Page 91 of Good Half Gone

My name stops me short.

I walk up the two stairs, ready to jump over the wood railings and disappear into the sea of thorns. How fast would the bullets find me?

When I face Leo, he is empty-handed, his cleanly shaven face resigned.

“Iris Walsh,” he repeats my name. I don’t move, I’m afraid to move. An alarm is sounding in my head, and Piper’s face appears where only I can see it.

There are only the woods, the rain, the darkness, and us. Thunder cracks above us and we both jump. Neither of us says anything, and my stomach plummets through the floor. I feel the crawl of his gaze and it sends my heart skittering. He doesn’t look like himself. He’s wearing a flannel shirt, much like the khaki one I’m wearing, and blue jeans. I eye his fresh buzz and close my eyes. I know his face—from then…from now.

“No…” The pain and grief crash over me. “Jude,” I say.

He closes his eyes, swaying on the spot like I’ve uttered the most delicious thing he’s ever heard.

My heart feels like it’s about to explode. I press a hand against my chest and squint at him through the tears. I know what he’s going to say next. Guilty people always say it.

“Let me explain…”

I was mistaken about Dalton. Here is the real alpha. Here is the man who organized the coup. I shake my head. Leo is Jude. How?How?!

“What the fuck?” I scream. I launch myself at him, shoving him in the chest with my bound hands. He stumbles backward, a look of surprise on his face, but recovers quickly. He grabs my hands, holding on to them while I try to pull away. I think he’s going to hit me, but he unties the rope from my wrists instead.

He drops the rope and looks at me. “Are you going to keep hitting me or can we talk about this?”

Terror seeps into every chamber of my heart. I thought I was the only player in this game.

“Where’s Piper, Jude?” I was staring at him angrily while he stared back, expressionless. He goes on like he hasn’t heard me.

“At first I was curious. I mean, what were the chances that Piper’s twin sister would fall right into my lap?”

The sheer shock and pain of the moment are so overwhelming I am winded.

“Sounds like we were looking for each other,” I say dryly.

He laughs.

“I have two critiques: you show your cards too soon, and despite everything that’s happened to you, you’re still too trusting.” He wags a finger at me. “But you didn’t just fall, did you? No, you knew I was here and you came.”

I see a photograph in my mind, of a group of teenagers posing in front of a church, their youth pastor grinning, wearing an orange shirt and ugly orange Adidases like he was trying too hard to be cool. That man’s physique… I see him now. As Dr. Grayson, he has never made that facial expression; I remember it from another place and time—a small gap between his front teeth, thinking he’d be better-looking if he didn’t smile. The orange Adidases—how Piper went on and on about how great they were. I’d glared out the backseat window, hating the color, hating the man, hating the church scene as a whole.

I want to vomit. I hold on to the side of the gazebo, grating between denial and realization as splinters bite into my palm. It feels as if I’ve fallen to a floor of ice. Finally, a sob tears out of my mouth, and I double over like I’ve been punched. Jude’s voice is so familiar and so strange at the same time. He’s slipping back into Jude, his old pastoral voice creeping down my spine like ice. My God, how had I not seen it?

“You son of a bitch,” I say. Rain slants through the gazebo at an angle,blowing against my back. I spin in a circle; I don’t know what to do with my body. I feel like I’m going to explode.

“I deserve that,” he says. “I lied to you.”

“You fucking murdered my sister!”

“Easy, tiger,” he warns. I’m spoiling things for him. If I want to survive, I need him to believe this is going the way he wants it to go.

Gran didn’t raise a moron.

“You’re judging my shock. That’s not very Dr. Grayson of you…”

He laughs at my teasing tone; he thinks we’re okay. He’s that easy or I’m that good.

“How did you do this? For real. I’m so confused.”

“Well, it took a while. And I had a while.”

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