Class.

The hardest day of classes of Connor's entire life, including his very first day at the university. Connor had made himself go, only because Adam told him that the news of his ex-boyfriend couldn't destroy his life. Connor knew that Adam didn't really understand. He didn't really know that his ex had already ruined his life and that his getting out of prison was just icing on the cake. It was just proof that Connor would never be free of him. And maybe he was never supposed to be free. He and told Jude that he never wanted to go back to his ex, and that was true. He didn't want to.

But if his ex were in front of him, that didn't mean he wouldn't.

The thought of Jude's name caused him to wince. It had only been a day. One day since he had changed his number. One day since he had made the decision to cut Jude out. One day of wondering if it was the worst decision he'd ever made. There was no guarantee that he would be found by his ex. There was no guarantee that, even if he were found, that his ex would find out about Jude. But Connor wasn't willing to risk it. He wouldn't gamble with Jude. It was a lot better if Jude forgot about him and moved on. It had been the best time of Connor's life but he knew that it was bad for Jude.

He had never deserved Jude.

While most of the class thundered out of the room, Connor looked down at his notebook. He hadn't take any notes in the last few minutes; he had just doodled Jude's name in large, block letters. He shut the notebook and felt tears prick at his eyes. He had to have made the wrong decision. Something that hurt this bad couldn't be the right decision.

Maybe he could call Jude, from his new number. Maybe he could explain. Jude was so good at understanding. It was such a big deal. Jude would know he had panicked. And he could make it up to Jude. He was sure there were ways that he could.

Connor pulled a baseball cap over his head and then pulled his hood up over the hat. Just in case. He didn't want anyone to recognize him. He picked up his bag and walked out of the room, Jude weighing heavily on his mind, just as it had since he had sent his last messages to Jude. He couldn't make up his mind and it wasn't as if he could talk to Adam or Dr. Scott about it either. He knew that it had to be his own decision. He had to take the responsibility. And he just didn't know. He'd been sobbing so hard he'd thrown up when he'd sent those last three messages to Jude.

Maybe it was a sign that he had made the wrong decision.

It was bright and sunny today and Connor started to sweat as he kept his head down and tried to pace his walking. If he moved too slowly or too quickly on the way back to his dorm, that would only call attention to himself too. He reached inside his hoodie pocket and pushed large sunglasses over his face so that he could lift his head slightly and double check where he was going.

He skirted around the edge of the parking lot in the dorms before his and that's when he saw the dark green SUV. He knew that SUV. He had sat in its passenger seat for so long that he was twenty-one-years old without a driver's licence of his own. And if the SUV was here, it meant that its driver was close by. A cold sweat broke out on his brow as he spun in a rough circle, panicking twice over when he realized how much it made him stand out. There was no tall, hulking man with dark eyes and dark hair. Connor thought his heart had completely stopped as he sprinted to his building, not caring anymore. He just had to disappear. He had to get into his room.

Unless, that's where he was.

Connor nearly collapsed on the third floor stairwell when the thought hit him. No. His car was parked at the wrong building. His ex was smart and meticulous. He wouldn't park over there when Connor was right here. He walked more slowly up the stairs, though, because he couldn't be sure. He wasn't sure of anything anymore. He made it to his room, expecting his ex to be standing in the middle of it, that brilliant smile on his face, his white teeth shining, as if he were grandstanding to a jury. But his room was empty. Connor obsessively checked around everywhere, but the room was empty. Everything was the same as he'd left it.

He hadn't been found out yet. But he was going to be. If his ex had made it this far, it was only a matter of time. He was too close, too quickly. It could be days or it could be hours until he was face to face with his ex again. He slowly crossed to his window and peeked out, but he didn't overlook the parking lot. It was just a stretch of green before another tall dorm building was visible. Not close enough that he could ever seen into someone's windows from where he was standing, but he could see lights and, perhaps, the occasional figure.

Connor snapped his blinds shut. Around him, for just a moment, the world was silent. His thoughts hushed, but there was no clarity. There was nothing but the briefest moment of respite, and then the anxiety hit him again. He took the picture of he and Jude off the wall and shredded it into small pieces. He made sure not to look down so that he wouldn't see Jude's face tear. He let the pieces fall into the trash, once he was sure that no one would ever be able to tell what they had once been, and looked around his room. There was nothing else to show that Jude existed. No one could know about the cactus Jude had bought him. No one could know the elephant on his bed had been a gift from a boyfriend. If his ex got in, he would have no way, from looking at the room, about Jude.

Except …

Connor went to his closet and with shaking fingers found Jude's Anchor Beach sweatshirt. Connor picked up one of the sleeves and held it to his face. It smelt a little like him, but it still smelt a lot like Jude. It was clearly older and more worn than everything else in his closet. He pulled it off the clothes hanger, thinking he should throw it out, give it back, do something other than keep it. It might just be the thing that put Jude in danger. But Connor could … hide it. He just knew that he couldn't stand getting rid of it.

He should. He knew he should. Now was not the time to be selfish. He had done everything he had done in the interest of protecting Jude. He couldn't do this now. He just couldn't. He pulled the sweatshirt on, found his journal, and curled up in bed. Maybe if he wrote it all down he would be able to understand, but, somehow, he doubted that. He didn't really think that there was anything to understand beyond having to protect Jude from all the mistakes that Connor had made in his past.

He bowed his head and cried over the page.

(-.-)

Adam: Connor, I'm worried about you.

Adam: Connor, please, call me back.

Adam: Connor. I'm not asking.

