Chapter Eighteen
Libby turned her head and found his lips less than an inch from hers. Stunned, she studied his face. His eyes were so serious and a little sad, and she wondered why she’d never noticed that sorrow in him before. Maybe he was just that good at hiding under a gloss of devil-may-care attitude. Or maybe she’d never really looked. Probably more like it. At one time, the wildness in him had thrilled her, and she hadn’t wanted him to be anything but the irreverent bad boy that her father disapproved of.
“My God,” she whispered. “Who are you?”
Confusion carved grooves in his forehead. “I’m…me.”
“No, you’re not. Not the Jude I knew. That Jude wouldn’t care about…” She waved a hand at the scenery, at a loss for words. “Well, any of this. What happened to you to make you change so much?”
“Oh.” His shoulders slumped, but then he met her gaze straight on, and she saw a flicker of something there. Hope? Fear? Maybe an anxious combination of both. “I’m the same guy I’ve always been, Libby.”
“Then I barely knew you. That whole year, you might as well have been a stranger to me.” The realization lodged a hard lump in her throat. “It never would have worked between us.”
“Probably not,” he agreed.
“Did you know that when you proposed to me?”
“I knew you only saw part of me, the part I projected, but I was okay with that. I’m used to being that man and could have kept on being him for you. I’ve been playing the part most of my life anyway.”
“But…” She couldn’t wrap her mind around any of this. “Why?”
He shrugged. “Because that’s what was expected of me from my brothers, my classmates, my teachers, my superior officers… Jude, the wild child. The perpetual fuck up.”
“And you never wanted to prove them wrong?”
“I tried for a while, but in school, if I made good grades, the teachers accused me of cheating. Whenever I tried to help my brothers around home, I always managed to screw shit up. In the Marines, my superiors—your father—labeled me as a problem from day one in OCS and never gave me a shot to prove otherwise. So I stopped trying and let everybody see what they wanted to see.”
“Including me.”
“Yes. Including you.”
She turned away. Stared at the mangroves and their tumble of roots disappearing into the water, almost like they were tiptoeing through the marshlands. She supposed, if she really looked, if she blocked out her fear of the potential threats hiding here, it was kind of beautiful in the same way that Jude was beautiful. Wild, complicated, dangerous—and yet somehow alluring.
She burned to ask him why he’d ended their relationship in the way he had. If he’d wanted out, why hadn’t he just walked away? Why had he felt the need to crush her heart into dust first? And so publicly, in front of all of her friends.
Now in this secluded tunnel, miles away from her real life, would be the time to ask if there ever was one, but she couldn’t bring herself to form the words. They lodged in her throat. Honestly, she wasn’t sure she could bear to hear the answer. “Can we get out of here, please?”
“Yeah. Sure.” The board wobbled underneath her as he gained his feet with a fluid grace she envied. The paddle made a soft sound as it dipped into the water and pushed them forward. She watched the mangroves pass overhead in silence, jumping at every little splash against the mangled roots, terrified of a wayward crocodile making them into lunch despite his reassurances.
Jude didn’t seem worried. In fact, he was so calm and more relaxed than she had ever seen him. Peaceful. He paddled at an even, steady rhythm, slower than she would have liked, and took in their surroundings with a smile quirking his lips. She found herself watching him more than the scenery.
Eight years ago, she had convinced herself she loved him. If she was honest, under all of the hurt, part of her still felt that way. Except what did she really know about him? He’d all but admitted that the man she knew and once loved was a fantasy version of himself, so who was the real Jude? This one, so serene and carefree, who enjoyed the outdoors? The player who cheated on her with a well-endowed brunette two days after he proposed? Or the man who had asked her to marry him over a romantic dinner with so much emotion that it still choked her up to think about that night?
The quirk of Jude’s lips spread into a dazzling smile. He glanced down, caught her gaze with his sparkling baby blues, and motioned up ahead with his chin. “Look.”
Still half-afraid of seeing a croc, she slowly turned to face the front of the board, and a gasp escaped her. Up ahead, the mangrove tunnel opened up into an expanse of blue-green ocean. Sunlight shimmered across the top of the calm water, and she shielded her eyes against the brightness.