In a Second by Kate Canterbary Free Novel Chapter 6

Today’s vocabulary word: litigate

I couldn’t decide if this was simple jealousy or the kind of old, desperate longing that sat in your bones and refused to budge. It twisted somewhere deep in my belly, a feeling equal parts familiar and unwelcome. There was no reasoning with it or explaining it away. It made me restless, like I needed to get up and run to save myself from saying something I’d never be able to take back.

‘He’ll be five at the end of September and he’s pissed off about that because he wants to go to kindergarten in the fall but the cutoff is September first.’

I nodded. I hadn’t stopped nodding since hearing Jude had a son. He was a father. To a human child. Which he had with a woman. Who was not me.

I knew I had no business having any reaction to this news. It wasn’t about me, even if it did stab my side like a bra’s busted underwire. I’d surrendered the right to react to any part of Jude’s life a long time ago.

‘He—Percy—he’s visiting with your mom?’ I asked. ‘Is she still in the Hartford area?’

Jude’s features shifted to granite and the warmth in his eyes followed suit. ‘He’s with Penny’s mother,’ he said, the words carefully plucked from a thorny vine. ‘She lives in a small town on Saginaw Bay. In Michigan.’

Penny. Her name was Penny and her family lived in Michigan and she was Jude’s—well, she was Jude’s. I worked hard at pulling a warm expression that hid the fact that I was still choking down a handful of glass.

‘Oh. Okay,’ I said, my words coming out high like helium. ‘That’s—that must be a fun spot in the summer. With the water and…everything.’

He swept a glance from my still-bobbling head to the stranglehold I had on my tea. His brow arched up. ‘You can ask.’

What a charming idea. As if I’d be able to say anything now that I wouldn’t flog myself for later. And Jude knew this because another smile twitched at the corner of his mouth.

I focused on my tea, taking several long sips before fussing with a paper napkin and rearranging the plates on the table like the coward I was. Then, when the options were saying something or walking out of here now and straight into the Connecticut River, I met Jude’s watchful gaze. ‘Tell me all about your family. I’d love to hear about them.’

He reached for his coffee, saying, ‘It’s a good look on you, Saunders.’

‘Excuse me?’

He brought the glass to his lips. ‘Jealousy,’ he said with a grin.

Leave it to Jude to wind me up and back me into a corner only to turn me around and prove it’d never been a corner to begin with. ‘I am not jealous.’

It was an easy lie, if not a complicated one.

‘Keep telling yourself that,’ he said. ‘You’ve always been good at outrunning your reality. No reason to stop now.’

Okay, we’re doing this.

‘You wanted to talk so here I am, talking. If the only purpose of this meeting was to see how long I’d put up with your shitty comments, then’—I pointed to his watch—’note the time because I’m done. I hope you got everything you wanted from this visit.’

As I reached for my bag, he leaned across the table and caught my wrist. ‘Spare me the dramatic exit, princess.’

I stared down at his hand. No rings. Though I couldn’t see him wearing one. He probably spent too much time elbow-deep in engines and machines. It didn’t mean anything. ‘Do not call me that.’

He eased back, his fingers skating over my palm as he went. Oh, hell. Why did I feel that touch on the back of my neck and deep behind my belly button? ‘The princess wants to hear about my family.’ Glancing away, he cleared his throat. ‘Where to start? Right, okay. I barely knew my son’s mother, she’s been dead for more than four years, and I have a clusterfuck of a custody agreement with his grandmother.’ He met my stunned gaze. ‘Still jealous?’

I wasn’t sure how many times a gal’s world was supposed to tilt in the regular course of business, but at this point I had to believe I was on the high side of normal. Or I was living inside a snow globe and no one had seen fit to mention it yet.

‘Jude. My god. I’m so sorry for your loss⁠—’

He held up a hand. ‘I spent one night with her. I don’t get to grieve her.’

‘Of course you do.’

He gave a stiff shake of his head, saying, ‘I met her in a hotel bar in Chicago. I was there for a meeting or something. She worked trade shows and industry conferences.’ His massive shoulders inched up toward his ears. ‘Almost a year later, a private investigator tracked me down for a DNA test.’

‘Wouldn’t have guessed the business traveler bar scene was your vibe.’

He laughed, and something in that raw, honest sound shredded the tension. ‘I swear to god it’s not,’ he said, still laughing.

I heard it then. I heard the Jude I used to know. The one I’d loved.

‘It was only the one time.’

‘Yeah, sure,’ I teased. ‘Take those odds to Vegas, my friend.’

The levity lingered for a minute before he blew out a breath, saying, ‘It was a car accident. One of those unbelievable icy highway pile-ups. She died on impact and—’ His voice hitched and I had to knot my fingers together to fight off all the instincts telling me to reach for him. He glanced away for a second before continuing. ‘Percy was in the car with her. He was…just about six months old. Broken leg. Traumatic brain injury. Lost some of his vision in the left eye. But he came out of it.’

