Page 188 of Oleander

“He knows about the trust. I suppose I have you to thank for that. But we are taking things slowly.” I sighed, knowing that despite my protests, I was going to discuss this after all. “I cannot walk back into his life and assume my place in it is the same as it was.”

“Yes, of course. But I think if you just tell him you love him then it will all work out, I am certain of it.”

“Yes, uncle.” I said because I wanted him to sleep. I wanted him to stop talking.

Upstairs, I’d gone to Jude’s room – my mother’s room – and stood outside the door. I was afraid to knock, afraid of what it would mean if I did. I wanted to knock, to ask him to put his arms around me, to feel the comfort of his constancy. I wanted to lose myself in that deep, unwavering comfort only he’d ever been able to give me. It had been true that his love had been my greatest comfort over the years I’d spent with Xavier. Jude, whose love was a lighthouse on a stormy sea. Jude, who’d saved me over and over and over again. But weweretaking things slow and it would be selfish of me to go to him now just because it was what I needed.

I’d gone to my bedroom alone. Cold and large and with memories, almost enough of them to pour scorn on everything I’d tried to fix inside myself since leaving Boston.

Gideon’s funeral was bigger than it ought to have been. People from the island and London, traipsing up the steep hill to the family plot to say goodbye to a man they hadn’t even known. Not really.

Only myself and Jude had really known all sides of him. Perhaps Jasper, his faithful nurse – who looked at Jude in a way I disliked intensely – had seen a side to him that not even we had.

Xavier hadn’t come.

Not only as I’d instructed my lawyer to advise him that his presence on the island would be considered a breach of our ‘agreement.’ The agreement we’d made upon our divorce, so long as he stayed away from me, the offences he’d committed against me (over the years I’d documented each one thoroughly) would never find its way to my lawyer.

In the end, it didn’t matter. He’d been caught in a compromising position with a boy of fourteen; the son of a client, a very rich and very powerful client who was doing a fine job of destroying him without my input. I expected I’d get a call before the case went to trial. I had been his husband, after all. Who knew his character better than I? A pity for him that our agreement wasn’t enforceable in a court of law.

At the graveside Jude stood close to me looking haunted and desperately sad, and I couldn’t help but imagine how he must have looked as a child at his parents’ funerals. Large, green eyes shimmering with fear and loneliness. He cried for Gideon. Gideon who’d only ever seen him as a playground where he could re-enact the pain that had been done to him. Jude’s heart was an awe-inspiring thing; its capacity for love and empathy and forgiveness despite what cruelty had been done to it was beyond my understanding.

Later, when everyone had gone and Jasper had left the mansion, I found Jude in the music room staring at the empty bed, cleared now of the detritus that had kept Gideon alive the last few months. He had a lost, far-off look on his face.

I took the opportunity to watch him from where I stood unnoticed, skin pale and smooth and hair a dark forest, rich with the dying light of the afternoon. He’d changed in the years since I first met him. From a gangly pretty boy who smelled of cut grass and Skittles, to something darker and frighteningly handsome.

Jude had always been unaware of his own appeal; of the very particular kind of beauty he possessed and the power it held over the people around him. While I’d been trained very early to wield mine like a weapon, his was innocent and guileless. Deceptively clever and yet filled with an almost child-like wonder, he was a perfect entrancing mix. He was less innocent now than he was then, more hardened – by myself and Gideon – but more attractive for it.

I loved him. I’d loved him for years.

It had taken me too long to realise it, to understand it and recognise it for what it was: that thing which had ruined everyone I knew. My mother. My father. Gideon.

Jude was theonlykind of love I’d ever known.

“Did you love him?” Jude asked when I came to stand by his side.

I stared at the deathbed. “No. I don’t think I did.”

He looked at me, forlorn but not surprised. “Seems unfair we both became orphans and I got Luke and you got Gideon.”

“Luke is one of a very particular kind,” I said. Jude was another very particular kind. “Very few of us get a Luke. Besides, my father’s alive and well, remember.”

“Liam,” he said.

“Please, don’t.”

“You prefer Lucifer?”

“Immeasurably.”

He grinned. My heart flipped. I liked seeing him smile. I also liked hearing him laugh, so I divulged the next piece of information for that reason only. I’d sworn to take it to my grave.

“He’s a used car salesman.”

Jude’s mouth dropped open. “No, he isn’t.”

I nodded, grimly.

“Oh, my god, this is perfect.” And he burst into a fit of laughter.