Total pages in book: 244
Estimated words: 236705 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1184(@200wpm)___ 947(@250wpm)___ 789(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 236705 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1184(@200wpm)___ 947(@250wpm)___ 789(@300wpm)
“But that’s not the real story, is it?”
I shake my head. I’m not sad over my parents split nearly two decades ago. I’m a grown man. I’m over it. But the divorce shaped me. “I’m not sure my dad knows the truth. He was fairly low-key about the whole thing. But my mom was having an affair,” I say.
Years ago, when I stumbled across the affair, I was shocked, then ashamed of my mom. I couldn’t look at her without thinking of the deception. I didn’t want to think about it. I didn’t want anyone to think of it. Silence was the only logical choice. I decided never to breathe a word about it, so it’s strange to hear myself talking about it.
“That’s so hard,” Jude says sympathetically.
Is it hard, though? Now that I’m telling the tale, it’s easier than I expected, and I don’t know what to make of that, so I keep wading through. “No, it’s actually not. I mean, it sucks. You should be faithful, of course. But that’s not what’s hard about it.” I take a breath then tell him the rest. “She was having an affair with my brother’s baseball coach.”
Jude’s jaw drops at the soap opera news. “Holy shit. Did your dad know? Or your brother?”
“I don’t think so. No one talked about it. She’s married to the guy now, but they didn’t publicly say they were together till Chance and I had left for college. Then they claimed they’d just started dating. When that wasn’t remotely true.”
“How do you know when it all started?”
“When I was fourteen, I found out accidentally. My mom asked me to use her laptop to look up directions to a game, and there was a window open with a string of messages between her and the baseball coach. The guy who was responsible for my brother’s potential career. And they were . . .” I stop because they were things a kid should never see his mom or dad talking about. That’s the real hard part, I guess.
Jude reaches out, strokes my shoulder gently. “You don’t have to say. I understand.”
“Yeah. Well, you get the idea.”
“I do.” He steps closer, squeezing my arm now. “Did you ever tell anyone?”
I swallow roughly. “Not till right now.”
Jude smiles warmly, as if he’s glad to be the one I invited in. He rubs my arm. “And so . . . you never told her you knew. You never asked her what was going on. You never said a word to your brother. You chose to protect everyone . . . including yourself,” he says, kind and caring and understanding me completely.
Just like that.
Ah shit. I thought I was holding it together. I thought I was fine with what went down and saying it nonchalantly now. But when Jude connects the dots, I’m not so chill.
“I wanted to protect Chance, so it wouldn’t affect what he loved. I wanted to protect my dad since he didn’t know. And I wanted to protect my mom, in case the affair didn’t work out. So, that might explain why I’m a little secretive,” I say, with an abashed smile.
“It does.” Jude runs his fingers softly through my hair. “You protected everyone, and then you just kept doing it for a long, long time.” He stops to play with a strand, stroking it lovingly. “You meant it when you said you were trying to protect me last year from getting hurt.”
“I did mean it, Jude,” I say, so damn grateful that no one is hunting for used jackets right now.
I don’t want to leave this safe zone with him, now that I know what I’m feeling—freedom. Maybe this means I no longer need to be everyone’s protector, including my own. “But I don’t want to be that guy anymore. Who keeps it all to himself. Who doesn’t let someone in,” I admit.
“You’re not that guy anymore,” he says, setting a hand firmly on my chest for emphasis. “You’re this man. A good man. And you shared all that just to help me with a part.” He sounds a little awestruck. “Thank you.”
“Thanks for making it weirdly easy,” I say with a smile.
Jude and I are quiet for several seconds, and then he lets go of me. “When I didn’t work for two years— you want to know why?”
I blink, surprised at the shift but ready for whatever he wants to share. “I do.”
“When Arlo—he’s my ex—used me to get my former agent, that was only the start of it. He slept with my agent,” he says, and I nod. Jude told me that in Los Angeles. But clearly, there’s more to the story. “Then my agent started sending Arlo out for more roles, ones he’d have sent me on. And my role. Arlo and Harry worked some kind of backroom deal for Our Secret Courtship where if the producers wrote me off, they’d bring back the character for him. So, Arlo got my part on that show. That’s why I was gone and he eventually replaced me.”