‘Oh my god. Jude.’

He shook his head like he had to sweep away the memories to speak. ‘They were driving home after I’d come in for the weekend. We’d agreed on monthly visits to start and then we’d shift to—’ He shrugged like none of it mattered anymore. I guess it didn’t.

‘I’m so sorry.’ When he tried to wave me off again, I added, ‘It couldn’t have been easy. Even if you didn’t have a relationship with Penny, it all happened at once.’

‘Definitely not easy,’ he agreed, ‘but the kid pulled through after two months in the hospital. He doesn’t speak, though the doctors can’t decide whether that’s a result of the TBI or a stress response.’

‘But he communicates with you,’ I said, pointing to his phone. ‘That’s really impressive for his age.’

‘He got tired of the alternative communication apps and learned to read and write over the past year.’ A warm, adoring smile brightened his expression. ‘Between ASL and texting, he doesn’t shut up.’

Fatherhood looked good on Jude. It looked really damn good.

A hollow spot inside me pinged though I managed to say, ‘He’s lucky to have you.’

‘That’s what my mom says,’ he replied, a laugh in his words. ‘She also says I deserve all the headaches and sleepless nights he gives me too.’

‘How is Janet?’ I asked. ‘Are you staying with her this weekend?’

I’d always loved Jude’s mom. She gave the best hugs, the kind that squeezed all the broken pieces back together tight enough that it seemed like they might hold. I’d missed her after everything ended and my parents shipped me off to California for college. Though I doubted she shed many tears over that change of plans.

She’d argued hard for us to go off to college separately. We needed time to figure ourselves out, she’d said. We had our whole lives to be together. Though even when she disapproved, she’d left the decision in Jude’s hands. My parents did not share that approach.

He pushed a hand through his hair and gave me a look that said Just wait till you hear this. ‘No, she moved out to Arizona last spring.’

‘Arizona? What prompted that?’

‘Mostly the breast cancer, but she’d had enough of the New England winters too. Also, there was something about better energy though I still have some questions about that.’

Slumping back in my seat, I absorbed the physical blow of those words.

‘She beat it,’ he added quickly, taking in the open-mouth alarm written across my face. ‘For a minute it didn’t look like she would, but she pulled through. It’s been a full year of no evidence of active disease now.’

‘That—that’s such a relief,’ I said. ‘But going forward, I’m going to need you to tell me everyone’s all right before getting into these tragic stories. I’m bracing myself for what’s to come.’

‘I’m tapped out on tragedy,’ he said. ‘Aside from the damage you did to my toes last night.’

‘You’ll survive.’ I gave him a tart smile before tearing off a chunk of chai muffin. ‘I’ve been trying to develop a recipe for these muffins for…well, for years. Never get it quite right.’

‘You like baking.’ There was something odd embedded in that statement but I couldn’t pry it out before he said, ‘I need you to do something for me.’

Ah. Finally.

I’d known it was coming but a shiver still raced down my spine and I had to work at chewing the muffin I’d crammed in my mouth. I made a real effort at looking casual as I swallowed hard.

‘Yeah, okay, let’s get into it,’ I said, tipping my chin at him. ‘I’ve been dying to find out the real reason for this visit.’

I expected an arched eyebrow glare, a broody stare that said nothing could prepare me, a scowl that sent me into a cold sweat. What I got was Jude ducking his head and blinking down at the table for a remarkably long minute.

Then he pinched his brow and ground out, ‘We need to be engaged. To be married.’

I waited. There had to be more. A punch line, perhaps, or a chasm waiting to open under the café and spring me from this mortal slog. Anything would be better than leaving me to tread water while holding up that—that announcement. Because it had not been a question, not at all.

When I couldn’t bear the weight any longer, I edged my chair closer to the table and tapped my fingertips on the surface. ‘I-I’m sorry but what did you just say?’

‘I need you to be my fiancée.’ He met my eyes before quickly glancing away. ‘Just for a week.’

‘I’m sure just for a week makes it all make sense to you,’ I said, my hands turning into little birds and fluttering around me as I spoke, ‘but that doesn’t clarify anything for me. One week is very specific. Why this time frame? What’s happening in this week? Is it a specific week or are we just tossing darts at the board to see where we hit?’

What I really wanted to ask was Are you just looking for the most painful ways to punish me?

He rubbed a hand over the back of his neck. ‘Do me a favor and dial it down, okay? There’s zero need to shriek.’

Everything inside me cooled. ‘I can promise you I’m not shrieking. I might have a few things to make up for but if this is how you’re going to treat me, you’ll be waiting another decade.’ I held his eyes for a long moment. Longer than he’d expected, if that flicker of surprise could be believed. ‘We can talk about all the things that went wrong and I can apologize for each of them but I’m not here for your fake-engagement games.’

‘No games, Saunders. I need you to be my fiancée for a trip to Arizona to visit my mother. We’ll go next week, if that works for you.’

