Crush

by Nicole Williams

  A flash of anger. It had been so long since I’d felt it, I welcomed it. Like a long-lost friend coming home for a visit. “Let me respond to that with a two-part answer,” I said, crossing my arms. “None of your business. And none of your business.” Jumping up, I grabbed my purse and headed for the coatrack to grab my jacket. I wanted out of here before Anton got warmed up.

  “I make you uncomfortable.”

  I huffed. “Doesn’t exactly qualify as the revelation of the year.”

  Anton chuckled. Infuriating. “Well, maybe this will,” he said, coming toward me. “I know why I make you uncomfortable.”

  “I know why, too,” I said, looking him up and down. “Everything. The whole Anton Xavier package makes me uncomfortable.”

  Super. I’d just mentioned Anton and package in the same sentence, and the twisted SOB hadn’t missed it either. One side of his mouth was already lifting.

  “I make you uncomfortable because some part of you likes me. Some part of you is attracted to me and that pisses you off. Some part of you knows that if you weren’t with him, you and I would be together.” He said this all without a bit of remorse, not even shame.

  I was getting upset. More upset. I wasn’t sure if it was because of how wrong he was or how right he was. It was all very confusing.

  “Maybe,” I said with a lazy shrug. “But that’s the answer to every question in the universe. Maybe. Maybe you and I might have hooked up in some alternate reality where there was no Jude, but that’s not the case. There is a Jude. And I’m in love with him.” I was getting worked up, just shy of a shout. I held up my left hand, flashing the ring in front of him. “And we’re getting married.”

  Anton stuffed his hands in his pockets. “When?”

  “Soon.” I grimaced at my word choice. He noticed that too.

  “How long have you been engaged?” Still the picture of calm.

  “Three years.”

  He took a step toward me; I took a step back. “What are you waiting for?”

  Why hadn’t I stuck with the whole none-of-your-business approach? “To graduate college.”

  “No, I don’t think that’s it,” he said confidently. “I think you’re waiting because you’re unsure. Something’s telling you this man is not the right one for you, and you can’t kill that voice.”

  “Wow, good one,” I said, clapping my hands. “And the Delusional Award goes to . . .” I stopped clapping to sweep my hands dramatically at him.

  The more I got worked up, the cooler he seemed. Nothing I said or did could tip his calm scale.

  “You say we could never be together, but that’s just because you’ve never even opened yourself up to the idea.” He took another step toward me and this time, when I took a step back, I was up against a wall.

  Fitting.

  “I don’t want to open myself up to that idea,” I said, warning him with my eyes. Warning him not to take another step closer.

  He didn’t heed that warning. “Then I’m going to help you.”

  Before I had time to process his intention, his lips were on mine, his hands following. Though his mouth was unyielding, his hands dropped gently to my waist and stayed there.

  I tried shoving him away immediately. It was a useless endeavor with Jude, but I at least managed to budge Anton, though not enough. His lips continued their assault on mine, like they were a drowning man begging for a lifeline, but I’d tossed my lifeline out a long time ago—to a different guy, and I’d never asked for or wanted it back. I knew that what Anton had said was partly true. The two of us very well could have ended up together had the world been Jude Ryder–less. But it wasn’t. Anton was the understudy to Jude. Anton was my what-might-have-been, but Jude was my was, is, and will be forever.

  “Anton, stop,” I protested against his unrelenting lips.

  Either he’d gone deaf or he was ignoring me. Neither would work for me.

  Raising my hand, I slapped it hard across his cheek. “Stop it!”

  The slap got his attention. Good thing, because my next move would have been a sharp knee to the groin.

  When Anton loosened his grip on me just enough, I gave him another hard shove, pushing him back a few feet. “You’re an asshole. How’s that for an answer as to why we’re not together?” Shoving him in passing just because he deserved it, I marched toward the door. “And one more thing. I quit!”

  I didn’t wait for a reply. I ran for the elevator, hoping I’d make it to the car before the last two minutes had caught up with me. As it was, I felt like I was hyperventilating.

