Clash (13 page)

“Whoa,” Tony said, grabbing hold of me. “Lucy? What are you doing here?” he asked, looking down at me. “Why are you upset?”

Throwing a look over my shoulder, I dodged out of Tony’s hold. I didn’t see him, but his voice was getting closer.

“Luce!” Jude shouted again down the hall. “Wait!”

I didn’t. I couldn’t.

Rushing outside the door, I leapt down the stairs, sliding almost the entire way to the Mazda. My hands were shaking, but I managed to pull the keys out of my coat pocket and start the ignition. Punching the car into drive, a shadow eclipsed the yellow light streaming out of the open front door.

Jude.

I hit the gas, forgetting I was on a plane of ice. My tires spun, getting me nowhere.

“No, Luce!” he shouted so loudly I could hear it across a lawn and through the windows of my car.

Taking a breath, I eased down on the accelerator this time and gained some traction. Encouraging the Mazda forward, I picked up some speed.

Before I’d gotten more than a few car lengths away, I caught sight of Jude leaping down the stairs and running across the lawn after me. He was still naked, nothing but a pair of boxers clutched in front of his nether region.

Gripping the steering wheel, I pressed the accelerator lower, praying I wouldn’t wind up in a ditch at the end of the road.

“Lucy!” he shouted, banging into the side of the car.

I screamed in surprise, pressing the accelerator lower.

Pounding on my window, he ran alongside the car. “Stop, Lucy!” he yelled. “Don’t do this.”

I couldn’t look at him, I couldn’t look at what I’d lost so soon after losing it. Keeping my eyes on the road, I bit my lip to keep from crying and shook my head before punching the accelerator.

He stopped being able to keep pace by the time I got to the end of the block, and even though I swore I wouldn’t, I looked in the rearview mirror.

He was crouching in the middle of the road, his breath steaming up the night air, and his head hung like he was both praying and accepting his punishment.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

I don’t know how I made it to the parking lot of a hotel outside of Monticello‌—‌in one safe piece‌—‌but I guessed it had something to do with angels. There’d been numerous alerts coming through the radio advising people to stay off the roads, and if one had to go out for an emergency purpose, to make sure they strapped on chains.

So the fact a young girl who had never driven on snow or ice in her life managed to drive her car that didn’t even have snow tires on it hundreds of miles without bending it around a median in a state of choking sobs, I knew some kind of ethereal being or beings had to have had a hand in it.

Grabbing my purse, I popped out of the car. My heels slipped and slid across the parking lot, managing to make it inside the lobby safely. The air was perfumed with coffee and some sort of chemical cleaner. But it was clean and it was somewhere Jude wouldn’t be able to find me.

I knew he’d come looking‌—‌I’d been checking in my rearview mirror every mile, expecting to see the square headlights of his truck shining down on me, but they never had. But then again, who knows? Maybe I’d overestimated him. Maybe he got the whole chasing after me thing out of his system when he ran balls to the walls down the middle of an icy road, wearing nothing but a boxer loin cloth. The thought made me more depressed. I wanted to be chased, in some part of me I didn’t want to acknowledge‌—‌I wanted to know I meant more to him than giving up after a few minutes.

But then I remembered Adriana’s glistening naked body and that smirk of hers and I swore I never wanted to see Jude Ryder ever again.

I walked carefully across the lobby, like I was still traversing over ice, and the receptionist looked up. Her smile was warm. “Good morning,” she greeted.

“Hi,” I replied because there was nothing “good” about this morning. “I need a room if you have one.”

I hadn’t realized this one might be full. The thought of getting back in the car and white-knuckling a few more miles to the next place made my stomach turn.

“We sure do,” she said, thrumming her fingers over the keys. “How long will you be staying with us?”

As long as possible. To the end of time.

“Until Sunday,” I said. I didn’t want to be in my room or in a place I could be found until I absolutely had to be.

“Check-in isn’t until three, so I’m technically supposed to charge you for four nights,” she said, swiping a card key through a device.

“That’s fine,” I said, pulling out my wallet.

“But it’s Thanksgiving weekend and I like to give ‘technically’ a break on the holidays,” she said, looking up at me with that smile again.

