Ch.41: Jude's Secret

It was hours before Jude came home, and during that time I swung between anger that he'd disappeared and left me like this, and fear that something had happened to him.

I'd long since made Elle go home. As important as she'd become to me, this was something that Jude and I needed to do alone.

When I finally heard him come in, a wave of relief socked me in the chest, followed by a fresh bolt of anger. He'd been gone for hours, and I'd had no idea what was going on.

"Why the hell didn't you answer your phone?" I said, my voice low and trembly.

"Sorry," Jude muttered.

Digger frantically pawed at Jude's jeans, and Jude crouched to pet him. Then he straightened and leaned against the edge of the breakfast bar. I wanted him to hug me, to reassure me, to ease the churning emotion in my chest, but there was a strange sense of space between us, like we were strangers all over again.

"I didn't find Darrell," he said.

"I know, because he was here," I said.

Jude's head snapped up, his eyes blazing with anger. "In the loft?"

"No, outside. He grabbed me after you ran off."

Jude shoved himself off the counter, his fists clenched tight. "What the fuck? He grabbed you?"

"You'd already know that if you answered your phone," I said, frustration sharpening my voice.

Jude let out a strained breath and raked his fingers through his curls. "Tell me what happened."

I did.

Jude was silent when I finished, staring at the floor. Digger sat and watched us, his tail lightly thumping.

"Jude," I said, quiet but firm. "I've respected your right to your secrets all this time, but enough is enough. You have to tell me what Darrell has over you. I have a right to know what the hell is going on."

Jude's jaw worked, and I braced myself for an argument, because he obviously still didn't want to tell me, but I just as obviously couldn't back off this time. I needed to know.

"I –" Jude started, then stopped.

His shoulders were rigid, his eyes downcast.

"Hey," I said softly. I closed the gap between us and touched his arm. "It's okay. You can tell me."

He gave a short, bitter laugh.

I waited.

Jude sighed again, a rough, pained sound, and reached out to snag the bottle of gin I'd left on the bar.

"It was two and a half years ago," he said. "Angels & Demons were at the top of the fucking world. Money was rolling in – more than we'd ever seen in our lives, and we were spending it almost as fast as we got it. Strippers, parties, drugs, cars, you name it, we bought it. We were above the rules. We'd take private jets to strip clubs and waitresses would bring us lines of coke or pills on silver fucking trays. We didn't even have to ask for it. We'd have competitions to see how many girls we could hook up with in a single night. We trashed bars and hotel rooms and venues, and none of it mattered. Nobody stopped us – hell, they encouraged it. All part of the image, right? We were fucking untouchable and nobody gave a shit who we hurt along the way."

I had to admit, that hadn't occurred to me either. I'd never considered that for every room they trashed, someone had to clean it up and repair the damage. I'd never thought about how frustrating it must have been for everyone else in the hotel, unable to sleep because of noisy, hard-partying rockstars.

"One night . . ." Jude stopped, swallowed, started again. "I'd just bought a new car. Darrell talked me into it, and we took it for a spin as soon as I signed on the dotted line. We'd both been drinking, but what the hell, right? We'd got used to doing whatever we wanted."

He took another swig of gin.

"We didn't stop drinking, and then Darrell asked if we could swing by his dealers." Jude lifted his head and fixed me with a bleak look. "I was already drunk when I bought the car, and then I drank more and took drugs and didn't stop driving."

There was a horrible feeling in my stomach, like I'd swallowed a lump of ice.

"It didn't fucking matter," Jude continued. "We're rockstars, we're above the law, we can do whatever we want. If we got pulled over for drunk driving, we could hire the best lawyers to get us off the hook."

"But you didn't get pulled over, did you?" I said.

It wasn't just the dangerousness that Jude had been struggling with. Something had happened that night.

"No. I don't remember much about the journey, I was out of my fucking head, but . . ." Jude's voice cracked a little. "I lost control of the car. It came off the road and crashed into a shop."

"Was anyone inside?" I asked.

Surely even the best lawyers in the world couldn't have covered up something like that.

