Chloe had volleyball practice until six.
Noel and Solange were somewhere on the 101, stuck in the kind of traffic that turned a twenty-minute drive into an hour of suffering.
Arthur was in Thailand. Or Singapore. Or wherever men like Arthur went when the weight of their actual life got inconvenient.
Jude knew all of this because he made it his business to know the schedule of every person in this house the same way he memorized defensive formations. You don't walk into a room blind. That's how you get blindsided.
He was in the living room with his playbook when Evelyn came downstairs in her yoga clothes.
That was the word he used. Yoga clothes. Clean. Clinical. Safe.
The reality was a sage green set that fit her like it had opinions. The leggings stopped just below the knee and the top was one of those cropped things that showed the soft line of her waist when she reached up to pull her hair back. She was barefoot. She always went barefoot in the house. Her honey blonde hair went up in a loose knot she stabbed a pencil through, and a few strands fell against the back of her neck like they couldn't be bothered to stay.
She rolled out the yoga mat in the living room ten feet from where he was sitting.
Jude looked back at his playbook.
He did not read a single word on that page for the next four minutes.
She moved through the poses slowly, unhurried, like the house belonged to her entirely. Which it did. That was the thing about Evelyn Fitzgerald. She never announced herself. She never had to. Her presence filled a room the way warmth filled a cold car. Gradual, then total.
He watched her fold forward, spine long, and go completely still.
His pencil stopped moving.
She had been doing this. For weeks. Not obviously. Never obviously with Evelyn. It was always something small. The cardigan she forgot to close over the fitted top. The way she reached past him in the kitchen and her hair swept across his shoulder. The three seconds she held eye contact after a conversation ended, like she was waiting for him to say something she already knew he wouldn't.
She called it nothing. He called it what it was.
Jude set the playbook down.
"Your lower back is off."
She turned her head, cheek resting against her forearm.
"Mm?"
"Your alignment." He stood up. "You're compensating on the right side."
She watched him cross the room. Those blue eyes, the ones that always looked like they were waiting for something to go wrong, tracked him without moving her head. There was something in them today that wasn't worry.
"I've been a little tight," she said.
"I can see that."
He crouched beside the mat. She was lying flat on her stomach now, arms folded beneath her chin, legs together and straight. The sage green leggings had a seam that ran from her ankle all the way up. He did not follow it with his eyes. He absolutely followed it with his eyes.
"I'll work on it later," she said.
"I can do it now."
"Jude."
"Evelyn."
She exhaled through her nose. Not a sigh. More like a word she decided not to say.
"I'm fine."
"You just winced getting into that last position."
She had. He'd caught it. She knew he caught it because she went slightly still the way she did when she realized he'd noticed something she hadn't offered.
"I did a lot of planting yesterday," she said. "The garden."
"Okay."
He stayed where he was.
She didn't tell him to move.
Jude placed both hands on her shoulders and felt her breath catch. Not a flinch. The other thing. He pressed his thumbs in along the ridge of muscle beside her spine and she made a small sound into her arms.
"Okay," she said, quieter. "Okay, that's. Yes."
He worked up toward her neck. She had the kind of tension that built in layers, the type that came from years of holding a posture nobody asked her to hold. He'd seen it on linemen who braced for contact so long their body forgot how to stand relaxed. The muscle under his hands was warm and dense and she went looser with every pass he made.
"You didn't learn this from football," she said.
"My mom had migraines." His thumbs moved along the base of her skull. "I learned fast."
She went quiet in the way she did when he mentioned Denise. Not awkward. More like she received it carefully and put it somewhere she'd handle later.
His hands moved down her back. Spine, then the broad muscles flanking it. She let out a breath that had been waiting a long time to leave.
"Oh."
"Yeah."
"That's. That's right there, that whole—" She stopped. Her shoulders dropped two inches. "Sorry."
"Don't apologize."
His hands moved lower. The hem of her top had ridden up slightly and his thumbs grazed the small of her back and she went very still in a way that was not the stillness of relaxation.
He kept going.
Down to the curve where her spine ended and everything else began.
"Jude."
"Mm."
She hadn't told him to stop.
He pressed both palms flat against her lower back, thumbs working the tight muscle above her waistband, and she exhaled something that was almost his name and almost wasn't a word at all.
Then he moved lower.
He heard her breath change. The leggings were thin. His hands curved over her and he felt the warmth of her through the fabric and he pressed lightly, thumbs working in slow circles, and Evelyn Fitzgerald made a sound that she immediately tried to muffle against her arms.
"Mmnh—"
A soft smack. Just one. Open palm.
"Oh—" Her voice came out small. Startled. "Is— is this part of the massage?"
"Shh." He leaned forward slightly. "Relax. Let me take care of you."
The sound she made after that was not a question.
If you had told Jude six months ago, back in West Philly when he was sleeping in his mom's apartment and eating cereal for dinner before early practice, that he would end up in Calabasas California kneeling over a yoga mat with his hands on his stepmother's ass while she made those sounds into her arms, he would have looked at you like you needed an intervention.
