Chapter Twenty-Three

Jude

All the anger that I had been feeling filled me to the point that I felt like I was going to split open and then suddenly changed to raging, uncontrollable desire. I surged toward Veronica and grabbed her against me, not stopping when she let out a startled cry. My mouth crushed against hers and I kissed her with unstoppable intensity, forcing my tongue between her lips and finding the taste of her that I had been missing since the last time I had touched her.

I pushed her backwards across the room to an ornate sculpture. Holding her in place with one hand pressed against her belly, I released my belt with the other and withdrew it from my pants. I looped the belt around Veronica's wrists and then around the sculpture, tightening it and hooking the buckle to secure her in place. I pulled her pants off unceremoniously and tossed them aside before releasing the button on my own pants and lowering the zipper to free my aching cock. I grabbed one of her legs and lifted it, planting her foot on the desk so that she was open to me. Without a moment of hesitation, I plunged into her, eliciting a tiny scream.

I tucked my fingers into her mouth to quiet her and she sucked them as I slammed into her with another hard, powerful thrust that lifted her up onto the toe of the foot she was standing on. Holding onto the statue above her head for leverage, I pounded into her at a frenzied pace, feeling her body first tighten as if to resist me and then release to accept every intense stroke. I leaned forward and bit into her shoulder, muffling my own grunts as I gave in to the primal need that drove me. The position of her legs ensured that my pelvic bone ground against Veronica's clit and in a matter of moments I heard her cry, trying to escape past my fingers, and felt her body squeeze around me.

I pounded harder, forcing my body deeper into hers as each of the tremors brought me further and massaged me toward the brink of my own climax. I could feel the engorged head of my cock hitting the furthest back wall and she closed her eyes tightly, each of the whimpers I heard in her throat somewhere between pain and ecstasy. When I felt her spasms stop, I untied the belt from around her wrists and picked her up over my shoulder. Ignoring the possibility that any member of my staff could see us, I carried Veronica through the house and into my bedroom. Once there, I tossed her onto the bed, watching her bounce up on the mattress before settling on her back. I ducked down and licked her core, gathering the taste of her orgasm into my mouth before drawing my tongue up the center of her body and onto her breast.

I filled my mouth with the swell, sucking it deep and biting the nipple just hard enough to make the breath catch in her throat. Taking my mouth away, I flipped her over onto her stomach and pressed one hand in between her shoulders to hold her upper body down onto the bed as I used the other to lift her hips up toward me. She was still shimmering and wet, but I knew that her body had had enough time to relax just enough to accept me again. I relished the thought of bringing her to the brink again and in one movement, I filled her.

Her walls were hotter, wetter now and I felt each ridge and ripple on my cock. Suddenly I realized that I hadn't bothered to pause long enough to put on a condom. I was inside of her with nothing between us, feeling her body against mine with no barrier. I had been so caught up in my arousal, in my undeniable need for her that the thought hadn't even crossed my mind. The realization that her body was fully encompassing mine pushed me to a higher level and I thrust into her harder and faster. Veronica was screaming beneath me, all control gone as she pressed her hips back to open further. I watched myself sink into her over and over again and then felt the rush of powerful, consuming climax crash over me.

My cock tightened and I felt myself spill into her, filling her in a new and dizzying way. I wrapped my hand around her hips, rubbing the pad of my finger into her taut peak for only seconds before she arched back and gasped my name, the sound a sob in her throat. Her walls milked me, drawing all of me into her, and I continued to stroke until I couldn't any longer. My body collapsed, sweaty and spent, beside her, and I curled Veronica into my arms just before falling into a deep, dreamless sleep.

When I woke up what felt like hours later I didn't feel the warmth of her body against mine. I reached to the side but felt only the smoothness of the sheets. They were cold, telling me that it had been some time since she left them. I opened my eyes and looked around the room. Evening had fallen outside and the room was now shadowy. I listened for any sound of movement in the house, any sign that she was there, but there was nothing. She was gone.

The next day I found a card on the table in my entryway. It had only Michael's name and phone number. I tucked it into a drawer in my desk and walked away.

In the days that followed, I felt the reality of her absence growing around me. It pressed down on me again. There was silence. There was coldness. There was hunger. There was longing. The impact of her was stronger than it had ever been, stronger than it was the first time that she had walked away, and I realized that this was different. She wasn't just angry or afraid. She had made a choice and she was done.

Veronica

I wiped the tears from my eyes and gingerly touched the sore place on the top of my foot where the vinyl floor of the practice space had burned away my skin. The pain was spreading through my foot and up my leg now, but it wasn't that that brought the emotion up my throat and through my chest. It had been there, lingering, simmering just below the surface, for weeks, but I had fought it. Now it was as if looking at the minor injury, one that I had suffered countless times before throughout my dance career, had shattered the surface enough for those emotions to break free.

"Are you alright?"

I glanced over my shoulder toward the voice that had spoken to me. I forced a smile through the tears that continued to slide down my cheeks no matter how hard I tried to keep them away.

"I'm fine," I said. "It just stings. Are you ready to keep going?"

"Actually, it's getting late. We've been at this for hours. I think that it would do us both some good to call it a day and get some rest. You look exhausted. At this rate, I don't think you'll get through the week of classes if you don't take some time off. Go home. Take a bath. Eat. I'll see you in the morning."

He scooped up his bag and walked out of the studio squirting water into his mouth from the bottle that he carried. As he left he hit the light switch next to the door, sending me into darkness. I felt like that was appropriate. The darkness could surround me. It could protect me. It could prevent anyone from seeing what I was going through. I knew that Aston had been right. I was dragging. I was at every class long before anyone else and always stayed after to continue. I added extra rehearsals into my days and kept myself in the studios for as long as I possibly could. At first, it had helped to keep my mind controlled, to force it to stay on the single track that protected me. But my body was starting to give under the pressure and no matter how hard I pushed, it was no longer guarding me from myself.

