Shit.
I opened the kitchen door and stepped outside to find rain. My heart sank again. Even a walk around the block would be a trial. Awesome. But I did it anyway, exiting our garage and taking off down the wet sidewalk. It was breezy, too. I hugged my coat around me to keep the wind from whipping it around and tried to think where to go. On Thanksgiving everything was closed. I could try to fetch my car keys without crossing my father, and then drive… where? Some truck stop with sludgy coffee?
The rain on my face was really the least of my problems.
As I proceeded through Colebury, there were few signs of life. The houses were lit up, but traffic was nil. Until I hit Main Street, where an unfamiliar car slowed to a stop beside me. The window lowered. “Hey. You okay?”
Jesus H. It was Jude. It was as if I’d summoned him like a genie by invoking him to my father. “I’m fine,” I grumbled. I kept walking.
He inched along beside me. “Get in the car, Sophie.”
I stopped walking and approached the car. “Why?”
“What do you mean, why? Because it’s pouring.”
“Where are you going to take me?” It’s not like I had a destination in mind.
Clear eyes blinked up at me. “That’s really up to you.”
I stepped closer, still unsure what to do. On the passenger’s seat sat a white bag. “What’s that?”
His expression turned weary. “I can only guess where your mind goes when you’re asking me that.” He picked up the bag so I could see that it was from the grocery store. “A chocolate pumpkin cake. Can’t you smell it?”
I could, actually. I put my hand on the door lever, but I was still feeling weird about this. “You’re the very last thing I need today.”
He didn’t even look offended. Not one iota. “That is true about ninety-nine percent of the time. But it’s Thursday, so it’s not true right now.”
I opened the door. “What? You’re, like, a better man on Thursdays?
“That’s right.” He placed the cake on the backseat. As he twisted his body to set it down, I got a glimpse of his sixpack beneath the hemline of his T-shirt. There was a flash of golden skin, and a peek at the trim strip of light brown hair descending into his jeans.
This was probably why I slid onto the passenger’s seat. My ex-con ex-boyfriend—a drug addict and convicted man-slaughterer—flashed me his happy trail and I got into his car.
One wondered why my father didn’t trust me.
“Where to?” Jude asked, pulling away from the curb. “You’re welcome to come to dinner with me, but I won’t get back until late, probably.”
Once more I went over my options. And… wow. That was a depressing three-second calculation. I didn’t have any of the kind of friends that you could just drop in on at Thanksgiving. There was Denny, who would always take my call. But he’d want to know my troubles, and I didn’t feel like talking about it. I had terrific friends from college, but they’d all moved away after graduation six months ago.
“You can come with me,” Jude said quietly.
“Where?” I asked, still using a crisp tone. I hadn’t sounded like such a brat since my teenage days. But my attitude was my only weapon against the sea of memories that choked me every time I looked at Jude.
“Some friends’ house. But it’s in the boonies, off exit three.”
“Nice friends?” I asked. And that wasn’t belligerence, it was just self-preservation. Jude had been a drug addict when we were together. There was a lot that I’d chosen not to see. I’d never make that mistake again.
Beside me, he sighed. “I wouldn’t take you anywhere that wasn’t nice.”
“Okay,” I whispered as the rain beat down on the windshield. “Thank you,” I added a little too late.
He drove through the rain, and for a while neither of us said anything. With the windshield wipers working furiously, he took us onto the highway heading south, driving slower than I’d ever seen him drive. I would have made a joke about it, except it wouldn’t have been funny. The last time he’d had a member of my family in my car, there’d been a funeral three days later.
Eventually the rain slackened, becoming only a mist. He relaxed back in his seat, one muscular arm braced forward on the wheel. I sat in the passenger seat, trapped in a time warp. Watching Jude drive was something I’d done too many times to count. Once I’d given him road head on this very stretch of highway. We’d been heading to an outdoor concert in Norwich. It had been a warm summer night, and I’d been feeling every kind of frisky. So I’d bent over and unzipped his jeans.