“It just might,” I admitted.
Every hard edge of him softened, and his gaze sifted over my face, like he was searching for any reservations or regrets. “Didn’t bring you back here for that.”
“Isn’t this the way you treat all your friends?” I tried for a tease, but the question thickened with emotion.
He kept brushing back my hair from my face as I gazed down at him.
The man this stunning creature that I wanted to know.
“Is that what we are, darlin’, friends? And here I thought you were going to stab me if I touched you.”
“I think I would have stabbed you if you didn’t.”
“And I think I would’ve died if I had to keep tiptoeing around you the way we’ve been doing the last few days. Hated it. The distance.”
“I hated it, too.”
The truth was, I’d gotten used to his friendship, or whatever other lie we wanted to label it.
The muscles in his body flexed. Torment rose to the surface.
“I fucked it up, Salem. Know it. I just…your daughter…”
That grief strobed like a beacon of devastation in the dark chasm of his eyes.
My heart skipped with the secrets I kept locked tight, panged against the ones I knew Jud was hiding, too.
Still, like a fool, I whispered, “What? What is it? You can tell me anything.”
Ominous laughter floated from his mouth, and his head shook against the hard floor where he lay. “No, see, that’s the problem, Salem. I opened up once and confessed who I was. It didn’t turn out so great.”
I swore the tattoo imprinted on his side burned against my chest.
Grim.
I swallowed back the disquiet, and I fell into the potency of those eyes. Into the gulf of darkness that waited below the surface.
“My wife—”
I didn’t mean for the gasp to get free, but it did, a shock in the air.
Jud’s mouth trembled and he curled his arm tighter around my back.
“I tried to be a better man, Salem. I fucking tried to leave the life I was raised in behind.”
Dread pounded through my blood.
His.
Mine.
A thunder that roared between us.
He looked up at me, no teasing left in the tone of his voice. “Our father was the president of a violent MC. I was raised in the life, Salem. He taught us to raid. To destroy. To kill.”
His teeth ground with the last.
Shame sparked across his flesh.
The air locked in my throat.
Fear and hurt and the rush of his pain.
It was like I could physically feel the ooze of the blood that stained his hands where they burned into my lower back.
I should get up and go.
Run.
Hide.
Pack our things and never look back.
This was the last place I should be. Wrapped up in him.
But I was already there.
Sinking into his being.
The man quicksand.
His tongue stroked over his lips before he continued, “We left that life behind when Gage was born. Got free because there was no chance Trent would raise him that way. We all wanted a second chance. To be something better. To offer something good instead of all the bad.”
His voice drifted with regret, then those eyes were pinning me through as he threaded the fingers of his right hand into my hair. “Met this girl…”
His mouth tipped down at the side. I wanted to bury myself in his body. Hold his pain.
“Loved the fuck outta her.” A rough chuckle came out with the admission. Shards of gutted sorrow.
“Jud…”
He shook his head to cut me off, and he moved to gather up my hand. He pressed my knuckles to his lips before he took a deep breath and forced out the admission. “Promised myself that I would never go back, Salem. That I was going to live clean. Be right.”
Everything quivered around him.
Torment radiating from his body.
The laughter that rolled was spite.
“Got sucked into some old shit, Salem. An old debt the owner had come to collect. My brother Logan…” He trailed off, shaking his head. “I had to do it. I had to protect him.”
I couldn’t speak, couldn’t do anything but watch as the agony pinched every line on his face into horror. “But it was fucked, Salem. They asked me to do something I couldn’t. I tried to fix it. Take it back. I tried to stop it, but it was too fuckin’ late. I didn’t mean…”
He choked on that.
Questions whirled through my mind.
My heart wouldn’t let me push him. The only thing I could do was listen. Hold whatever he was willing to give and pray it didn’t destroy me in the end.
He swallowed hard, then forced out, “I confessed it, Salem. I came home and confessed it because I couldn’t stand keeping secrets from her. Couldn’t take any more lies between us. Couldn’t sleep next to her while being riddled with that kind of guilt. But she saw who I really was, Salem. She saw the monster and she packed her things.”