The Rules of You and Me (7 page)

I expected Jude to back out and tell me to go on without him. But he nodded and then turned back toward the house. I sat in my car, tapping the steering wheel as I waited. What was I doing? Was he really going to tour Asheville with me?

Just when I was thinking that it was all a joke and I should drive off, the door opened again and Jude emerged, this time wearing nice dark jeans and a clean white T-shirt. He had brushed his hair and pulled it back into a neat ponytail.

I raised an eyebrow.

“
What?” he asked once he was settled into the passenger seat.

“
We’re really going to do this?” I asked. “Go to Biltmore Estate. Together.”

Jude shrugged. “I don’t have anything else to do.”

“
Weren’t you working on your truck?”

“
I’m always working on my truck,” he said. “It’s a work in progress.”

Still, I didn’t put the car into drive.

“
If you don’t want me to go, I won’t go.” Jude put his hand on the door handle.

“
No,” I said quickly. “You can go.”

“
Only if you want me to.”

“
You can go.”

He opened the door just a crack, his eyes locked on me. “Do you want me to go?”

“
If you want to go, then go,” I told him.

He shook his head and opened the door wider. “That’s not an answer.” He put one brown booted foot outside on the asphalt.

“
I want you to go!” I exclaimed. “Are you happy now?”

Jude settled back into the seat and shut the door. “If you wanted me to go, all you had to do was say so.”

I scowled at him as I shifted the gear into drive. “Do you love being difficult?” I asked.

“
My mom says it’s my specialty,” he said with a grin.

#

“
The house was completed in 1895 by George Vanderbilt,” the tour guide said. “It boasts two hundred and fifty rooms.”

“
Plenty of space to get lost in,” Jude whispered to me.

We had slipped into the back of one of the guided tours, even though I’d only paid our admission for the self-guided one. I felt kind of like a rebel, doing something against the rules, even if it was something as lame as a guided tour.

I had, however, insisted on paying for Jude’s ticket. Now we were completely even for the flat tire.

The house itself was impressive, an American castle nestled in the green mountains. The rooms were decorated with items that were priceless. The tour group moved onto the next room, but Jude and I hung back so he could marvel at the ornate ceiling one more time.

“
I think my whole house fits into this room,” he said, craning his neck to look up at the ceiling. “Can you imagine living here? You wouldn’t even have to see anyone else in your family if you didn’t want to. You could hide out in just one side of the house and pretend you’re all alone.”

“
Sounds lonely,” I said. The house reminded me of my own home. Not that my house was anywhere near as big as Biltmore Estate, much to my mother’s dismay. And we’d never own the antique furniture or portraits displayed here. But the house had a quiet, frozen feeling to it that I knew well. It was a house waiting to be lived in, a house where the people inside couldn’t quite fill the space enough to make it cozy. The air in the house was cold, even though it was over ninety degrees outside.

“
Let’s go outside,” I told Jude.

We followed a hall back toward the doors and then found our way to the south terrace. A few people sat on the steps or wandered around looking at the statues situated around the terrace. There were a lot of statues, figures frozen in time, unaware of the demands of life around them. I eyed a statue of a man playing a flute, his sightless eyes staring at nothing as he played on forever.
Must be nice to not have to see how empty and dead a giant house like this really is inside,
I thought as I smirked up at him.

I walked over to the stone wall that bordered the side of the house and leaned against it, looking out at the blue mountains that stretched as far as I could see until they blended into the sky. I sucked in a deep breath, holding it in as long as I could before letting it out.

“
You okay?” Jude asked. He sat down on the wall next to me, stretching his legs in front of him.

“
I’m fine,” I said through clenched teeth. I hadn’t expected to feel this way about a house I had never seen before. It was a tourist museum, not a real home, not anymore. I wondered about the people who had once lived here and whether they had found happiness hidden away in their impressive castle. Or had they realized that everything they’d built had all been just a mask for what really lay underneath? No matter how well you held things together on the outside, your life could be crumbling away bit by bit on the inside. It still had the power to destroy you. Big walls and expensive things couldn’t keep it out.

“
When I was a kid,” Jude said softly, “we used to have a yearly pass to Biltmore. My mom loved coming here and pretending we lived in this giant house. My brother, Liam, used to try to scare me with those big lion statues out front. He told me that they came to life at night and ate anyone who was still in the house when they weren’t supposed to be. I was six and terrified. I nearly peed my pants whenever I passed the lions. If it started to get late in the day and we weren’t on our way out, I’d pester my parents to go until I’d start crying.”

I looked at him from the corner of my eye. He didn’t look at me, he just stared straight ahead at the statues. I wanted to ask him about his brother, but I couldn’t.

“
So when did you stop coming here?” I asked.

“
When I was nine,” Jude said. “My dad walked out on us, and my mom couldn’t afford the yearly pass anymore. This is the first time I’ve been since then.”

I turned around and sat on the wall next to him. We were quiet for a long time as families and couples moved around us. The wind whipped my hair all around my head.

“
What about you?” Jude asked. “What’s your family situation?”

I pressed my fingernails into the stone wall. “It’s just me and my parents.”

“
And they didn’t come on vacation with you?” he asked.

“
They’re…on their own vacations this year.” I left it at that, hoping Jude wouldn’t press further.

He didn’t. He seemed to know when to step away from a topic. “Hey, you want to see my favorite place in the whole state?”

I raised my eyebrows. “Something even better than Biltmore Estate? I don’t believe it.”

He smiled. “Come on. This is something nature made all on her own.”

