Page 81 of Floored

I felt my brow wrinkle as I studied him—the set of his jaw, the line of his mouth, the tension in his shoulders. "Yeah, that was ... awkward."

"Again, I apologize for how my parents acted, if that's why you're upset."

He was at a loss, that much was obvious. Jude wasn't entirely sure what he should be saying, and maybe I didn't know either. But what I did know was that we'd done a stellar job of burying ourselves in each other while ignoring all the things that swirled just outside of that bubble.

I ran a hand over my belly. "I don't even know if upset is the right word, Jude."

"You looked pretty upset when you walked away from me without another word." He lifted his eyebrows, and my face warmed in embarrassment at how I’d acted. "And when you did, I saw that side of Isabel you warned me about. She looked like she wanted to feed me my bollocks from a blender, just for going after you."

It was the kind of thing I wanted to smile about, but even that felt too hard.

“She’ll never not protect her family, even if she disagreed with me leaving like I did.”

He swallowed. “That’s a good trait to have in a family member.”

I nodded.

“I don’t quite know what that’s like,” he said quietly.

"The things your parents said to you," I paused, shaking my head, "and the things you said back … it was awful. I wish they could see how selfish they’re being.”

“Me too.”

I chose my words carefully. “But I think it just all felt like a giant blinking sign of how little we really know about one another."

His jaw clenched.

"My time here, Jude, it's like ... it's like being on vacation, you know? It's fun and exciting, and I'm doing something I love to do, but it's still not real life."

"It felt pretty real to me," he said in a rough voice.

The look in his eyes was full of unsaid things. And maybe my gaze was the same. Something big and important changed when we slept together, and he felt it too.

"I know. A lot of it did. But this whole time I've been here, the whole time we've been making up the little rules that gave us permission to do what felt good and right, we were avoiding everything hard and scary."

He exhaled a dry laugh. "I don't know about you, love, but I've come face-to-face with a lot of hard in the past few months. Do you think it's easy to get your arse benched?"

My mouth fell open. "Today you did?"

Jude slicked his tongue over his teeth before answering, but eventually gave me a reluctant nod.

"Oh, Jude," I whispered, "I'm so sorry."

As he propped his hands on his hips and stared at the ground, my stomach churned uncomfortably because I had to come to grips with the fact that Jude hadn't confided in me about anything important. Not one thing.

Not about his job.

Not about his family.

On an elemental level, the part of us that was instinctual and immediate, I knew him.

How he looked when he woke up in the morning.

How he smiled when a fan approached him.

How he kissed me.

How he made me feel, how thoughtful he was, how easy he made it to fall in love with him.