  What Anton had said might have been true, but none of it mattered. I was with Jude. I wanted Jude. There was no Anton and Lucy when I’d given my heart to Jude Ryder four years ago.

  I had no doubts that if you plugged Anton and me into a compatibility computer, we’d come out on the other end together. I knew that, but it didn’t change anything. His rubbing that in my face when my fiancé was across the country, while I was an emotional, hormonal wreck, was not what I needed right now.

  As soon as the elevator doors opened, I ran through the lobby, shoved through the revolving door, and continued my sprint to the Mazda. I was pulling my phone from my purse before I knew I’d gone searching for it. As if my fingers had a mind of their own, they punched in a number as I crawled into the car.

  Jude answered on the first ring. “Hey, Luce.”

  Just hearing his voice unleashed the flood of emotions I’d been trying to hold back. I started sobbing. Hard-core, rocking, choking sobs. The kind I’d experienced only in the days after my brother’s murder.

  “What’s the matter, Luce?” Jude’s voice was tight with worry. “Shit. Are you all right? Where are you?” He was frantic, and it sounded like he was running.

  I inhaled and counted to five, trying to compose myself enough to reassure him I wasn’t dying in some back alley. “I need you, Jude,” I sobbed. “I’m sorry. I know it’s late and I know you’ve got practice in the morning”—it was next to impossible to get words out, and each one felt like a victory—“but I need you.”

  I heard him curse under his breath. I don’t know if my idea of composing myself had calmed him or made him more panicked. “I’m coming, baby. I’m coming,” he said, definitely running now, because I could hear the air cutting through the phone. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  I hated feeling so weak, like I needed someone else to hold me together, but I tried not to focus on that. I tried to focus on how lucky I was to have someone to call when I needed to be held together.

  “Thank you,” I whispered as I tried to start the car. My hands were shaking, making it difficult.

  “Are you safe, Luce?” he asked. “Are you hurt?”

  I knew he was talking about the physical safe and hurt, so that was why I replied, “Yes, I’m safe, and no, I’m not hurt.”

  “Where are you?” he asked, before talking in a clipped tone to someone. A taxi driver, maybe?

  “I’m in my car. I’m heading back to the apartment.”

  “Are you okay to drive?”

  I took a few more deep breaths until my shaking stopped. “Yeah, I’ll be fine.”

  “Okay, Luce. Wait for me at the apartment. I’m on my way, baby.”

  “Thank you.” There was nothing else I could say.

  “I love you, Luce.” His voice was still anxious, but it soothed me.

  “I know, Jude,” I said. “I know.”

  I hoped he would feel the same way once I told him everything I’d been keeping from him.

  After a teary drive home, I found Holly waiting for me. Thomas and LJ were gone.

  “Did you get off work early?” I asked, faking a smile.

  “Jude called me,” she said, pulling me into her arms. “He was freaking out and asked me to meet you here until he flew in.”

  “I’m sorry you had to leave work early,” I said, melting into her arms.

  “That’s not what I’m worried about,” she said, ste
ering me toward the couch. “I’m worried about you. What happened?” She inspected me as she sat me down. “Jude said you’d told him you were okay, but he wasn’t so convinced.”

  “I’m okay in the way he was worried about,” I said, as she slid my heels off.

  “Jude’s worried about you being okay in all the ways you can be, Lucy,” she said, grabbing the pillow and blanket over on the chair.

  “I know he is. And I guess I’m both okay and not okay. If that’s even possible.” I let Holly ease me down on the couch until my head crashed into the pillow.

  “What happened?” she asked as she layered the blanket over me.

  Suddenly, just having my feet up and my head on a pillow, I felt exhausted. Utterly spent from the month, the day, and the past hour. It had all caught up with me, and my body was going to revolt if I didn’t let it shut down for a while.

  “I’ll tell you later, Holly,” I said, yawning as I closed my eyes. “Will you wake me when Jude gets here?”

  “Of course, Lucy,” she said. “Sleep tight.” She pressed a kiss to my temple, and then I was asleep.

