Page 19 of This Might Hurt

JUDE

“How did you get this number?” The electricity running under my skin right now is fucking unreal. Every confused, aimless atom in my body surges toward his voice.

“Wow, good for you.” The sound of ripping paper and a blood-curdling scream drifts through the stacks. Poor Mikey. Ramona must have decided to end Booky the Magic Book’s suffering.

“You’ve read about me, haven’t you?” he asks in a cool, acidic tone. “So you know I can spare a staff member to Google two things.”

Annoyed, I sit back and stare at the ceiling.

I put a lot of work into figuring him out.

I rode in his fucking trunk. But when it was his turn, he just asked someone else to do it.

“Tell your ‘staff members’ to answer your questions then, you entitled dick.” When he goes silent, I can faintly hear music tinkling in the background, a hum of voices. “Where are you right now?”

He sucks in a ragged breath. “It’s—”

“Excuse me?” interrupts an irritable voice from directly in front of me.

I glance up, disoriented, into the expectant face of a balding man in his sixties. Ramona is nowhere to be seen.

“I need a book about vegans.”

“What?” I blink at him, still white-knuckling the handset like Andrew will slip away if I don’t hold him tightly enough. “Quick, what’s a good book about vegans?” I ask him.

“My son started dating one,” the old guy complains, “and I don’t understand why they eat like that.”

I jump when Andrew speaks into my ear. “Because unethical consumption has destroyed our bodies, minds, and souls.” There’s something earnest in his voice I’ve never heard before, along with a twist of humor.

“I…” I slide backward off the counter and edge toward the staff room as the man starts to protest. “Please go away. Thank you. Sorry.” I try to slam the door behind me, but it bounces off the cord, so I have to crouch with my back against it in the blessed silence.

“Out of curiosity, when has a billionaire cared about unethical consumption?”

“Imagine what the world would look like if we did.” His measured tone speeds up, painfully earnest. “I think about it a lot. We could fund whatever technologies are needed to create a truly sustainable future, and if there wasn’t enough technology, we could pay for the research to invent more—” A loud voice cuts through the background noise, something I can’t make out, and he falls silent.

“Where are you?” I ask again.

“My—” He coughs some kind of bitter, wretched non-laugh. “My engagement party. I’m getting married in three days.”

My ass slides the rest of the way to the floor with a thump. I watch in a daze as dust swirls across the pale light from the window.

“Help me,” he whispers. “I don’t know what to do.”

My whole body shivers as I drop my head back against the door and close my eyes. “Don’t say that to me.”

“You know how to make people do what you want. Like the gas station clerk. Like me. How?”

“How what? Are you asking me how to ruin a billionaire’s wedding?” I know he is, but I want to hear him ask again, over and over.

“You made me stay, and now I’m here, so fucking shut up and tell me how to get out of this, Jude.” His brittle, dark voice, that nasty edge that he gets when he’s scared, goes straight to my dick. I spread my thighs a little, trying to ease the friction of my jeans so it doesn’t get any worse.

“If I tell you what to do, will you do it?”

He hesitates for a long time. “Yes.”

“Good. Then you’re gonna blackmail Draxley or whatever the fuck his name is. Find a pen and paper or something.”

“What?” He sounds bewildered. “I don’t know if he’s done anything wrong.”

I can’t bite back a laugh. “Is he a young, white, male billionaire with an attitude problem?”

“Sure.”

“Then you don’t even have to fucking aim, dude. Just fire and you’ll hit something.”

He huffs, half frustration and half panic. “That’s the worst idea I’ve ever heard.” I knew he wouldn’t listen. He’s too attached to the way things ought to be. He doesn’t know how easily people unravel when you pull on the right threads. “Come up with something else.”

“Andrew.” I lead him through it gently, ignoring his demands. “When you rob a gas station, you don’t ask. You don’t beg or negotiate. You point the fucking gun at them. It doesn’t matter if it’s empty—they just have to be scared, for real.”

He doesn’t say anything. I can hear him breathing fast.

I close my eyes and picture him in a tuxedo, hiding in some dark corner with that heady mixture of need and arrogance on his face. My dick is really turning into a situation now. The baggy jeans have given up trying to hide it. “Do you want to know the worst part of making people do what you want?”

His throat clicks when he swallows. “What is it?”

“It’s a fucking high. You’re never the same again.”

Silence. I shift my hips, trying not to gasp at the sensation. “Say you know what he did last summer,” I suggest helpfully. “Say if he doesn’t run, your family will wipe him out. But write all that better, like the way rich people talk.”

