Chapter One
Day
“Jude! Stop!” Sunny Day held up the long skirt of her evening gown as she chased her seventeen-year-old son out the front doors of the de Young Museum.
Jude couldn’t breathe, yet his legs propelled him … away from the woman impersonating his mom. Away from what he saw. Away from his life falling apart.
“Stop! You don’t understand.”
She was right. He didn’t understand. How could he? No explanation on Earth could justify what she did.
“Please …” Her plea broke with a heart-wrenching sob.
As if he hit an invisible wall, he stopped—chest heaving, heart hardening into a four-chambered prison of bitterness.
Sunny rested her hand on his shoulder. He jerked it away, keeping his back to her.
“I love him. I’ve loved him my whole life.”
Jude laughed. “Don’t sugarcoat it.”
“You’re old enough to hear the truth. I’m not going to lie to you.”
Jude didn’t want the truth. He wanted to un-see his mom kissing a man who wasn’t his father. He wanted to un-hear her saying that she “loves him.”
“Fuck you.”
“Jude!”
He turned. “If I’m old enough to hear the truth, then I’m old enough to tell you what I think of it.”
Why was she crying? The tears she wiped from her eyes meant nothing.
“We met when we were five. To say we were inseparable would be an understatement. He was the first boy who held my hand, the first boy I kissed, the boy who took me to all my homecomings and proms. He was my first everything. Then he enlisted in the military and left me. I waited for him for five years, but he kept reenlisting and his career ambitions crowded me out of his life. I wanted a family … I wanted a life.”
“I don’t care.” He gritted his teeth. Heat flushed through his body as his muscles tensed to the point of quivering.
The stranger before him clutched her body, holding herself together. Her voice thickened with pain. “Someday you’ll understand. Someday you’ll fall in love and it will brand your heart forever. And if life keeps you apart, you may invite others into your heart, but it will never truly be theirs. One stamp. One person.”
Sunny gazed at Jude with vacant eyes. “I hate him for leaving me. I hate him for coming back when it was too late. I hate him for still loving me. But after seventeen years I’m just so tired of all the hate. I was in it for you and Jessica.”
“Was?”
She cast her eyes to the ground on a long, slow sigh. “I’m leaving your father after you and Jessica start college next fall. I wanted to wait until next summer to say anything. I know Jessica will take it hard, but she’s a strong young woman. I know you two are close and you don’t have secrets, but if you love her, then you need to think about what’s best for her during her last year of high school.”
Jude leaned forward, demanding she look at him. “If I love her? Do you hear yourself? How can you preach to me about love when the only person you love is yourself and that fucker who had his hands all over you!”
A second round of tears filled his mother’s eyes. He felt nothing.
“I love you and Jessica—”
“No! You just said one stamp. One person.”
“It … it’s not the same.” She shook her head, pressing the back of her hand beneath her nose as sobs racked her body. “The love I have for you is a different kind of love. It’s unconditional. You and Jessica are not my heart, you’re the beat. You’re my life, my world. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you, and I’ve spent the past seventeen years proving it. I’ll spend the rest of my life loving you, being here for you, protecting you …”
Jude narrowed his eyes. “I don’t want your protection. I don’t need your protection.”
“Don’t say that.”
Love didn’t exist, at least not the way he thought it did. Jessica was daddy’s girl, but Jude idolized his mom. Sunny was president of the PTO, organizer of fundraisers, keeper of schedules, the bright face in the front row at all their school events, the hug before bed and kiss on the cheek in the morning. She kept a tidy house, baked, cooked, mended clothes, and always … always made everyone feel loved.
More than that, she was the loving wife. Jude knew it. He saw it in the adoring looks she exchanged with his father, the hand-holding, the playful banter, the patience she showed when his job got stressful. She was the glue that held everyone together.
No longer.
She was a fraud. A liar. An adulterer. She could not be trusted. Women could not be trusted … except Jessica. That night his sister became his everything and all other women became objects to fuck. Period.