Page 61 of Dirty Like Jude
On the edge of some minor emotional crisis, I took my ass outside, where I could be alone. I was planning to leave, but figured I should get myself together before I drove. I wasn’t drunk, hadn’t even been drinking, wanted to be sober when I talked to Piper. But it wasn’t like we did much talkinganyway.
I was sitting on the back stoop of the house by myself in the dark, kinda half-smoking a joint, when I realized a man was standing over me. He startled me, but when I looked up and discovered it was Jude, Irelaxed.
“Hey, V,” he said, looking at me in that silent way he did. Like he was reading thesituation.
Readingme.
It was the first time he’d called me V. He’d never, ever called me “Wild Card” like Jessa’s brother, Jesse, did, or like Zane and some of their other friends did. Jude called me Roni or Veronica. And now,V.
He was wearing his leather Kings cut with the too-clean Prospect patch on it. He’d started prospecting for the Kings that year. Jessa had told me that Jesse was hellbent on making it big with Dirty so they could take Jude on the road and keep him out of the MC, but I was pretty sure, by the looks of things, even if Jesse’s band made it huge, Jude was still gonna be in theMC.
He did work with the band a lot though, as a roadie, bouncing parties, that kind of thing. Which meant I often ran into him, because I went to as many band parties as I could. He’d always been nice enough to me, but he’d always kept his distance,too.
Other than that one night he’d kissedme.
Piper was also distant, but as Jude sat down beside me on that stoop in the dark and looked at me, I could feel the stark differences betweenthem.
Maybe I’d convinced myself Piper just hadn’t had a chance to discover how fabulous I was yet; that he’d come around when I got my chance to seducehim.
It wasn’tthat.
Piper was distant because he just didn’t care. Frankly, he probably thought he was better than me. Not that I really kidded myself that Piper thought about me at all—especially after that night. More like he barely even noticed me because, in his eyes, I wasn’t someone worth noticing. I was just more slutty white noise, which, for a brief moment in that kitchen, for whatever reason, he chose to tune in moreclearly.
Then tune right backout.
But Jude… Jude kept himself at a distance from me deliberately. I knew that because even while he stayed distant, hewatchedme.
And it was pretty obvious to me why, on that night of all nights, he got close. Because I was sitting in the dark, alone, at a biker party, and when I looked up at him I had tears shining in myeyes.
I’d watched him, too, and even though Jude was quieter than Piper, I’d figured a few things out about him. One thing I knew for sure was that Jude cared about people. More than that, actually; he felt responsible for people. I’d seen it again and again with how he looked out for Jesse, the rest of the band… and Jessa. How protective he was. How he was always breaking up fights and kicking people out of parties when they got out ofhand.
He didn’t want people getting hurt on hiswatch.
And that night, I’d been hurt. As much as I didn’t love to admit that to myself. It wasn’t exactly that Piper had hurt me. In reality, I barely knew Piper, and he definitely didn’t knowme.
It was that I’d set myself on a year-long course to get hurt… fornothing.
Nothing but a few hot minutes in some dude’s kitchen at aparty.
Jude’s shoulder brushed mine, maybe because the stoop was so small and he was so big—he’d gotten bigger since I first met him. He felt warm next to me, and solid. It just made me feel small andcold.
“You got any more of that?” he asked me, flicking his chin at my half-finished joint. As if he couldn’t get weed from his brother or anyone in thatparty?
“Take it.” I handed it to him. He took it and smoked, but he didn’t hand it back to me—which was when I realized he wasn’t smoking it because he wanted to smoke it. He was smoking it so I couldn’t smoke it. “How old are you now?” he asked me, exhalingsmoke.
I was pretty sure he knew how old I was, which meant he was asking the question forme. My defenses went way up, along with myattitude.
“Seventeen,” I said, like he was stupid for asking. “And so what? I can’t have any badhabits?”
He considered that. Even in the dark I could kinda see his eyes, searching my face. “This a habit?” He held up thejoint.
“No. But we can’t all be perfect like you, JudeGrayson.”
His dark eyebrows raised. “Perfect?”
“You know. Some of us have vices. Bad habits. Weaknesses. It’s called being human,” I informed him, with the confidence of someone who thought she knew way more about life than she reallydid.
He was only three years older than me, but surely he knew how little I reallyknew.