“Thanks,” I said, handing her my card.

I didn’t know how much it would cost, I didn’t even know if the only room they had left was the presidential suite. I just had to crawl into a bed and let sleep take me away from reality for a while.

She took my card, studying my face. Her smile lined into concern. “Honey, are you all right?”

Great. I was a walking, obvious exhibit of emotion. I suppose my red-rimmed eyes and puffy face gave away something wasn’t “all right.”

I nodded. “Just tired,” I said, wishing she could run my card faster so I could get on my way.

Having me sign a copy of my receipt, she handed me my card back. “You give us a call at the front desk if you need anything,” she said, resting her hand over one of mine. Patting it, she gave me another smile. “Lord knows I love them, but men are one giant pain in the ass.”

I didn’t ask why in the entire population of hotel receptionists I’d wound up in front of the most perceptive one, because the irony of it just sort of fit the tone of the last twenty-four hours.

Trying to smile back, I tapped my card key on the counter. “Agreed,” I replied, before heading towards the elevator.

I made it to the third floor; I even made it down the hall and into my room before the next batch of tears came. For someone who loathed crying, I was eating a lot of crow today. Taking a few seconds to kick off my shoes and coat, I slid under the covers and closed my eyes. I was asleep before the next tear could fall onto my pillow.

I spent the next three days never leaving my room. I slept almost all of Friday, watched the television unseeingly after that, and didn’t order my first meal until Saturday afternoon because I’d lost my appetite. Even at that, I had to force myself to finish half of my toasted cheese sandwich. In between channel surfing and sleeping, I took showers. I preferred them to baths because I could pretend I wasn’t crying when I was in the shower. I even tried to find a ballet studio I could dance at just to get some of the pain sweltering inside of me out. Of course, not a single studio would be opened this holiday weekend.

I’d turned off my phone when I woke up on Friday because Jude had been calling it every half hour since earlier that morning. My guess was that he’d made it back to my dorm by then, only to discover I wasn’t there, and was going nuts trying to figure out where I was or worried what had become of me on those roads.

Turning my phone off, I reminded myself that a man who slept with another woman didn’t have the right to worry about me or be assured I was safe anymore.

I slept late into Sunday, wanting to delay the inevitable. The hotel had been like this warm safety blanket, keeping me out of line of the storm coming for me, but it couldn’t hide me forever. I had reality to get back to and I sure as hell wasn’t going to ruin my life over one guy who I shouldn’t have let into mine in the first place.

The ice and snow had melted by Friday afternoon, so the roads and my Mazda got along much better this trip, although the roads were a hundred times busier this trip thanks to all the holiday vacationers making their way back home.

It was late when I made it back to Juilliard. I told myself it wasn’t because I’d been stalling, but because I’d wanted to take in the sights of the city from behind the windshield of my car. Of course I’d been living in a state of denial all weekend, so why should I stop now?

The parking lot was almost full again, almost every light in the rooms turned on and streaming with people back from a long weekend. Pulling into my assigned space, I turned off the car and gave myself a few long breaths before getting out. I couldn’t put this off any longer.

Jude and his truck weren’t anywhere in view, so maybe I’d been right and I hadn’t been worth more than a few minutes’ chase and a gazillion phone calls. The thought was one of the most depressing ones I’d had to date.

I still had on the same outfit I’d left the dorm in on Thursday, but it was crumbled, dirty, and in need of a trashcan now.

I could smell the signs and faintly hear the sounds, even from the stairwell, that India was back. That was just what I needed. To curl up next to her while she made me some kind of hippy tea that contained I didn’t want to know what, while I spilled my guts and she gave me some sage advice that was along the lines of sicing a voodoo witch on him.

Shoving open the stairwell door, which felt twice as heavy as it used to, I stiffened as soon as I turned down the hall. The same figure, in almost the same position I’d peered at in my rearview mirror four nights ago, was crouched down the hall, staring at my door like he was begging it to let him in.

I’d just taken my first step back towards the stairwell when Jude’s shoulders stiffened, right before his head snapped my way.

“Luce,” he breathed, saying it like it was a prayer.