“The fuck?” He spits the words out, full of indignation. “Are you making fun of me with that cheesy crap? What if he didn’t do anything last summer?”

“You asked what I’d do if it were me, and I’m telling you the answer,” I growl. “I swear to god you’re such a fucking pain.”

“It can’t possibly work. What, a twenty percent chance?”

“Probably more like ten.” I shrug. “But if you commit, if you believe it, ten is all you need.”

The man groans quietly, right in my ear, and my hips twitch. Fucking hell. My whole body screams at the thought of staying still. Now that I’ve found a way to release that black, putrid lake in my chest, I can’t hold myself back.

My head spins as I scramble to my feet. “Call me on my cell phone.” I recite the number almost too fast for him to track, then hang up.

Ramona is laminating book covers when I emerge with the corded handset dangling from my fingers. “Is it alright if I run some errands?” I ask breathlessly, tugging the front of my oversized t-shirt down in case my bulge is too obvious.

She frowns in confusion. “What did that boy want?”

“Nothing. He was looking for someone else named Jude who might be hanging out here.” I wiggle my fingers like a bad magician. “There’s more than one of us!”

My heart sinks when she doesn’t smile. “If you don’t want to tell me, you can just say so.”

“I’m sorry.” Hanging my head, I remember what Andrew said in the car—people know I’m lying to them, because I suck at it. They let me because I don’t have anything else.

Relenting, she plunges one arm deep in her bottomless purse and emerges holding her distinctive ring of cute keychains with a couple of keys mixed in for variety. She offers it to me along with a gentle look that’s probably pity. “Go on, honey.”

“Thank you.” I peck her soft, wrinkled cheek. “I’ll be back in an hour, and I’ll take you out for dinner tonight, okay?” The backpack of extra cash hidden in the wall of her upstairs bathroom isn’t as full as I want, but I can spare thirty bucks to apologize for hurting her feelings.

“Are you alright, Jude?” When she searches my face, I realize I’m probably flushed with adrenaline, my eyes a little wild.

If I stopped lying, right now, I’d tell her no.

I’d tell her I don’t understand what’s happening to me, that I never wanted to hurt anyone but now that I’ve started, I don’t know how to stop.

My phone rings shrilly in my sweaty grip. “I—”

She squeezes my wrist, something complicated in her smile. “Go ahead. I’ll see you soon.”

I put the phone to my ear as I sprint out of the air conditioning into a hot, dry afternoon. Shading my eyes with my hand, I search until I find Ramona’s ten-year-old white Impala. “How’s the party going?”

“They haven’t even noticed I’m gone,” he says sourly as I throw myself into the driver’s seat and roll down the windows. “Presumably Daxton’s under some table fellating my uncle.”

“Did you make the note sound good?” Propping the phone against my shoulder, I start the car and pull out onto the quiet main street. “Do you have nice handwriting?”

“I didn’t use my handwriting, you idiot. I changed it.”

“Oh. Good job.” My body calms with the cool breeze on my face. “One point to you. Read it out for me?”

He clears his throat with a hint of self-consciousness.

I can picture him sitting ramrod-straight at some desk, frowning at the paper like it personally insulted him.

His awkward monotone gives a weird edge to the words, darker and more innocent at the same time.

“You have no place in the Innes family. Walk away. If they find out what you did last summer, they’ll burn you to the ground. ”

After a long moment, someone honks behind me and I realize I’m sitting at a green light, staring at nothing. “Damn,” I murmur as I hit the gas. “So you can hold a gun.”

“Fuck you.” There’s something different in his voice, a thickness, something that reminds me of my dick pressed against the denim around my crotch.

Everything that matters in this town is lined up along the same long, sleepy road, so I’m already pulling into the parking lot of the hardware store.

“Now,” I draw out the word as I weave between people lugging two by fours and bags of fertilizer to their cars and park near the front.

I’m realizing that I can’t fit everything I need in Ramona’s vehicle, but maybe they’ll hold it for me. “Now you point the gun. Tell me how.”

He must have been thinking hard, because he’s ready this time. He sounds a little helpless, like he’s being dragged along by something he doesn’t quite understand. “Could I put it in his car? He was telling my uncle earlier that he takes it out every morning before breakfast.”

“Two points to you.” The chilly brick building hits me with the smell of sawdust and paint as I make my way inside. I think I can hear rustling now, like he’s walking too.

“What happens when I get five points?” he asks softly.