Jude snorts. “First, I’m not going anywhere near Knox’s junk.” He shrugs. “It’s nothing. He’s opening another Hard Knox Ink and wants me to manage it.”
I stare at him. “Is that the job opportunity most people would kill for?”
His eyes flare. Probably surprised I can repeat his words from our first meeting back to him almost verbatim. As if I could forget anything about that night. About him. “That’s it.”
“And you turned it down.”
“Yeah, I did.”
“Is it because of London?” His gaze narrows on me, and it’s my turn to nonchalantly shrug. “I was straightening up in the living room,” I hedge, using the task of unwrapping the plastic fork and digging into my salad as a handy excuse not to meet his gaze. “Several of your mail and documents fell off the table. I respect your privacy and would never infringe on that…”Oh for Christ’s sake. Sighing, I set the fork down and glance up at Jude. He hasn’t touched his food but stands next to the table, arms crossed, watching me. Jesus, I wish he’d look at the floor. Or at the wall. Anywhere but me, because the intensity and beauty of his stare melts brain cells. “I saw the contract for your guest artist position in London.”
He doesn’t move, doesn’t blink. Yet the tension that invades the room—invadeshim—is unmistakable.
“You’re leaving the country,” I state, needing him to confirm what I know bone-deep. “That’s the reason why you didn’t accept Knox’s job opportunity. You’d already decided to take a guest artist position in a London shop. Does he know?”
“Yes and yes.”
That’s it. No explanation, no expounding. Just yes. The breath-stealing punch to my gut is silly and unwelcome. Why should it matter?It doesn’t, my inner-voice insists. But my sore chest disagrees.
“Well, congratulations,” I force out. “When do you leave?”
He cocks his head to the side, studying me like some failed science experiment. And in this moment, I feel like one of those eviscerated frogs, spread out and skin pinned down so he can glimpse every bit of me—the hurt, anger, completely inexplicable sense of loss.
I shut the lid of the to-go box, my appetite having fled. Stuffing it back into the plastic bag, I stand, needing to escape this room, escape him…escape myself.
“Cypress.” My name in that sandpaper-rough voice doesn’t stop me as I head toward the door. The hand encircling my bicep does. “Cypress, what’s wrong?” Gently, but with a firm hold on me, Jude turns me around until I face him. “You’re angry,” he murmurs, pinching my chin and tilting my head back.
Ignoring the spot of warmth that radiates from where he touches me, I look him in the eye and lie. “No. I just need to get to work.”
“You’re angry,” he repeats in that maddeningly calm tone. It just makes me even more mad because of the maelstrom of ridiculous emotions wailing and twisting inside me.
“I’m not.” I jerk my head out of his grasp and step back, placing much-needed space between us. At least on my part. “I have no reason to be upset with you. We’re roommates, Jude. You’re giving me a place to stay for a while. That doesn’t mean we’re privy to each other’s personal information. And I’m sorry for prying.”
“Playing the victim doesn’t sit well on you,” he says, green eyes hooded.
NowI’m angry. “See? This is why we’re not friends. None of mine would dare call me a victim.” Call me a bitch, a cunt, a raging asshole, but that word? No. For a year, I fought being seen as a victim—even as I was being victimized. Now, when I was trying to jack my life out of neutral and back into drive, back into moving forward, I despisedthatword.
Because deep down, in a place I rarely acknowledged, a tiny part of me believed I was one.
“Then stop acting like one,” he counters, his tone just as calm as before. But those eyes…they glittered. “I wasn’t intentionally keeping anything from you. It never came up because of all that’s been going on in the last few weeks. You’re my friend, Cypress. I wouldn’t intentionally lie to you by omission. Or just up and tell you in another month that you need to pack and get out because I’m leaving. I wouldn’t do that to you.”
“I’m not your responsibility,” I snap, because damn it, that throb has intensified behind my sternum. A month. He would be gone across an ocean in another month.
For all intents and purposes, I’ve only really known him for little over a month. During those three years of our childhood, we were too busy snapping and sniping at each other to become friends, much less family. But these weeks, Jude has become a… Hell, what is he? Not a friend, because I don’t wage an internal battle every night over entering my buddies’ bedrooms and climbing in with them. I don’t dream about fucking my pals.
Yet he’s the closest I’ve come to one in too long to count.
But this impending separation is good.
Yes, it is. Becoming attached to Jude would be a bonehead mistake. Becoming dependent on him, a disaster.
“I never said you were my responsibility,” he replies, lowering his arms and reclaiming the space I inserted between us. “I don’t know what happened to you out there in California, but it’s screwed up the way you view people. Makes you look at an outstretched hand as if it’s about to haul back and smack you. Makes you see kindness as pity. Has you viewing help as a burden. Friendship as obligation.”
Screw him. “We’re not friends,” I point out…again. As if the more I say and think it, the deeper it will sink. But not for him, for me.
“Sherlock.”
I blink, thrown by the sudden, random switch of subject. “What?”