  NINETEEN

  “How long has she been out?” Jude’s voice broke through my dreams, but didn’t fully free me from them. Dreams that had been more dark than light, more nightmare than dream.

  “Since she basically walked through the door,” Holly replied, sounding far-off.

  “What’s going on, Hol?” His fingers started stroking my hair.

  “She wouldn’t say, but I’ve got a few ideas.”

  “What ideas?” His voice was so tight with worry, and something else. Exhaustion, maybe?

  “Nope, not my place to say. Lucy can tell you what’s going on when she wakes up.”

  Jude’s mouth pressed into my temple and stayed there for a beat, like he was trying to breathe me in. “I was so worried, Hol. So fucking worried.”

  “It’s going to be all right, Jude. Whatever Lucy needed you for, you two will work out.”

  “Yeah,” he said against my skin, “I know.”

  It might have been his lips, or it might have been his words, but one of the two freed me at last from the curtain of dreamland.

  “Luce?” Jude’s face was blurry as my eyes adjusted. “Baby? Are you all right?”

  “You made it,” I said, smiling up at him. I already felt ten times better just having him close.

  “I told you I would.”

  “I know,” I said, shifting below him. “What time is it?”

  “A little before midnight.”

  “How did you get here so fast?”

  His fingers continued running through my hair, soothing me. “I chartered a plane,” he answered. “A fast one.”

  This time, the price tag didn’t bother me. He was here in less than eight hours’ time. “Thank you,” I said, knowing two words were inadequate, but not being able to offer him anything else right now.

  Jude smiled his reply. He was so close I could smell the scent of his favorite soap. Having him here, his presence, his smile, his scent . . . I was home.

  “I know I should probably let you wake up and give you a minute, but I’m dying here, Luce. I’ve been dying since I got your call.” His voice got tight again. “What’s the matter? What happened?”

  For one of the few times in my life, he looked scared. Scared of the questions and scared of the answers.

  “First things first.” Holly appeared behind Jude holding a cup of orange juice and a handful of crackers. “You haven’t eaten anything for hours, Lucy. Eat this. Drink this. Or else.” She winked as she waited for me to sit up.

  I twisted around so I could face Jude and took the OJ and crackers. “Thanks, Holly.” Again, there was so much I owed her for, but two words of gratitude were all I had right now.

  Jude waited for me to take a sip and get down half a saltine cracker, but I could tell the waiting game was killing him. How could I break what happened to me this afternoon to him gently? If there was a way to ease the blow that the man Jude had been so certain had a thing for me had just plastered his lips to mine, I wasn’t finding one.

  Segue . . . ease him into it with a segue.

  “Anton kissed me.”

  Segues, apparently, in my book, sucked.

  The worry lines of Jude’s face deepened, until each wrinkle was its own canyon. “When?” His voice was so rough it scared me.

  “Right before I called you.” I took another sip of my juice and waited.

  “Where?” His jaw was locked and his shoulders were tensing.

  “At the office.”

  And now the veins in his neck were popping against his skin. We’d hit rage liftoff.

  “Where is he now?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “And I don’t care.”

  “Well, I care, and I’m about to find out.” He pulled his phone from his pocket and started searching through his contact list. I knew who he’d call first on this Anton manhunt.

  “No,” I said, wanting to grab the phone out of his hands and toss it out the window. But then he’d just go find mine. “You’re not going to go find him so you can teach him a lesson and kick his ass.”

  “That’s exactly what I’m going to do,” he said instantly, stopping when he got to the I’s in his phone.

  “No, you’re not,” I said firmly, setting my juice and crackers down. My attention and hands were needed elsewhere. “I don’t need you, or anyone else, to prove to some other guy that I belong to you.”

  “He kissed you, Luce,” Jude said, his eyes immediately narrowing. “It appears you do need me to do just that.”

  I gently traced the scar I’d memorized years ago. “It doesn’t matter how many guys want to, try to, or actually succeed before they feel the slap of my hand on their cheek,” I said, forcing him to look me in the eyes. “Because the only one of them I want to kiss is you. And that’s what matters.”

