Within These Walls (Within These Walls #1)(36)

You are an adult, Lailah, I chanted, as I willed my fingers to continue their previous path through Jude’s thick hair.

“And who is this?” she asked, her tone clipped and formal.

She wasn’t wearing a mask as well. Apparently, she wasn’t afraid of catching whatever I had either.

Jude stirred under my fingers, his hair falling into his eyes as sleep drained away. I turned away from my mother’s rigid stance by the entrance to see soft moss-colored eyes staring back at me.

“Good morning,” he whispered.

Even though I felt like I’d been run over by a Mack truck, then dropped off the side of a bridge, and stomped on, I couldn’t help the grin spread across my lips.

“Morning.”

My mom made a sound in her throat, and I snapped back, sitting up further in bed. I cleared my throat and took a deep breath.

“Mom, this is Jude…” I looked at him, asking for permission.

He gave me a single nod as a go-ahead.

“Cavanaugh. He’s a nurses’ assistant here in the hospital, and we’ve become quite close,” I said, trying to muster up as much maturity as possible.

Speaking up to my mother was something I’d never mastered. Having her in front of me always made me feel small and weak.

As I’d expected, Jude’s last name was lost on my mother. Her nose was usually buried in a textbook, or she was standing in front of a classroom. Either way, she really only paid attention to current events if they had to do with religious conflict or medical research. Everything else—politics, fashion, celebrity gossip, or business reports—was filtered out and forgotten.

Being the gentleman he was, Jude rose from the tattered old chair and went around to the other side of the bed to formally greet her. Standing over six feet tall, he dwarfed the petite frame of my mother.

“Very nice to meet you, Ms. Buchanan,” he said cordially, offering his hand to her.

She glanced down, and I bit my lip, waiting for her to take it.

“Likewise,” she finally said, taking his hand.

“Jude stayed with me and took care of me all night,” I said with as much enthusiasm as my frail state could manage.

By the way her lip tightened into displeasure, I would have thought I’d said, Hey, Mom! Jude and I had wild-monkey sex right here in this very bed! Want to see the video?

“Well, thank you very much, Mr. Cavanaugh. I’ll be able to take it from here.” Her voice was liquid ice. She’d lost control of things, and she didn’t like it. To her, life was always about control.

“With all due respect, Ms. Buchanan—” Jude started, that deep commanding Cavanaugh tone returning to his voice.

It sent shivers down my spine and made me wonder what he had been like in his alternate life.

“Jude…” I said softly, cutting him off, before he had the chance to give my mom the lashing she deserved.

As much as I wanted to see someone finally dish back what she’d been serving for as long as I could remember, I didn’t want my mother to hate him. The bad-boy thing wasn’t very appealing when I counted on my mother to manage most of my life. I needed her to like my boyfriend.

Boyfriend…mmm…

Warm fuzzies.

“You’re tired. You were up all night. Why don’t you run home and take a nap, shower, and then meet me back here for lunch?”

I could see the turmoil in his eyes. He didn’t want to leave. Last night, as Jude—the nurses’ assistant—had barked orders to those who earned double and triple his salary, I’d figured out fairly quickly that he had a driving instinct to protect others. Or maybe it was just me.

Yep, more warm fuzzies.

“Okay,” he relented.

He walked back over to my bedside, not caring that my mother’s eyes were shooting virtual laser beams of death at him, and he bent down.

“I’ll be back in a few hours,” he said.

When I nodded, he followed up with a list of instructions, “Try to drink some water. Have your mom use that cool washcloth on your forehead, and try to sleep.” He squeezed my hand and gave a quick kiss to my forehead. Then, he was gone.

I looked up at my mother looming in the empty space by my bed, glaring at me as if I were a deviant teenager, and I huffed out a frustrated breath.

Mother—One.

Adulthood—Zero.

“Are we going to talk about this?” my mother asked moments after Jude had left my room.

She paced several steps toward the bathroom and then pivoted back, retracing her steps, only to do the same thing all over again. She looked a bit agitated.

“Talk about what?” I asked, sinking further into my blankets. A chill traveled up my spine, and I buried my hands under the sheets, trying to cover as much skin as possible.

“Why haven’t you told me about your secret visitor?”

“Jude isn’t a secret. I wasn’t trying to hide anything from you. You were just never here when he visited.”

“And you never thought to tell me that you were…befriending a man who worked in the hospital?”

She’d said the word befriend as if it were dripping in gasoline and would likely light on fire at any given moment. It pissed me off, and it was a problem that needed to be taken care of quickly.

“Listen, Mom, I wasn’t trying to deceive you. Jude has been a friend to me. He’s kept me company on lonely nights.”