And if Jude was about to make some point-of-no-return decisions, Snow wanted him to be stone-cold sober for it.
The video was less than fifteen minutes long, but it was more than twenty minutes before Rowe and Noah descended the stairs again at a much slower pace. He wasn’t sure if they’d watched the entire video, or if they’d simply stopped it and made some notes and plans between the two of them.
Snow placed a reassuring hand on Jude’s back as his friends stepped into the living room. They both looked a bit paler than they had when they went up the stairs. Rowe’s hair was a little mussed now as if he’d run his hands through it a few times.
“I made you drinks. On the island,” Snow directed with a jerk of his head toward the kitchen.
“Thanks,” Noah murmured. He walked into the kitchen and grabbed both while Rowe dropped into the chair opposite the couch. Rowe accepted the drink and downed both shots in a single swallow.
Leaning forward, Rowe placed the empty glass on the table and rested his elbows on his knees. He wrung his hands together over and over again, his brow furrowed in thought. In some ways, they’d been down this road before with Ian. Snow felt a little bad about dragging Rowe into this, but he knew Rowe had zero regrets about getting involved to save Ian’s life. And he knew in the long run, Rowe would have no regrets about helping Jordan.
“What can we do?” Snow asked when neither Rowe nor Noah was offering anything up.
“Call the police,” Rowe simply said.
“No!” Jude said with a burst of fire. His head snapped up and he glared at Rowe. “There’s got to be something we can do. I am not just handing this over to the police so they can potentially fuck this up. Jordan deserves justice after what happened. My brother deserves justice!”
Rowe didn’t even blink at Jude’s outburst, while Noah sipped his whiskey as he continued to stand just behind Rowe’s shoulder.
“And I’m suggesting that you call the police,” he repeated calmly. “Let them do the digging. It’s their job. They can track all the fuckers down related to this and put them behind bars for a very long time.”
“And drag my brother through a horrific court trial, assuming that he wakes up, forcing him to relive it all over again. No!”
“Jude—” Rowe started, but Jude jumped to his feet and cut Rowe off.
“No! Don’t put me off. You had no problem breaking all the rules to save Ian from a fucking drug lord and sex trafficker. My brother was beaten and raped, and you are just going to abandon him. Abandon me!”
“You’re ready to break the law? To kill a man to get your justice?”
Jude looked over at Snow, his pain-filled eyes briefly meeting Snow’s gaze.
Rowe jumped up faster than Snow thought the man was capable of. Taking a step around the table, he roughly snagged Jude’s arm. He started dragging him around the table when Snow lurched to his feet, but Noah was right there, placing a restraining hand on his shoulder. He didn’t honestly think Rowe would hurt Jude, but he knew his lover wasn’t thinking clearly. His emotional state was fragile, and Snow didn’t want Rowe making things worse with his usual heavy touch.
“It’s okay,” Noah murmured in his ear and Snow willed himself to relax.
With one hand on Jude’s bicep and another wrapped around the back of his neck, Rowe dragged Jude across the room to a decorative mirror hanging on the wall, forcing him to stand in front of it. Jude tried to look away, but Rowe released his arm and roughly grabbed him by the jaw. He held his head up, forcing him to look at his own reflection.
“Don’t look at Snow for your answer,” Rowe snarled. “This is who you need to worry about. You do this, you go after this bastard personally, and this is who you’ve got to be able to face again.” Rowe paused and shook his head before he lifted his own eyes in the mirror to Snow’s reflection. “Snow, Lucas, me? We made the choice to go outside the law a long time ago, and we’ve had to make peace with those demons. Ian didn’t have a choice, and he still found a way to make peace.”
Rowe released him and Jude continued to look in the mirror, his eyes filling with tears while his breathing grew more ragged.
“But you…you’re straight and narrow,” Rowe softly continued. “Yeah, you’ve helped us in the past, but you did that for Snow. You do this now…it’s not for Jordan. You’re doing this for you. And you’ve got to be able to live with that.”
The tears slipped down Jude’s cheeks, but he stayed staring into the mirror. “Every time I look in the mirror, I see that video, I see him lying in the hospital…and I think of how I failed him. How I should have been there…should have—” Jude’s voice broke. His shoulder slumped and Jude started to fold in on himself.