I shook my head, my eyes filling with more damn tears as I kept backing away. I couldn’t do this anymore. I couldn’t do Jude Ryder anymore because it was going to wind up being the reason for my death or institutionalization.

“Luce. Please,” he begged, working his way into a stand. He wobbled, like he had run out of strength or was shit-face drunk.

I kept backing away. It was the only way I knew to keep me protected from him. I’d just keep retreating to the end of the earth if I had to.

“Luce,” he repeated, his entire face twisting. Balancing against the wall, Jude took a couple steps my direction. But he didn’t make it any farther than one before his legs gave out, his whole frame collapsing onto his knees.

It was instinctual, not rational, how I responded. Rushing towards him, I had this flash of panic that he was dying. I’d never seen Jude weak; I didn’t think it was in him. Vulnerable, sure, but never weak. And here he was, not able to support his own weight more than a step at a time.

Sliding to the ground next to him, I could tell right away his lack of balance and coordination wasn’t alcohol induced. His strained breath only smelt of Jude, and his eyes were clear.

Except when they lifted to meet mine, they clouded with some emotion that ran so deep I was sure I could never decipher it.

“God, Luce,” he breathed, his breath coming in haggard spurts, “don’t do that to me again.”

His arms folded around me, pulling me against him with all the strength he had left. It wasn’t his normal embrace, the one that felt like those arms could shield me from the whole world; this one was hollow and even a bit awkward.

Pushing away from him, assured he wasn’t going to die any time soon, my sorrow morphed into anger. Partly to do with him being here when he didn’t have a right to be here anymore, and partly because I had to look on what I’d lost again. His face lined with pain when I pushed him away.

“Don’t ever do that to
you
again?” I spit the words back at him. I didn’t care how weak he was; he didn’t deserve even the thinnest filter of mercy. “Don’t ever do that to you again?” I couldn’t seem to get anything else out.

“Yeah,” he said, staring at the ground, “don’t do that to me again. Do you know how god damned worried I’ve been about you?” His chest was heaving with his words, like oxygen wouldn’t take up residence in his lungs. “Do you know how many times I’ve searched this city over making sure you weren’t dead in some back alley? Do you know how many hospitals, police stations, and news stations I called every hour to make sure they hadn’t found you at the bottom of some ditch?” His eyes lifted back to mine, and they flashed onyx. “So, yeah, don’t you ever do that to me again.”

“Fine,” I said, giving his chest another shove. For the first time, I could actually move him. “I’ll stop doing
that
to you when you stop screwing skanks behind my back. Oh wait, I’m done with you and your cheating ass ways, so you can screw whoever the hell you want.” Shoving him again, I bolted up, lunging towards my door. I needed a buffer between us right now, preferably a state or two, but I’d have to settle for a dorm room door.

“You are not done with me,” he said, his teeth gritted as he walked on his knees towards me.

“Oh, yes, I am. I’m so done with you, Jude Ryder!” I shouted, spinning on him once I’d thrown open the door. “I’M DONE IN!” Slamming the door shut, it bounced right back. Jude had wedged himself inside the doorway and I’d managed to slam that door hard into the side of his face.

He grimaced, but it looked like it was more due to the kind of pain that wasn’t physical.

“Hell and Hades, you two!” India shouted, springing up from her chair in the corner and lunging across the room at us. “Stop making a scene. You’re not the first couple to have a lover’s quarrel, so stop acting like it.”

Pushing me to the side, she leaned over Jude, glancing down the hall. “Sorry,” she called out, “we’re working out some issues down here. We won’t keep y’all up all night.”

Waving down the hall, she glanced down at Jude, who was leaning into the doorway, breathing like he still couldn’t catch his breath and staring into the floor like he was waiting for it to swallow him up. Winding her arms beneath Jude’s, she pulled him inside the room. “Get in here, you crazy son of a bitch.”

Once Jude was inside, she shut the door and slammed her back against it. Exhaling, she looked over at me where I stood at the foot of my bed, arms crossed and looking everywhere but at Jude.

“Hear the man out,” she said like it was an order. “He’s earned it and you deserve it.”