I ran for the hills just like every other man she’s dated, although it had more to do with my own fear then anything else.
But Giselle wasn’t to know that.
Which is probably the reason it fucking hurt so much when I didn’t text or call; she thought I’d abandoned her.
Bending my head, I run the length of my nose alongside hers.“If you’re laying your soul bare to me, Gee, then you better believe I’m laying every inch of myself bare on this table, too. I’m not going to let you do that alone.”
“I know.” She nods, a sweet sigh escaping. “I know you are. But… I need some time to think, Hudson. To process everything that’s happened between us, everything you’ve just told me.”
My throat bobs as I swallow thickly. “Gee—”
“I just need some time, Hudson. Please.”
It’s her plea that hurts the most.
“Okay,” I say, inhaling shakily. God, I feel sick. “But I want you to know I don’t mind waiting, Giselle. When you’re good and ready, then we can take that next step together. Until then…
She doesn’t reply, but the look in her eyes says it all.
Without another word, for there’s simply nothing else left to say, I turn, heading across the floor of her studio to the door.
Dipping my head low, I wrap my fingers around the door handle. But not before I peer over my shoulder, my heart crumpling in my chest when I see the small shape of Giselle; the way she grips each of her elbows tight across her abdomen, her thumb spinning the gold band on her middle finger, chin tilted to the ground, lower lip wobbling.
“Am I losing you, Giselle?” My voice cracks, but I don’t care. “Have I already lost you?”
I watch Giselle open her mouth and then swallow harshly, the silence between us stretching for miles, until it snaps with a painfultwanglike a rubber band.
“I don’t know yet, Hudson,” she answers, crushing me. “I don’t know.”
Chapter 18
Hudson
Shutting Giselle’s door behind me, I hightail it to the staff room.
Finding it empty, thank fuck, I sit down and pull out my phone from the pocket of my running shorts, quickly double checking the arrival of my next client.
With twenty spare minutes under my belt, I slouch down further, tapping my contact’s list icon in the bottom right-hand corner of my mobile and scrolling until I find the number I’m looking for.
“You alright, Hudson?” My dad picks up the phone within the second ring.
“Not really,” I answer truthfully.
I thought I’d done a pretty good job of hiding how scared and confused I felt about everything after leaving Giselle’s apartment on the morning of my birthday.
Grey hadn’t seemed like he noticed anything was afoot as we boarded the train home together, although I did catch his girlfriend, Delilah, staring at me once or twice as I took my seat quietly and flicked my eyes to the fast-moving scenery outside – the smog filled streets of hustling and bustlingLondon becoming open country fields, rolling hills of plush jade greenery, as far as the eye could see.
Nobody questioned my lack of sarcasm or the way I couldn’t bring myself to joke around. Maybe they just thought it was a case of the birthday blues, seeing as how I was now firmly in my mid-twenties, closer to being thirty than I was to being eighteen again.
I mustered up a smile for the photo Mum snapped of us, her four boys as she so lovingly called us, my birthday cake, candles still lit and flickering sitting in front of me, waiting to be wished on.
But I couldn’t keep the fake smile on my face for much longer than the couple of seconds it took her to hit the button.
It was only when Dad pulled me aside, two crystal tumblers carefully grasped in his hand, each with a perfect sphere of ice inside and surrounded by two fingerfuls of amber coloured whisky, and walked me to his office, just us two Millen men, that it all came spilling out.
There wasn’t much I could hide from my dad as a young boy, although I will admit I got a little bit better at the art of secrecy when I was a teenager, but I seem to have lost all of my tact now that I’m an adult.
“You’ve not been yourself all day, Son,” he’d said, pinching the top of his trousers and sitting down on his mahogany chesterfield leather sofa. “What’s wrong?”