Jude shook his head. "It was about one in the morning, no one was there. But Darrell was freaking out, and maybe it was the drugs because it wasn't the first time either of us had crashed anything, but somehow he'd got it into his head that this would be the end of the band. Of course it wouldn't, but I was high as a kite too, I didn't know what I was doing, so when he told me we had to destroy the evidence, I went along with it."

I took back the gin; I had a feeling I was going to need it. "What did you do?"

"We torched the car." Jude shook his head. "Just doused that thing in vodka and lighter fluid and lit her up. We were too out of it to realise that the shop would burn too. And it did. So did the apartment above it. And the house next door. Turns out the shop was a little family-run business, and the family themselves were split between the two properties." Jude fixed me with another intense look, and his eyes were burning with anger and regret and self-loathing. "They were all at home when we started that fire."

"Oh my God," I breathed. "Did they . . ." I couldn't finish that sentence.

He shook his head again, his chocolate curls tumbling around his face. "The family all got out, but they lost everything. Every single thing they owned. They had two daughters and one of them went back into the burning house to rescue her dog."

He reached for the gin with a shaking hand, but this time he didn't drink from it. He just stared down at it with tears in his eyes. "She rescued the dog but it cost her. She was left with burns on nearly twenty percent of her body. She lost most of her hair. She had to have skin grafts." Jude squeezed his eyes shut and made a low, agonised sound. "I took everything from that family."

"So what did you do about it?"

His mouth made a nasty twist. "What makes you think I did anything?"

"Because I know you, and because I don't believe that you could feel this bad about it without ever having done something to help."

He snorted, but there was no heat behind it.

"What did you do?" I repeated.

"What any coward would do. I anonymously sent them a fuck-ton of money. I'm still giving them money today. I made sure they had enough to buy two new properties, bigger and better than they had before. I made sure they had enough to rebuild their business, also bigger and better than before. I paid for their daughter to get the best medical treatment, and for any higher education that she might want, but do you think that makes it better?"

"I honestly don't know," I said. "I'm guessing their lives are better now, in so many ways, but that doesn't change what happened."

"I could have killed them all," Jude said.

"You could have," I agreed, because there was no point pretending otherwise.

"And what did I learn from it?" Jude challenged, his eyes still burning with that awful, desperate light. "Did I stop drinking? Did I stop doing drugs?"

"Some of them, yes."

"But not all of them. The first time we met, I sparked up a joint. What the fuck does that make me?"

"It makes you human." A little lightbulb went off in my head. "Is this why you don't drive anywhere?"

He gave a jerky nod. "I've barely been behind the wheel of a car since that night. Then you came along and made me feel like maybe I could do it, maybe I could face my fears."

"So this is what Darrell has been blackmailing you with."

"Yeah."

"Did he do anything to help that family?"

"I think he would have done, if he'd been in his right mind. I couldn't see it at the time, but looking back now it's obvious that addiction was already getting its claws into him. So no, he didn't do anything. He just kept spiralling downwards. When he crashed his own car a couple of months later, I realised that things were really fucked for him."

"Why has Darrell waited until now to blackmail you? What does he want?" I asked.

"Money, same as everyone. Drug habits are expensive, and since I kicked him out of the band two years ago, he's been getting by on royalties."

"You guys get a lot of royalties though, don't you?"

"Yeah, but Darrell does a lot of drugs, and he hasn't stopped spending on things like strippers either. Months ago he came to me because his money was running out. The royalties are keeping him afloat, but as soon as any money comes in, he puts it up his nose or into his veins. He can't sustain himself much longer and he knows it. Equally he knows that I'm making more money than ever, and he wants a piece of that."

"But he won't want a one-off payment. You realise that, right? If you cave now, he'll know he can hold this over you forever. You'd be setting yourself up for a lifetime of supporting him," I said.

"Yeah, I know. But if I give him nothing, then he'll go public with what I did."

"With what you both did," I corrected him. "Hasn't Darrell realised he'd incriminate himself too?"

"I don't think he cares anymore."

"Then why not just go public with the story? Tabloids would pay a fortune for it, wouldn't they?"