I knew that I had done the right thing when I walked out of Jude's house. I hadn't expected to end up in his bed when I went there that day and even the intoxicating effect of his body hadn't been enough to prevent the change of heart that brought me out of the bed and out into the late afternoon sunlight without waking me up. That sun had hit me like I had never been touched by the light before. I was walking into a new part of my life, a part that I controlled and that would eventually allow me to heal. With every step, I still ached for Jude. Every day I still thought of him. I reached for my phone to tell him about something I saw that he would think was funny. I waited to hear his voice. I sometimes found my feet heading for his office without realizing what was happening and had to force myself to turn away. But I knew that I was making the right choice. Even as I stood there in front of him, baring myself to him, he didn't budge. I wanted so desperately for him to tell me he loved me, but he didn't and he never would. But it wasn't just that. That wasn't the breaking point. The cracks had already formed and I was already ready to walk away, but I wasn't broken yet.

That came when I saw the fury in his eyes and heard him say that he knew about his son.

He had known about Michael and never mentioned him to me. He told me about him and let me feel the cutting pain of his loss, but didn't tell me that he had found his son, that he knew that he was still alive. It was excruciating and I didn't feel like I could bear to look at him anymore.

But soon I wouldn't have the choice. Soon I would see eyes that might look like his or lips that would curl into the smile that I had fallen in love with. I couldn't just think about myself anymore, as much as I wished that I could. I was no longer grieving on my own. The test I had taken earlier that week had confirmed that for me.

I stood and walked out of the dark studio feeling like my legs were cemented to the ground and getting heavier with each step. The tears were still flowing down my cheeks but I wasn't trying to fight them anymore. There was no reason to. They were trying to cleanse me, to make me feel something real again. I would just let them fall.

They couldn't prepare me for the next day when I walked into the grocery store and saw Jude standing in front of me.

In all the time that I had known him, I never knew him to shop for groceries. That was something that his staff did for him. Part of me was convinced that he didn't even know what a grocery store was. And yet there he was, standing in the produce section staring at a tower of lemons like he was contemplating which he could grab without sending all of them cascading to the checked tile floor below. Javi grabbed my arm and tried to steer me away, but I had already seen him. I couldn't pretend that he wasn't there and I couldn't make myself move away from him. Suddenly he looked up and our eyes locked. I couldn't interpret the expression on his face and I wondered what he was seeing on mine.

"Come on," Javi said.

"You go," I told him. "I'll meet you in a minute."

"Are you sure?"

I nodded.

"I'll be fine."

Javi lingered at my side for another moment, then walked away as Jude approached.

"Veronica," he said. "It's good to see you."

"Hello, Jude."

I needed him so much right then. But I couldn't bring myself to tell him.

"You left without saying anything."

"I didn't really think that there was anything left for me to say. Nothing's changed."

I could see him tense.

"So that's it? You just get to decide that we're done because you can't stand things not going your way? You're not willing to bend a little so you're just going to run away?"

There are times when you don't realize that your eyes are closed until you open them. That's what I felt like in that moment. Suddenly my eyes were open and I was seeing Jude and what we had shared for all that it really was and all that it could have been. I took a step closer to him.

"This isn't my fault. This is on you. What has happened between us, and what hasn't, is your fault."

"How is that?"

"You should have told me you loved me. You should have told me that you had loved me from the beginning or that you had fallen in love with me. You should have told me that you still loved me even when you were angry with me, even when I walked away from you. You should have told me that you would keep loving me, no matter what. You should have been willing to step up and make the changes to your life that you needed to that would let us be together. I changed everything for you. I altered my entire existence for you and you were never willing to do the same. You can't just pretend that we exist in some sort of other world and that that's enough for both of us. If our relationship was ever going to be real, you had to be willing to be open about it. If you won't even admit to yourself how you feel about me and that I was important in your life, how do you think that I was supposed to feel it?"

Jude's eyes seared into me and I closed the space between us, pressing a hard kiss to his lips.

"Goodbye, Professor Ford," I whispered before turning and walking away.

Javi was waiting for me with worry etched across his face, but I didn't feel like I needed it. For the first time in as long as I could remember, I felt truly calm. I had done what I needed to do and I had gotten closure, even if it wasn't the outcome that I would have wanted. I was going to be fine.

Both of us were going to be fine.

I let my hand rest for a fleeting moment over my belly. There wasn't even the hint of an indication yet that there was anything different about me, but I could feel it. I was aware with every breath of the new life that was growing inside of me and in that moment, I was fully in touch with it. Of course, I needed Jude. I would never be the type of woman who professed that I somehow magically didn't need the father of my child just because my own relationship with him didn't work out. The need for his support and for his influence was real and undeniable, but it didn't make it possible.

I knew that this wasn't what he wanted. Finding out that he had known about Michael all along was enough to confirm to me that a traditional family was something that he wanted no part of. Just because I could acknowledge that I needed him and that his presence in our lives would make them easier, however, didn't mean that it was something that I could have. I had finally stood up for myself and I felt prepared to raise the baby on my own. I would find a way to make everything work. I had spent my life not having a traditional family and that made it feel like a natural progression that I would raise my own non-traditional family. Now that I had freed myself of worrying about Jude all I needed to think about was my baby. All I needed to concentrate on was my pregnancy and I was going to manage my future with this new addition. I would need to find a way to maintain my position in the company throughout my pregnancy and then to continue my career as I raised the baby. It wasn't what I had envisioned, but it was my life and I finally felt ready to embrace it, even if my heart still ached.

Even if I knew that it always would.