked to Judge. “She doesn’t drive down the mountain tonight.”
Chloe tensed at his side.
“Absolutely not,” Judge agreed.
“I—” Chloe didn’t quite begin.
Duncan cut her off by saying, “Come here just real quick, honey.”
Chloe didn’t protest further. She pulled from Judge, and Duncan folded her tight in his arms.
Judge shifted just enough to see the expression on her face was relieved, content.
And suddenly, Judge felt the same.
Duncan had to say no more, the hug said it all, so he kissed her cheek, broke their hug and ordered, “Eat. Rest. We’ll see you soon.”
Judge reclaimed Chloe, and Duncan clapped Judge on the arm, dipped his chin and sauntered away.
Judge felt Chloe’s head move and looked down at her to see her looking up at him.
“I have to work tomorrow, Judge.”
“So wake up early to get down the mountain.”
She scrunched her face.
He bent and kissed her nose.
When he lifted away, she didn’t hesitate to educate him about something important.
“There will be times you doing something that sweet will allow you to get away with being ridiculous. A very early morning on the line is not one of those times.”
“Sure it is,” he disagreed.
She glared but rearranged her face to watch and then wave as Duncan drove away in his Tesla SUV.
When the night swallowed his taillights, Judge guided her inside.
Straight to the kitchen.
There, he gave her a squeeze and let her go to get on with dinner, because he was starved.
She reached for her bag.
“You touch your phone, I’ll take it from you and throw it over my deck.”
That got him another glare.
“I’m not sure I’m a fan of this bossy,” she declared.
“They can stew in the pot they cooked up and tried to boil you in,” he said, dumping the ground beef in the skillet.
“That’s quite the metaphor,” she tossed at him.
He shot her a grin. “You’re not gonna get poetry from me either, doll, but you won’t go wanting to understand what I mean.” He paused then, “Or how I feel.”
She rolled her eyes, but she did it with lips curving.
She then explained, “I wasn’t going to connect with Sash…or Matt. But Mom needs to know I’m good and Sully might do something severe, like charter a plane to get to me or go over to Matt’s and punch him in the face. He’s overprotective, that one. I’d weed that out of him, but it’s immensely attractive and will serve his future partner well, once I’ve decided she passes muster.”
Judge burst out laughing, his relief complete because she was herself again.
He noticed her lips were again tipped up as she finished reaching for her phone.
When he saw the screen light up, he also saw it filled with notifications.
Shit.
Before she got into it, he said, “I want you spending the night.”
Her head came up, and her eyes found his.
He made himself clear.
“In my bed, next to me. Where I can be close to you. No sex. That’s going to be only ours, and I don’t want the memory of our first time clouded with something ugly. But I also don’t want you driving down in the dark, or after a big trauma and crying jag. It’ll worry the fuck out of me.”
She left that a moment, her face soft, her eyes gorgeous, but she said, “I really do need to open tomorrow, and I am not a morning person. Further, my toilette is not swift. I’d have to be out the door by five and I don’t fancy that.”
Only Chloe would describe getting ready as her “toilette.”
“Are you overrun with customers on a Monday morning?” he asked.
She looked like she was assessing that.
Then she said, “No.”
“Can you open a few hours late and it not detrimentally hit your bottom line?”
She didn’t have to assess that. “Yes.”
“Is there anything scheduled, a meeting, deliveries, that you have to be there for?”
“No.”
“So are you spending the night with me?”
She smiled. “Yes.”
“Come here, baby,” he murmured.
She came to him.
He rounded her with an arm, and she kept her face tipped to him so he could take her mouth.
He did that, the beef sizzling, and he kept doing it, because the beef could burn for all he cared.
If it did, he had more in the fridge.
But now, he finally had her there, at his side, in his home, after she let it all hang out.
He needed to see to his woman.
When she was fully melted into him, he released her mouth and paid attention to their dinner.
But he didn’t let her go.