"Yeah, but like you said, that would be a one-off payment, and he'd blow through it in no time. He wants me to be the gift that keeps on giving. But, sooner or later, his money will run out for good, and then he'll be desperate. Then he won't care about anything and he'll go public with this and everyone will know."

Judging by what Darrell had been posting to social media, I had a nasty feeling that he'd reached that point sooner than Jude had realised.

Jude sucked in a shuddering breath. "I know I'm far from fucking perfect, but there are some things the world doesn't need to know. Sometimes I find it hard enough looking at myself in the mirror – I don't need everyone else looking at me like that too."

I eased the gin bottle out of his hand. "Thank you for telling me."

Jude's mouth made that nasty twist again. "You sure you still want to be married to me?"

"Yes," I said firmly. "You fucked up, Jude, and I won't pretend you didn't. What happened that night was terrible, and yeah, you should have known better, but fame does crazy things to people, and everyone around you had enabled you for months. I'm not making excuses for you, but I'm not going to condemn you either."

Tears gleamed in his eyes again, and he looked away, as if he didn't want me to see them.

"This is how you knew Darrell was responsible for what happened to your car today, isn't it?" I said.

"He was making a point. To anyone else it would look like a random act of vandalism. But he knew that I'd know it was about the last time we burned a car."

"Then why did he say someone paid him to do it?"

Jude's gaze sharpened. "That's a really good point."

"Do you think he was lying?"

"There's no reason for him to lie about that. If he wanted to get my attention, burning the car did it. But then he made sure I couldn't find him to confront him about it. If this was just about the blackmail, why wouldn't he have made sure I could speak to him face to face? Why corner you?"

"Do you think he trashed the studio too?"

"I really don't know."

"Don't you have any other way to contact him?"

"I unblocked his number when I couldn't find him at his apartment, but he's not answering."

"He went through all this to get your attention and then he ignores you?"

Jude rubbed his thumb over the black stars on his knuckles. "He's probably passed out after shooting up somewhere."

I put my hand over his. "What do we do now?"

"You don't do anything. I don't want you anywhere near Darrell."

"I really don't think he'd hurt me."

"I'm not taking that risk. Something seriously fucking weird is going on, and until I've had a chance to talk to Darrell properly, I want you to stay in the loft," Jude said.

"For how long?"

Jude sighed and scrubbed his palms over his face. "I don't know, just . . . give me a chance to talk to him."

"Last time he threw a bottle at your head."

"Last time I as good as accused him of vandalising our bedroom. This time he wants to talk to me."

There was no talking him out of this, I could tell. And even if I wasn't happy with him going, we did need answers, and Darrell might be the only one who could give them to us.

"Just promise me you'll be careful."

Jude brushed his lips against mine. "I promise," he murmured.

"And promise me that you won't do it tonight. He was really erratic this morning, and if he's taken anything throughout the day, he could be worse."

Jude wrapped his arms around me and I closed my eyes as I leaned into the comforting solidity of his chest. "I'm not going anywhere tonight," he said.

I was still scared and shaken, but when Jude held me like this, it made me feel like everything would be okay.

***

The sound of Jude's phone ringing jerked me awake, and I buried my face in the pillow with a groan. "Too early," I mumbled.

The warm weight of Jude's arm left my back as he rolled over.

"What?" he grunted into the phone.

There was a moment's silence, then Jude sat bolt upright, yanking the covers with him.

I sat up too, my heart starting to beat fast. I thought I recognised Neil's voice on the other end of the phone, but I couldn't hear what he was saying.

Jude dropped the phone into his lap, and sat very still, his shoulders rigid.

"Jude?" I said, gently touching his shoulder.

He turned to me, so slowly it was like that small movement was almost too much for him.

"What's wrong? What's happened?" I said.

Jude stared at me, but his eyes were distant, as if he couldn't really see me, as if he wasn't here in our bed.

I pressed my palm to his cheek, and he blinked, slow and heavy.

"That was Neil," he said. "It's Darrell . . ."

"What he's done now?" I said, my heart sinking.

Jude blinked again, and the look in his eyes cracked my heart open.

"He's overdosed," he said. "Darrell's dead."