Until Hudson’s car pulls up outside.
Dread sits heavy on my chest. But if there’s going to be a reckoning with my brother, I may as well get it over with.
He slams the door of his SUV and stalks up the driveway.
He has the good grace to stop when he sees Noah, and his mouth forms an angry line, holding in whatever he wants to say to me.
Noah wriggles uneasily, and I turn toward the house. “Let’s get you inside.”
Hudson doesn’t say a word as he follows us inside. He leans against the kitchen counter with his arms folded while I get Noah a drink and some apple slices.
We go through to the backyard, where I drop Noah into his sandpit before retreating to the porch and out of earshot.
Only then does Hudson speak.
“Why didn’t you tell me it was Ryan?”
He keeps his voice low, but the tone is all righteous indignation, as if he has a right to know.
“I don’t owe you an explanation.”
He raises his eyebrows at me. “When you refuse to tell anyone who the father of my nephew is and then it turns out to be my best friend, then yeah, you do have some fucking explaining to do.”
“Shhh.” I glance at Noah pushing a digger through the sand. “Don’t use that language in front of him.”
Hudson gives me a look that calls out my hypocrisy, but he doesn’t say anything.
He’s right. For three years, I refused to say who Noah’s father was. Mostly because I didn’t know his name. What was I going to put on the birth certificate, Sergeant Gray? It seemed better to leave it blank.
Noah throws the digger, and some sand blows into his face. He lets out a cry, and before I can get up, Hudson strides over, scoops my son into his arms, and gently wipes the sand out of his eyes.
As I watch Noah smile up at him, and Hudson set him back down into the sand, all the fight goes out of me. Hudson cares about Noah, and he deserves to know the truth. I’m just not sure he can handle it.
Leaving Noah in the sand, he strides back to where he was sitting underneath the covered porch.
“I didn’t know it was Ryan you went through BUD/s with.”
Hudson grunts at the admission. I take a deep breath and spit out the truth, steeling myself for Hudson’s reaction.
“We met one night in a bar. It was supposed to be a one night thing.”
“A one night stand.” Hudson winces.
My mind goes back to the hotel room. It was supposed to be one night, but the smell of his skin and the way he whispered my fake name made one night impossible. “It turned into two nights.”
“Okay, I don’t need the details.” Hudson runs a hand down his face. “But didn’t you talk? Didn’t you think a special forces guy named Ryan might be my SEAL teammate?”
I shake my head. “We agreed to no names.”
Hudson scrunches his face. “Paige, you’re killing me. Didn’t you use…protection?”
I press my lips together and nod. “Yeah, we did.” I’ve thought about this a lot over the past three years, especially in those first few months when I was in denial about my pregnancy. “The only explanation I can come up with is that the condoms were past their expiration date. They’d been in my purse since before college.”
“Did you check the date on the box afterward when you found out?”
I shake my head. “I didn’t have it. We went through the entire package.” I can’t keep the grin off my face as I remember our bodies pushed together in the shower, on the bed, against the nightstand…
Hudson groans and hunches forward with his head in his hands. “Stop. I don’t want to know anymore.”