It was possible they looked ludicrous, but he didn’t care about that either as they shuffled around the kitchen attached, Judge making taco meet and getting stuff they’d need out of the fridge, whooshes coming from Chloe’s phone as she dealt with the fallout of her sister’s nasty.
He knew when she gave him more of her weight that he had her attention back.
And that was when he asked, “How much research did you do on me?”
She stilled.
He laughed and looked down at her.
“It’s okay. It’s cute. It proves how totally into me you are.”
It took her a beat, but she wisely decided to let that slide.
Unfortunately, she did it to say carefully, “Your grandfather seems like quite the character.”
He didn’t break their gaze when he shared straight out, “He’s a dick. I detest him. Even though I’ve said this to his face more than once, he considers it indication I’m a ‘real man’ who ‘knows his own mind and has the balls to speak it,’ instead of the reaction I’d like it to have. Him getting out of my life for-fucking-ever.”
“I sensed this would be the way you felt about him,” she murmured.
But he did not miss her pressing closer.
She then said to the simmering taco meat, “As much as I, too, want to know everything about you, I think you should not only share all of this in your own time, but also, we’ve had enough excitement for one night.”
“My mom’s a functioning addict with the ‘functioning’ part of that being pretty dicey.”
Her head jerked back, and her eyes locked with his.
“No time like the present,” he said.
“Judge—”
“Let’s get it out of the way, yeah?”
A brief hesitation, then she nodded.
Yeah.
“I do my absolute best to steer clear of her because she’s a fucking mess,” he said dispassionately. “I’ve learned not to get dragged in, but it’s still hard, because she’s my mom. Though, only because of that. Anything else I might have felt for her has been leached out through years of cleaning up her puke, putting up with her ranting about my father, when she was the one who cheated on him first, and generally our home being devoid of any parental guidance at all. The only thing she put her absolute all into, outside of making certain there was always booze, pot, pills and coke in the house, is keeping me from Dad.”
“She cheated first?”
> He nodded. “Apparently, Dad had repeatedly called her on her consumption, not only of booze, but blow and other pharmaceuticals. When she refused to admit she had a problem, something she’s committed to, to this day, he attempted a tough love route. He cleared the house of all of that and cut her off financially. She couldn’t access cash at all, which wasn’t a problem. He paid for everything, and she didn’t need for a thing. Or want for one. Except the thing she needed most. Which she got by fucking her dealer.”
“Judge,” she breathed, full-on pressing into him now, her hand coming to his stomach to flatten tight to the muscles there.
He shrugged, set the spoon aside and reduced the heat on the meat.
“Judge,” she called.
He looked down at her again.
“How do you know this?” she asked.
“She got drunk and told me. Then I called Dad, and he’d been protecting me from it, so he was pretty pissed she let it slip. But he confirmed. By the way, when I learned this, I was fourteen.”
“Mon dieu,” she whispered.
He shrugged again.
Her eyes narrowed on him.
He gave her a squeeze.
“By the time he supposedly cheated on her, he’d already asked her for a divorce and had made moves to see that through. She fed it to the media he had another woman, when they were living in the same house while she was supposed to be sorting herself to move, but they were separated. She was lashing out. And I suppose in the end that was a good thing for Dad. It was the final straw.”
Chloe was staring up at him in horror.
Judge moved to allay that.
“It’s gonna sound cold, but I honestly don’t care about any of this anymore,” he told her. “I can’t say it’s comfortable when she’s around. I find her trying or irritating or embarrassing. But she doesn’t come around often, and I don’t go to her. She’s no fun, obviously, but she’s also locationally close to Granddad, and he’s to be avoided too. Problem with him is that he has a sixth sense of when I’m close. And then he’s there and she’s enough. The both of them…” He shook his head.
“I find it difficult to believe you’re this cavalier about all of this,” she remarked hesitantly.
“Sadly, one day, you’ll find out. They both are family. And although we’re not close, family is family.”
Chasing Serenity Page 25