I tried to swallow this piece by piece but the more I chewed it over, the less it made any sense. ‘Why?’

‘Because my mother was dying,’ he said, the words broken off and heavy. ‘She’d taken a turn and it didn’t look like she’d pull through. I would’ve promised her anything if I thought it’d make her comfortable, if it would’ve brought her some peace.’ He reached for his coffee but didn’t drink. He just held the glass, sliding his fingertips through the condensation. ‘She wanted to know I’d be all right when she was gone. Not just with Percy but that I’d find…someone. It mattered to her, and the only thing that mattered to me was putting her at ease.’

‘I can see that,’ I said, all hesitance, ‘and I understand you wanting to make her comfortable.’ I still couldn’t choke this down. ‘But I’m still not sure I understand how I figure into this yet.’

He stared at the table, his gaze far away. I desperately wanted to put this into a comprehensible order, give him what he wanted—if I could, and I had some doubts about that—and then get the hell out of here. There wasn’t a world where I could talk about being engaged to Jude, even as some kind of side quest, without feeling like my belly was filled with steel wool.

‘I told her we’d reconnected and—’ Jude waved a hand between us as if that explained anything. ‘Yeah. Well. She pulled through.’

We. At least eighty-four different emotions flashed across my face and I was working too hard at continuing to cosplay as a regular, functional human rather than the howling hound inside me to hide any of them. ‘We reconnected? And somehow that translates to us getting engaged?’ I leaned in, pressed my palms to the heat flaming my cheeks. ‘Jude, what? And why? Also, how? Just…how did that happen?’

‘I didn’t think she’d make it through the night,’ he went on. ‘She was in and out of it. Heavily medicated. Half the things she said made no sense, but then she’d be clear as day for a few minutes. She wanted me to get married, said it was important for Percy and…for me.’

He shoved a hand through his hair and then let it fall to the back of his neck, gripping and kneading the muscles for a minute as he stared out at the café. The move highlighted the biceps straining under the fine, soft weave of his shirt. His arm was a solid mass I’d struggle to get both hands around.

Eventually, he dropped that hand to his leg, his broad palm flat on the denim while his fingers tapped out a hurried rhythm. ‘I told her what she needed to hear, that I’d picked out a ring and was waiting for her to make it through that last round of treatment to propose. I just wanted to give her something to hold on to. Something good, even if none of it was true.’

‘And now you’re stuck with it.’ Stuck with me.

He shrugged. ‘More or less.’

That was when I realized that between all of our rocks and hard places, we had a real problem on our hands.

I frowned at the dishes between us and started consolidating the half-eaten muffins and empty glasses. ‘Wouldn’t it have been better to pick someone less’—I laughed to myself—’complicated to fulfill your mother’s dying wish?’

Jude pinned me with a stare that told me precisely how little he wanted this complication in his life. ‘Yeah, it would’ve,’ he said, ‘but there’s nothing I can do about it now.’

I picked at the muffins, pressing the pad of my finger to the crumbs. ‘What exactly are you asking me to do?’

‘Come to Arizona with me. Spend a few days with my mom. Let her throw us an engagement party,’ he said, ticking off the list on his fingers.

I shook my head but didn’t tear my focus away from feeding myself tiny bits of muffin. Much easier than eye contact. ‘You want me to—what? Pretend we’re together? That we’re engaged? How would that even work?’

And why did you choose me?

‘We both know you owe me one, Saunders. Help me make this happen.’

I blinked up at him, half expecting to find a smirk on his face or some indication this was an elaborate joke constructed to fuck with the last of my frayed nerves. But no, there was nothing but cool, unwavering seriousness in his eyes—and a challenge we both knew I’d accept.

‘What about your little boy? Won’t it be massively confusing for him?’

Jude’s lips firmed into a tight line. ‘Penny’s mom has him for six weeks every summer. He won’t know anything.’

At least that wouldn’t be an issue. There was no way I’d involve a kid in this sort of thing. It was bad enough that we were talking about taking our fraudulent engagement on tour.

‘How does this end?’ I asked, my throat suddenly tight. ‘Or have you failed to mention that we’re actually faking it for the rest of your mother’s life and there will be a wedding at some point?’

He cocked his head to the side as if he hadn’t thought that far ahead. ‘We’ll realize we want different things come September,’ he said, eyeing me with a bit more attention than necessary. ‘Or maybe you’ll run off on me once again.’

My entire adult personality was a carefully stacked tower of bad decisions, the foundation built on falling in line because my parents said so, and the mortar a mixture of grief and regret. I drifted off to sleep every night replaying my most painful moments and rehearsing new, less disastrous versions of them.

So I knew what it looked like when I was staring down a dark, thorny path that would inevitably drag me to hell and back. I also knew Jude Bellessi didn’t want anything to do with me. If not for that deathbed promise and the miraculous events that followed, he never would’ve spoken to me again.

And I knew I’d do anything for him. Always. Even if it broke me in the end.