Connor stared down at his phone, knowing that he had to answer Adam. He hadn't spoken on the phone to his father in a week, since he had gotten the news about his ex-boyfriend. He didn't want to confess to Adam all of the things that had happened in the past week, because he knew that Adam would tell him that it was a mistake and that he had done the wrong thing. Connor couldn't handle hearing that, because he had wrestled with it enough, and he knew that it was the only option he had. Adam could tell him he was wrong all he wanted to, but Adam didn't really understand. No one else could possibly understand. He didn't know if anyone else could understand. Who else had been standing in this place but him?

Certainly no one that he knew.

Connor called Adam. His father filled the conversation most of the time. He probably wouldn't have to say that much. He hoped he wouldn't. Maybe Adam would understand his silence.

"Hi, Dad."

"So, I made a few phone calls."

Connor coiled back into his bed, hiding in Jude's sweatshirt that he still hadn't found the strength to give up. He was going to take it back to Jude's, yesterday, but when he'd tried to sneak out of his dorm again, he'd seen the green SUV and he realized he couldn't go anywhere near Jude's. He couldn't risk being followed.

"He got out on a technicality," Adam said. "There was something wrong with one of those officers that investigated. He was corrupt, or something. A lot of the cases he was working on got screwed over. A lot of bad people are going free."

"It took them this long to realize it?" Connor whispered, as if it would have been better for them to realize it beforehand. But it really might have been. If he had never met Jude, if he had never had a chance to get away from his ex, then he would have stayed where he was, slightly miserable at all times but really believing that it was as happy as he were going to get. He wouldn't have met Jude; he wouldn't have been possibly be putting Jude in danger.

"I guess so," Adam said. "I can't believe it."

Connor didn't know what to say. He didn't know if he could bring himself to believe it either.

"So, he's never going to go to trial."

"Not unless he does something else."

Something else. Like come after Connor. Or find another boy like him. The thought of his ex finding someone else repulsed him. He hated the thought of someone else being made as miserable as he had. And, somewhere down under all of that, Connor also hated the thought of being replaceable. And that disgusted him too. He didn't know what he was supposed to think or feel. He thought he knew where he stood now, but that had all been knocked away. Everything that Connor had even started to feel even slightly sure of had been washed away, and he was stuck, adrift, again, just like had been left this time last year.

"Maybe he'll just go away. Maybe he learnt something." He sounded like a naïve child, even to his own ears.

"God, I hope so, Connor," Adam said, but he didn't sound hopeful about it at all. "How are you?"

"Fine," he lied, and it sounded like a lie.

"I hope that's true, too."

Maybe Jude just saw through him too easily, so Jude always caught his lies. Or maybe Adam just wanted to believe in the lies more than Jude had wanted to.

"Look, are you sure that you still feel safe at school? You don't want to come home?"

"That will be the first place he'd look," Connor said.

He just couldn't lead his ex back to Adam too. Adam wasn't safe, no one was safe. That had been proven the last December he'd spent with his ex. In December, it might not have been him. It could have been his father. That definitely would have been worse. No one should be hurt. No one but him. He was the one who deserved it, for bringing his ex – his monster of an ex – into the lives of innocent people. People who, inexplicably, seemed to care about him.

"He might come here anyway."

If he had, he hadn't spent long there. No one thought Connor was living at home, anyway. They all thought Connor was on the east coast for school. It was what Adam had told anyone who asked, even people who didn't ask. Connor wondered how his ex had found him so quickly. He couldn't have just started looking for him, right?

Connor didn't know.

He didn't know anything. He had never known anything and that was the problem. If he had been just a little smarter, at any point of his life, then everything would be different. He might be safe. He might still be able to have a normal life, to have a boyfriend like Jude. Or, specifically, to have Jude, in the way that he always wished that he could. In the way where it was easy, and he were normal, and he could kiss Jude without being scared, without having to tell himself that he shouldn't be scared. He thought of how it could have been, if he had been able to have sex and fall in love, all of the things that Jude wanted out of a relationship and all of the things that Connor wanted to be able to have with Jude.

Tears started to roll down Connor's cheeks at the thought of Jude. There was no going back now. It was part of the reason he had severed their relationship so brutally. So he wouldn't be tempted. Even if he called Jude now, Jude would turn him away. There was no reason for Jude to want to be with someone that could abandon him so quickly, without mercy, and not think to look back for him at all. The more time that passed without contact, the less likely it was that Connor could ever fix it. And that was the point. As much as he hated it.

"He won't find you," Adam said.

"Okay, Dad." As if it were that easy.

"I'll call the campus security, let them know –"

"No! That's just going to draw more attention! I'll just fly under the radar. No one will notice me at all!"

"Connor –"

"I'll be fine, Dad."

"I just can't let anything else happen to you. I won't lose you again, Connor."

Connor never knew what to do when other people got emotional and he especially didn't know what to do when it was his father.

"I'll be fine, Dad." He tried his best to sound convincing, but he knew that he'd failed. At least, in his opinion.

"You can call me if you need anything."

"I know, Dad, thanks."

"I love you."

No one should. "You too," he forced himself to say.

And then he hung up and was alone. Just as he should be.

The chapter's title is after the song Carry You Away by Us And Our Daughters. If you have a song that reminds you of Barefoot And Bruised and would like it to be on the playlist – and possibly a chapter title – send it in and let me know! I'd love to hear your playlist suggestions! (Chapter titles are mostly chosen via shuffle.)

So, on tumblr I'm: we are all of legend now (with dashes between every word). If you want to find my replies to anon reviews, add backslash tagged backslash anon dash replies. If you want to see anything I post about Barefoot And Bruised, go to my tumblr URL and add backslash tagged backslash barefoot dash and dash bruised dash. Punctuation is spelled out due to Fanfiction's restrictions. If you're having any trouble accessing the tumblr content please send me a pm and I can format it for you in a different way.

~TLL~