Flirting With Chaos (22 page)

Yet, the therapist had helped. I hadn’t told her about the visions of blood or about Dad. Instead, we’d talked about my lack of intimacy. It had given me a focus. After a few weeks, the blood had disappeared. My sex drive had returned and thoughts of losing my virginity had drowned my brain.

Would it be weird to call her now and ask her why the blood has returned?

“Okay. My virginity is gone. The blood is back. Now what do I do?” I gripped my blanket hard in my fingers and stared at my bathroom door as more of the crimson liquid leaked down in several lines.

Kaden dragging me down memory lane and this damn house is bringing the blood back. I have to get out of here. I would have never come back this summer if I’d known I’d be at home so much.

I jumped out of bed and started packing, keeping my thoughts on the plan ahead. Every now and then I would risk a glance at the door behind me. Finally, once my suitcase was packed, the blood disappeared.

Get out of this house, and I’ll feel better.

Chapter 16

Road Trip

“T
HANK
Y
OU
, T
HOMPSON
.” I squeezed his hand one more time before I released it and stepped away. “Thanks so much for letting me borrow your car. I swear to God that when my trust fund comes, I’ll buy you a new one and write you a check.”

“I don’t need the money or a new car.” He frowned. “I need you to come back here in one piece. I need you to make good on your promise that you’ll call me every day to check in and eventually return.”

“Okay. I just need a few weeks to myself.”

He dropped the keys in my hand. “I’ll go get your bags from the house.”

“Thanks so much.”

“Don’t thank me yet,” he muttered.

Why not?

The booming of a song sounded far off in the distance. Mansions littered my neighborhood and provided living spaces for several professional athletes, so a car blasting loud music on a Tuesday morning wasn’t odd at all. However, the long black luxury motor coach that sped down the road toward my house was out of place. It turned into my long driveway and barely fit behind my mom’s town car and Thompson’s Toyota. No signs or words decorated the bus. I had no idea who, what, or why it would be coming to my mom’s place. I just hoped Mom wasn’t going to step out of it.

The door opened.

Jude jumped off like a crazed man and stomped my way. “You were just going to fucking leave without saying anything to me?”

“Why do you have a bus?” I almost dropped Thompson’s keys.

“Stop avoiding my question,” he said through clenched teeth. “We make love one night, and you think you can bugger off whenever the mood hits you?”

I scrunched my face in confusion. “First of all, stop yelling at me, and second, my leaving has nothing to do with you.”

“I didn’t say that. I’m saying that now, because we hooked up, you won’t come to me when you need me.”

Thompson came out with his attention focused on the ground as he carried my bags to the bus.

He must’ve told Jude that I was leaving, or maybe Jude had made him say it.

I rolled my eyes. “What did you do, bully my driver into telling you where I was going?”

Jude closed the distance between us. “I didn’t have to bully him. He called me and told me you were taking a bloody road trip across the damn country! He obviously cares about you and knows I care about you too!”

“Stop yelling.”

“Fuck you.”

My mouth dropped open. “Why are you so mad?”

“Get on the bus.”

I flipped him off. “You can’t just rush up here and talk to me any way you want to. This trip was about me, not you.”

“Then we’ll do this the hard way.” He picked me up like a caveman and slung me over his shoulder with no further word.

Thompson gaped at us.

Jude ignored my punching and yelling as he marched over to the coach, climbed the stairs, and set me down on my feet next to a shocked bus driver. Clearly, the poor guy had not been informed that Jude was executing an abduction.

“Hello, Miss Kenner.” The bus driver tipped his black hat and quickly averted his eyes.

“Hello,” I said.

“Keep going.” Jude snatched Thompson’s keys from my hand, slung them outside, and pushed me forward.

“Stop shoving me! I know how to walk, and this is just us talking. Nothing else. I don’t even know why you have a bus, and why you threw those keys outside and—”

“Just keep moving,” he snarled.

“Asshole.” I walked through the slits in a black curtain and entered an area decorated in all white from the carpet to the walls. A huge leather couch with a TV and video gaming system was on the right. T-Bone chilled on the other side with his feet propped up on a foot rest while he read a thick book with ferocious dinosaurs adorning the cover. The aroma of pizza and something sweet drifted in the space.

Jude grumbled behind me, “Go ahead, Rain.”

I kept moving. “Where are we going?”

“In our room to talk.”

I paused in front of a white door. “Our room? How is this
our
room?”

The coach moved. The floor vibrated under my feet. I lowered and leaned to look out of the window.
Damn it.
We were backing out of my driveway.

“Have you completely lost it?” I tried to step around Jude, but he acted like a brick wall and wouldn’t let me by.

“Keep on moving, Rain. If you think you’re getting off this bus, then you’re dead wrong. If you think you’re going on some road trip as a beautiful young woman on a lonely highway by yourself, then you’re more insane than me. Get in the back so we can talk, or I’ll pick you up and take you there myself.”

“Where are we going?”

“To the back.”

“I’m talking about on this bus, asshole! Where is this thing going?” I crossed my arms over my chest and tapped my foot.

Jude stared me down, and what I saw in his eyes made me shiver in fear. He looked like a man that would tiptoe along the ledge of a roof twenty stories in the air. Fury pooled within his eyes. He cracked his fingers on his right hand and took a few breaths, as if to calm himself.

“Where are we going?”

“Apparently, we’re going on a bloody road trip!”

I scanned the area. A duffle bag lay next to two boxes of pizza and a big bong with musical notes at the top.