“
You’ve got to be kidding me.”

I stood in the parking lot of Chimney Rock State Park, my head craned back so I could stare up at the rock itself. It was a tower of huge rock, with what looked like another flatter rock sitting on top of it.

Trails of stairs and rocky paths led up the side of the mountain to the top of Chimney Rock. Stairs on which people were actually climbing
willingly
.

“
You have to see the view,” Jude told me.

He started toward the entrance, but I stayed behind. After a few steps, he realized I wasn’t with him and looked back at me.

“
What’s wrong?” he asked.

I gulped and shook my head. “I’m not climbing that.”

“
Why, are you afraid of heights?”

When I didn’t say anything, his eyes widened. “Oh,” he said slowly. “You’re afraid of heights.”

“
I’m not afraid of heights,” I said. “I’m afraid of
falling
from heights.”

“
It’s safe. There are rails everywhere. The stairs across the gap are supported—”

“
Stairs across a
gap
?” I crossed my arms firmly. “No way. I’m staying here.”

Jude frowned as he looked back up at the rock towering over us. I could see people up there, tiny people who roamed around the top of the rock as if it were no big deal that they were hundreds of feet in the air.

“
There’s a cafe up top,” Jude said. “We could get something to eat after we climb up. And there’s even a waterfall if we take the path up the mountain.”

But I shook my head. “No mountain. No cafe in the sky. My feet are staying here.”

“
Is that one of the rules?”

I glared at him. “No, but it should be.”

“
How about if we just go a little way up the stairs?” Jude asked. “We won’t go all the way to the top, and we’ll stop when you can’t go on anymore.”

He looked like he really wanted to go up. I felt bad about ruining the big reveal of his most favorite place.

Don’t hold yourself back, Hannah,
Mark’s voice filled my head.
Do what you think you can’t do.

I sighed. “Fine. I’ll go up
one
flight of stairs. But that’s it.”

Jude’s face broke into a wide grin. “Come on.”

Kids raced by me, giggling as they ran up the stairs while their weary parents followed behind. The first set of steps was fine and I followed Jude up a second set. He cast a look at me, then continued when I didn’t object.

My muscles burned, but I was able to make it a little farther before a wave of dizziness washed over me. I didn’t even want to look back at how far up we were.

“
Let’s sit down for a while,” Jude said, perching himself on a large rock along the trail. He patted the space next to him.

I managed to situate myself on the rock, our hips pressed close. He didn’t say anything about going on and he didn’t ask if I wanted to, but I had a feeling that he had stopped only because of me.

“
I’m not afraid of many things,” I said after a moment. “I can talk in front of crowds. I’ve never been afraid of the dark. But heights get me. They always have.” I rubbed my palms over my khaki skirt. “One time, my friends Avery and Elliott wanted to have a treehouse. So Elliott’s dad built one for us in this big tree in their backyard. And on the first night after it was finished, we were going to sleep out there. We all got our sleeping bags and pillows and Elliott climbed up first so we could throw everything up to him. Then Avery went up. And then it was my turn. I got two feet off the ground and couldn’t move any farther. Avery and Elliott were yelling at me to climb up and that it was easy. But I was stuck there, until I started crying. Elliott had to jump out of the treehouse to help me down.”

I laughed and picked at a few blades of grass near my feet. “I never did make it into the treehouse. Avery and Elliott gave it up because of me and we slept on the ground instead.”

“
Everyone is afraid of something,” Jude said. “Yours just happens to be heights.”

“
What are you afraid of?” I challenged him.

Jude scratched his chin. “Commitment,” he said.

I rolled my eyes. “That’s such a guy response.”

“
I don’t just mean relationships,” he said. “I mean all kinds of commitments. The kind that make you change your life, that make you take a step you don’t know if you’re brave enough to take.”

“
I think everyone’s afraid of that,” I said.

He shook his head. “My brother wasn’t. He dove into everything headfirst. He never doubted any step he took. He was always one hundred percent sure that whatever move he made, it was the right one.” He pulled at a piece of grass and twirled it between his fingers. “I’d love to have just a tiny bit of his confidence.”

“
Seems to me you have a lot of it,” I told him. “You didn’t hesitate to help me with my tire. You gave me a ride home. You managed to weasel your way into my tourist day and got me halfway up to this rock. That takes a lot of confidence, you know.”

Jude looked at me and smiled. He had a smile that made a warm tingle spread through me. No guy had smiled at me like that since the early days of my relationship with Zac.

Don’t get any ideas,
I reminded myself. I was not in the market for a boyfriend. I’d arranged the end of my last relationship because it was too much stress keeping him from finding out the truth about my dad. The last thing I needed was to get myself right back into something where I had to keep secrets to protect my family.

“
I’m starving,” I said, jumping up from the rock. “You hungry?”

Jude stood, brushing his jeans off. “Yeah, I could eat. I know this great little place in town. And I promise, it’s on the ground.”

#

“
I was starting to think I’d have to send out an A.P.B. to find you.” Aunt Lydia sat on the couch in her little living room, with a magazine spread open on her lap. The TV was on, but the volume was muted. Had she kept the volume down in order to listen for me when I came home? Even my own parents didn’t keep tabs on me like that, except when Mom thought I should be studying to keep my GPA up rather than having something that resembled a social life.

“
I went out to see Asheville,” I said.

“
You could have called to let me know where you were,” Aunt Lydia said. It was late in the day. Jude and I had gotten lunch and then talked for a long time. He told me about Asheville and I told him about Willowbrook. Time flew by before I knew it.