Steadfast (True North, #2)

by Sarina Bowen

Of all the things I’d lost—my good name, the chance to get a decent job, my carefully restored car—none of them mattered as much as Sophie. She was gone from my life, and it was a permanent condition. No way to fix it.

Colebury reeked of all my old mistakes and desires.

When I was seventeen, I thought Jude was sent to me from heaven. When I was eighteen, I let him take me there. When I was nineteen, he broke both my heart and my family.

That hundred-watt smile of his made all the girls stupid. I was so astonished to find it pointed my way that I frowned back at him like an idiot.

“Thing is, I’m not convinced you’re as good a girl as everyone thinks.”

But even a glimpse of him had given me palpitations. As if my subconscious had recognized a piece of my soul before my brain got a chance to speak up.

“What? You’re, like, a better man on Thursdays?

My ex-con ex-boyfriend—a drug addict and convicted man-slaughterer—flashed me his happy trail and I got into his car. One wondered why my father didn’t trust me.

My heart splintered every time he smiled.

It was hard to be here with this oddly sanitized version of Jude. The wearer of flannel. Diet Coke in his glass. This was a Jude from an alternate universe. But I knew if I slid into his arms he’d feel so achingly familiar—broad and warm and strong and so very mine.

I wore the memory of Sophie like an imprint on my soul.

“That’s my Eeyore. Always looking on the bright side.” “It’s my specialty.”

“Even the grimmest lives have moments of beauty,” I’d heard an addict say once. “Don’t miss ’em.”

Kissing her wasn’t a decision I made. It was just inevitable, the way a clap of thunder follows lightning.

The first time I ever kissed Sophie was in a car in the rain. That kiss had made my blood surge with lust and hope. But this one made me ache with impossible longing.

The sound of the door closing again reminded me of a jail cell slamming shut.

She tasted like Sophie. She tasted like the best thing that had ever happened to me.

Just having her here in my room hurt so bad. I was bleeding out memories. The taste of her cherry lip gloss on my tongue. The scent of her hair enveloping me.

“Soph, I’d give you anything. But I don’t have a lot to give.”

“I haven’t been properly fucked in three years, Jude. After all that’s happened, are you going to make me beg?”

“You haven’t been fucked in three years?” I repeated on a whisper. I pressed my forehead to hers and stared down into those eyes at close range. She blinked up at me. “I said properly.”

My fingers itched to reclaim what was mine. I wanted to cover her with my body. Touch her everywhere.

“It’s just sex.” My heart broke again when she said that. There was no such thing as “just sex” with her. Not for me.

This is what she wanted, after all. It’s just sex, she’d said. It’s just sex. It’s just sex. Repeating that would be the only way to keep my eyes dry.

See? I could have raw, angry sex with the love of my life.

She had once been all mine, and I’d squandered it.

I felt lightheaded from all the laughter and more than a little crazy. But alive. That was the effect Jude had always had on me. He made the world a weirder, rowdier, more unpredictable place.

The sound of his laughter—low and naughty—cranked my heartstrings a little tighter. It used to be this easy between us. When Jude and I were alone together, the rest of the world didn’t exist.

“You make me crazy, Sophie.” I ran a hand up and down his bare chest, and his eyes closed. “Yeah? Well back at you, babe. We both have first-class tickets on the crazy train. But it’s my birthday, and you’re the only one who remembered.”

“You feel like mine.”

An addiction is when you can’t keep away from something that’s bad for you. Maybe Jude was a drug addict, but I was a Jude addict.

“You got so big in prison,” I gasped. His next kiss had him chuckling into my mouth. “That sounds really badass, Soph. But I got big lifting bushel crates of apples at the Shipleys’.”

“Do me, farm boy.” “As you wish.”

“It’s just sex.” What a crock of crap. He was everything to me. It’s just that I was only allowed to have everything for an hour before it disappeared again.

Once again I walked into the church kitchen with fear in my heart. But this time I wasn’t afraid that Jude would be there. Instead, I was afraid he wouldn’t be.

It was useless pretending otherwise; I was gone for him. Always had been.

I stood there panting. The angel choir in my head had switched over to a dirty, groovy channel. I wanted more, and I was probably doing a bad job of hiding it.

We were complete right then. There were no naysayers. There was no past, and there certainly was no future.

“Wednesday is the best day of the week,” she whispered, trailing the backs of her fingers over my face. “They don’t call it ‘hump day’ for nothing.”

It’s not a relationship, I reminded myself. Just two people relieving some sexual tension on Wednesday nights. That’s all we could ever be.

She needed to realize it for herself—there were no cheery options for us. We were stuck, and there was no unsticking us.

“Bye,” I said, instead of I love you. Saying it out loud would only be more depressing. Because I couldn’t have her. Not for keeps. “Bye,” she’d said instead of I love you, too.

Thank God it was Thursday, though, and I could spend the day looking forward to an evening with the Shipleys.

“I don’t want to date anybody, Jude.” “You don’t want to be with somebody nice and normal? That can’t be true.” “Fuck normal! Normal is dull. That’s what you told me when we were seventeen.” “Yeah? I was a bonehead when I was seventeen.” Still am

“Jude!” “What? Tell me how this ends.” “I don’t want it to end at all.”

Fuck. When I was released from prison, people told me to “stay out of trouble.” But what the fuck do you do if trouble comes looking for you?

“The goal of meditation is not to make you all into superhumans. The goal is to remind your brain that focus is a choice. That a place of calm is always waiting for you if you seek it.”

This right here—this was the reason I’d hid my problem in the first place. She was the one person in my life who thought I was somebody worth knowing. I never wanted to show her the truth.

But it takes courage to want things, and to pursue them. Staying numb means you can never be disappointed.”

“Maybe you weren’t always good for her. But it’s not a fatal condition. St. Augustine said it best—‘It was pride that changed angels into devils; it is humility that makes men as angels.’”