“When Thompson called me early this morning and told me that you were packing your bags and had asked to borrow his car, I told him to stall you until I could call him back and let him know I was coming,” he said.

“No wonder it took him six hours to finally bring his car to the house.”

Jude nodded. “I rented this since I figured I couldn’t convince you to not want to drive out of Miami.”

“What happened to you avoiding me Sunday? That’s why I didn’t call you to tell you I was leaving.”

“You’re so full of it. I’ve been leaving messages on your phone since yesterday. I texted you this morning. You said a few things and then ignored me.”

“You avoided me before so I decided to avoid you.” I shrugged.

It had made sense at the time, but now it just sounded petty and stupid. In the end, I was just angry. It didn’t matter at who or why. I’d been fuming since I started having all those horrible dreams.

This morning, I’d been forced to talk with Mom, and boy was she pissed. She’d seen footage and articles of me all over the Internet—partying at South Beach on Friday night, arguing with Jude in front of the spa on Saturday, and running away from Kaden at the cemetary on Sunday. The Internet speculated that I had slept with both Kaden and Jude. Others claimed I’d broken Kaden’s heart by cheating with his son. Blogs named me the Slut of the Year. To say Mom was horrified was an understatement. She’d described my actions as being immature, reckless, and detrimental to me and her. I had a feeling she was going to cut off my credit cards and lock down my bank account if I didn’t fix this.

After our conversation, all I could do was scream.

I’d spent all these years trying to be good and keeping her secrets, only to be labeled as bad. What was the point of trying to do the right thing when people treated me how they wanted to anyway and pushed me down whenever the opportunity arose? So the plan to escape had popped into my head, to just get in Thompson’s car and drive until I became tired. Just leave. I’d taken out as much as I could at an ATM, returned home, and waited for Thompson to return with his car. Mom had many cars I could use, but if I took any of them, who knew what she would do. I left all my credit cards in her bedroom.

What was the point of bringing them if she’d just cancel them anyway?

“I want to be there for you like you’ve always been there for me.” Jude interrupted my thoughts. “So if you want to leave Miami, then fuck it, we leave Miami. But it happens together.”

“Whatever.”

“I’m going to interpret ‘whatever’ as a big, fat yes. And by the way, I wasn’t avoiding you Sunday. I just needed space.”

“Space from what? It’s not like I was crowding you.”

“Let’s talk in the back.” He formed his hands into fists.

“And will you be beating me behind closed doors?” I motioned to his fists.

“No, but I can’t say if mirrors and walls won’t be harmed during our conversation.”

“Whatever.” I turned around, opened the white door, and walked through it. An opened door with a bathroom inside stood on my right. A poster of a naked woman hung on it. She had her legs spread open and her hand stroking herself. I glanced at Jude.

“We have a bathroom in our room with a shower, so I designated this one for T-Bone. I let him hang up the nude girl.” He placed his hand on the middle of my back and guided me forward. “This is my studio on the left.”

It looked like a big walk-in closet with only glass walls. A microphone stuck out from the ceiling. Two stools had been nailed to the floor in the center. Buttons, switches, knobs, and glowing lights were on all the walls.

More black curtains swayed ahead of us. I assumed that was the location of “our room.” I pushed through them. The walls were painted yellow—Jude’s favorite color. A huge bed sat in the middle. My painting of the beach near Jude’s house adorned the wall behind it. Art supplies were stacked on a tiny desk in the corner.

“Thompson put your bags in the compartment under the bus. If you need anything, you can go down there when we stop to eat, or you can borrow my shirt.” He pulled his off and handed it to me.

I let my gaze drift down every row of muscle on his stomach as I took the shirt. “You should probably rest. Thompson said you didn’t sleep last night, that you screamed a lot and that this morning you just walked around the house yelling at things to yourself and talking about blood.”

Thompson has a big mouth.

I walked out of the room and through the curtains.

He came behind me, turned me around, and pulled me back to him. “Why would you decide to just leave like that?”

“I needed a break.”

“From what and who?” His voice came out in a low growl.

“From everybody.”

He gently pushed me into the glass walls outside of the studio and molded his body into mine. “You don’t get to have a break from me.”

“I got one yesterday and Sunday. Get off of me.”

“Those were my stupid moments of insanity. I won’t be giving you any more space.” He lifted me up and wrapped my legs around him.

My body melted into his. I hadn’t been expecting this. We were supposed to be just friends, no more intimate touching. But there we stood in the hallway with him holding me up and his body and lips so close that I couldn’t think of anything else but him moving inside of me and shoving all of my earlier depressing thoughts away.

“I thought I needed a day or two to get my head right,” Jude whispered. “I had to get you off my mind and clean up all the confusion the sex brought to my brain.”

“Well, holding me can’t be helping.” My hands shook. “Please put me down.”

“No.” He kissed me. His soft lips caressed mine. His tongue tasted like wine and some sort of candy.

I gasped as he slid his hand under my shirt, thrust it under my bra, and seized my breast as if it was the only thing that could keep him alive. I panted and squirmed in the grip of those big hands. “Why were you so mad?”

“I hate to see you go through this.”

“I’m not going through anything.”

“Yes, you are. I bet you’re seeing blood again. Thompson figured as much. I wish I could just fix it.” He pierced me with his gaze. “I wish I had a formula or pill or song or anything to make whatever you deal with go the fuck away.”

“I-I’m fine.”

“Don’t ever try to leave me again.” He buried his face in my neck and sucked, then set me back down and opened up his studio door. I figured he needed time alone, but he grabbed my hand and pulled me in. “I want you to listen to something.”