He would have said put down the hentai, get off Pornhub, go outside, touch grass, call a loved one.
He would have been deeply concerned.
But here was the thing about Evelyn Fitzgerald.
She had been doing this. Weeks of soft voices and cardigan slippage and fingers grazing his forearm when she passed him something in the kitchen. Weeks of those red eyes going somewhere else right before she looked away. Weeks of the house being emptier than usual when he happened to be in a room with her. Weeks of her finding reasons to come to him instead of the other way around.
He was seventeen, not seven. He knew what that was.
And he had patience. That was the thing people underestimated about him. Jude Fitzgerald had the patience of a man who'd waited his whole life for things to come to him and had learned, watching his mother work two jobs without complaint, that good things required time and stillness and the self-control not to reach until the moment was right.
Well.
The moment was right.
Evelyn made another sound. Lower this time, less contained. Her hips had moved, just slightly, but they had moved, closing the small gap between her body and his hands, and when he pressed down she arched into the pressure and the muffled sound she made against her forearms sent something hot up his spine.
He leaned down.
"You good?"
"I." Her voice had lost the melody. It came out rough at the edges, stripped of the soft Ohio warmth, and what was underneath was something rawer. "Yes. I'm. Yes."
He wasn't done.
His hands moved to the sides of her hips, thumbs pressing into the muscle there, and she rolled slightly, involuntary, like her body had decided something before she did. The sage green leggings had a small gold drawstring at the back and it sat against her lower back and he watched it like it owed him something.
"Jude."
His name in her voice sounded different now. It always had a specific quality to it, warm, a little careful, the way she said everything. Now it had no careful in it at all.
"Mm."
He pressed his weight forward slightly, still on his knees, and his shorts did not help the situation. The fabric was thin. She would feel him. She did feel him, because she went entirely still for one second and then made a sound that Jude was going to remember for a very long time.
"Nhh—"
And then she wiggled.
Not dramatically. Not even fully consciously, he thought. Just a small shift of her hips, side to side, slow, like she was asking a question she hadn't decided to ask yet.
He looked at the back of her head. At the honey blonde knot coming loose. At the strands against her neck. At the line of her shoulders and the dip of her spine and the curve of her beneath his hands.
Arthur Fitzgerald was in Thailand eating room service and ignoring his wife's texts.
Noel and Solange were on the 101, minimum forty minutes out.
Chloe was six miles away running line drills.
The house was the quietest it had ever been.
Jude touched the cross at his collar once.
He had not resolved this one yet.
He leaned down until his mouth was close to her ear. Not touching. Just close. Close enough that she would feel the warmth of his breath.
"You've been doing this for a while," he said quietly.
Her whole body stilled.
"I don't." Her voice came out uneven. "I don't know what you mean."
"Yeah you do."
A long pause. Her shoulders rose and fell.
"Jude, I'm your—"
"I know what you are."
She went quiet. He could feel her heartbeat in the muscle under his palms. Rapid. Present.
"I know exactly what you are," he said again, softer. "I've known since the third morning I was here."
"That's not." She stopped. Started again. "That's not appropriate."
"You started it."
The sound she made was not a denial. It was something between a laugh and a groan and it died in her throat before it finished forming.
He straightened up, hands still on her, and she did not move. Did not push up from the mat. Did not tell him to stop again.
She just lay there, breathing, those blue eyes he couldn't see looking at something below her face.
He thought about his mother who raised him to know the difference between what was real and what was convenient. She would probably have something to say about this.
His mother was also the woman who told him, sitting on their apartment steps when he was fifteen and asking about a girl in his class who kept finding reasons to be near him:
"Baby, when someone keeps coming to where you are, they're telling you where they want to be."
He pressed his palms flat against her lower back one more time. Firm.
"Nnhh—" The sound came out before she could stop it. Her head dropped forward. "Oh god."
Jude's mouth curved.
"Still want me to stop?"
Evelyn Fitzgerald, forty-three years old, a woman who had managed this household with perfect composure for twenty-two years, who had survived Arthur's absences and Arthur's infidelities and twenty years of being the warmest and loneliest person in any room she occupied, said nothing for four full seconds.
Then she shook her head.
Small. Almost imperceptible. Just side to side.
But it was there.
He leaned back down.
"Okay," he said.
And he thought, completely seriously, without any humor at all: this is his life now. This Calabasas house, this quiet afternoon, this woman beneath his hands with her careful composure all the way gone.
To think all of it started with the worst day he ever had.
===
A/N:
Welcome to the end of the chapter.
You want to watch Jude take the quarterback position. You want to see him conquer the Fitzgerald women.
Feed the algorithm to unlock the next play.
Add this book to your library today to secure your spot on the active roster. Drop those Power Stones to keep the chapters arriving.
Every comment tells me to turn up the heat.
Do not stay on the sidelines. Tell me you are ready to play.