“No, this was for you,” I said, rolling my dress back down.
“Don’t lie to my, Luce,” he said, the muscles in his jaw going taut. “Everything—the dress, the coy little smiles and flirty eyes, the panties, the damn orgasm in the bathroom as Holly ‘accidently’ shows Adriana what’s going on—it was all just some calculated plan put into play by a jealous girlfriend.”
“No,” I said. “This whole thing in the bathroom was one big, spontaneous, pleasurable surprise,” I argued back. “At least up until right now. There’s nothing pleasurable about my boyfriend calling me a calculated, jealous girlfriend.” Even as I said the words, I knew they were true.
“So this wasn’t planned,” he said, waving his finger around the room, “but everything else was. And you sure as hell didn’t mind when Adriana got an eyeful of us all hot and heavy.”
Why was he being like this? Jude rarely raised his voice to me anymore. And the fact that the reason he’d broken tradition was because of Adriana made me as outraged as it did sad. “If that’s what it takes—seeing you doing me over any and every surface in the goddamn state—then yes! I sure as hell don’t mind!” Super, now I was shouting.
His forehead lined as he pressed as far away from me as the bathroom allowed. Going from the intimacy we’d just shared to him wanting to separate himself as far from me as space would allow made my body hurt. “So still, after everything, after all this time,” he paused, inhaling through his nose, “you still don’t trust me?”
He waited for my response, but I didn’t have an immediate one. His question had thrown me, not at all what I’d been expecting. Was that it? Did I not trust him? My first response was ‘no,’ but why else had I been acting like such a crazy girlfriend? If I trusted him, would it matter if every Adriana in the world threw herself at him?
I didn’t want to admit my answer to that question.
“Yeah,” he said, moving towards the door, “that’s what I thought.” Opening the door, he looked back at me. “Here, you can have these back now.” He tossed the underwear at me. “Well played. Glad I could be a pawn in your little game.”
“Jude,” I called after him.
“Leave me alone, Lucy!” he hollered back, disappearing down the hall.
He only called me Lucy when he was hurt or pissed. I guessed he was a lot of both. And the whole leaving him alone thing wasn’t happening.
Not when I knew a welcoming set of arms was sharking around the party waters, more than happy to do a little comforting.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The only time I wasted before going after him was the time it took to put my underwear back where they belonged. Winding down the hall, I did a preliminary search of the main floor. Lucky for me, Jude was a tower that stood out in a room most of the time, but so were a lot of his teammates, so weaving my way towards the stairs, I climbed the top few, leaping over a couple doing something very close to what Jude and I had just done behind a closed door. Gazing down at the packed room, I didn’t see him. The knowledge he wasn’t in plain sight made my stomach twist as my imagination ran away with me, wondering who might be comforting him and where they could be locked away.
Lunging up the stairs, I rushed down the hallway, not able to get to his room fast enough. I was behaving irrationally, I knew this, but I wasn’t able to stop it. The crazy had taken root and couldn’t be killed.
I didn’t knock before entering his room, not sure I wanted to see what I’d find inside. I sighed in relief when I found it dark and empty. Just as I was about to leave and search the next place, I noticed a figure crouched on the floor beside his bed.
His elbows were propped onto bent legs, his head hanging between them. He looked broken. What had I done?
I closed the door behind me and crossed the room.
“Jude?”
“Go away, Luce,” he said so softly it was almost a whisper.
He’d never said those words to me once, and I’d heard them twice in less than five minutes.
“No,” I said, coming around the side of the bed he was leaning against.
“Go away,” he repeated, winding his fingers over the back of his neck.
I pried off my shoes and scooted next to him on the floor. “No,” I repeated. “You’re pissed at me and I’m pissed at you. Let’s argue this out.”
“Yeah, I am pissed at you,” he said into the floor. “But I’ve got a good reason to be. Why in the hell are you pissed at me?”
I opened my mouth in answer.
“And your answer better not have Adriana in it.”
I did not like the way her name sounded coming out of him. “Damn right my answer has her name in it.”
Jude shook his head, still refusing to look at me. “So you’re pissed at me because of Adriana,” he said, not hiding his sarcasm. “A girl I haven’t so much as touched or looked at in one intimate way. Super. That’s makes a shit ton of sense, Luce.”
My temper was flaring, I could feel it igniting. “Don’t play dumb,” I said. “Like you’re not aware that she’d let you touch her any intimate way you damn well pleased.”
Jude huffed. “Yeah, well, just for your knowledge, there’s no shortage of women here who would let me do whatever the hell I wanted to them. There’s no shortage of Adrianas in the world, Luce.” He paused, taking a couple of breaths while I tried not to mentally calculate the number of women who’d bed Jude any night of the week. “But you know what makes me say no every time? You know what makes me impervious to every woman and whatever ploy she throws at me?” He didn’t wait for my response.