  To prove it, I lowered my face until our mouths were just a hair apart. Our lips hadn’t touched and already electricity was bouncing between us. When my lips did cover his, that electricity became something else entirely. Our lips played together, smoothing and sucking, until my breath started hitching in my lungs. Jude’s hand held my face carefully, but there was an undercurrent of strength in that touch.

  I ended our kiss by running my tongue along the seam of his lips before pressing a featherlight kiss to the corner of his mouth.

  “That’s who I want to kiss, and how I want him to kiss me, until the day I can’t kiss anymore,” I said, staring into his eyes. The darkness in them was gone. “So don’t feel like you need to kick Anton into next week to defend my honor. I can defend my own honor. Just stay here. With me,” I said, patting the couch. “Kissing me would be an added bonus.”

  He sat beside me and grabbed my hand. “You know it might kill me not to give that little jerk-off a piece of my boot, right?”

  I nodded. In fact, I was surprised he was still here, relatively calm, and talking in his normal Jude voice again. That kiss must have worked a miracle, because the Jude I’d known would have already tracked the guy down and broken his nose.

  “But I want you happy. Nothing’s more important to me than that,” he said, sighing. “So I’ll resist every instinct and not hang him over the edge of the Empire State Building.” Another sigh, this one longer. “Happy now?”

  “You have no idea,” I said, running my fingers through my hair. It was a mess, tear- and snot-coated, topped off by hours of twisting it into a pillow.

  “I’ve got a quick solution to that,” Jude said, patting my leg as he stood up. “I’ll hunt down one of those ponytail-holder thingies you leave all over the place.”

  “Bathroom’s a good starting point,” I called after him. I smiled. Jude had gone from hard-core Hulk to my ponytail-holder-thingy hunter in under a minute. Plus, he was here. I didn’t care why or what events had led up to his chartering a plane and flying across the country. Because he was here.

  �
�Impressive,” Holly muttered to me from the kitchen, sipping a cup of tea. “I thought I was going to be sweeping up glass for weeks from that special shade of pissed he turned.”

  Before I had a chance to reply, I heard a drawer slam before Jude came stomping out of the bathroom. “Goddammit, Hol,” he said, clutching something in his fist. “Did you go and get yourself knocked up again?”

  Holly’s face did the confusion thing before she noticed what was in Jude’s hand. Then her face fell.

  “What the fuck?” he said, holding up the pregnancy test in front of her. The pregnancy test I’d stuffed in the top drawer where I kept my toothpaste, ChapStick, and ponytail-holder thingies. Shit.

  “Jude,” I said, but he didn’t hear me.

  “How the hell are you going to take care of two kids on your own, Hol?” he said, sounding truly upset.

  “Jude,” I said again, this time louder.

  Holly was glancing between me and Jude, not saying a thing. She couldn’t lie, but she didn’t want to rat me out.

  “Say something,” Jude said, waving the test.

  “Jude!” There. I’d gotten as loud as he had.

  “What?” he shouted, spinning around. His face softened just a bit when he realized he’d snapped at me.

  “The test isn’t Holly’s,” I said, unconsciously draping my hands over my stomach. “It’s mine.”

  It didn’t register right away. It took a minute. But as Jude’s face changed from red to white, I knew my words were settling in.

  “It’s mine,” I repeated, looking at the test.

  “Wait . . .” He shook his head, glancing at the test, then back to me. “What?”

  I prayed he wasn’t going into shock, because I’d never seen this pale, clammy look on his face, and it sure as hell looked like shock to me. “The pregnancy test is mine.” He actually went a degree whiter at the word pregnancy.

  “Don’t play games with me, Luce,” he said, frozen in place.

  “I’m not,” I said, my voice quiet. “I’m pregnant.”

  He wavered but caught himself. Oh, God. He spread his hands over his face, leaving them there. “When did you find out?”

  He’d accepted that I was, indeed, pregnant. We were making progress, although this was hardly the response I was looking for. I knew he wouldn’t be jumping for joy, but I’d hoped for a hug and a We’ll get through this together reassurance.