“I knocked, you didn’t answer.”
“Sorry… I just…”
He came inside and walked straight over, I turned towards him and he gently thumbed the tears from my cheeks. I hadn’t even realized I was crying.
“It’s gonna be okay,” he told me. His voice wasn’t soft or gentle, it was firm, like what he was saying was a given and nothing would change that. “Talk to me,” he brushed my hair back over my shoulder. “What do you want me to do? Leave you for a bit, let you have some space, or I can just be here, whatever you need.”
I leaned my ass against the counter behind me and looked around the bathroom. A shower would be nice, and damn I was tired too. I didn’t think I could sleep with everything inside my head.
“My whole life I thought our mom abandoned us,” I said.
Hudson stood at my side leaning his hip against the counter, he didn’t touch me, but he was there for me, and I appreciated the hell out of that.
“With everything else going on, it never fully hit me until just now. I’ve been so angry at my mom for my whole life and, now I find out she never had a choice? She wasn’t even the person I’d been told she was.”
“It’s okay to be pissed at him.”
“Iampissed at him,” I said, pushing away from the counter. “Before, at Rosa’s place, I was just so shocked and confused. Dad was so sad and genuine when he was telling us but… he kept that from us. He made us believe a woman he hated, a woman he knew had a hand in our real mom’s murder was our mom. Who does that?” I shouted, my cry echoing around the small, enclosed space we were in. “He hugged me,” I looked up at Hudson. He raised his brows questioningly. “Dad. He actually pulled me out of my chair and hugged me, like if he didn’t, he’d go crazy.”
“That’s not a good thing?”
“No… Yes… I don’t know. Now it kinda feels like he was just trying to make himself feel better. He’d spilled his guts about what really happened, and he was upset.”
“King wouldn’t hug anyone unless he meant it, he isn’t the kind of guy to take for himself, Wave. If he hugged you, it was for you. You never saw what he was like when you were gone.”
“Maybe,” I walked to the wall and put my forehead against it. “Doesn’t change the fact that he lied to us for years.”
“From what Rosa told me, your dad has never recovered from it.”
I whirled around to face him. He talked about this with Rosa? He came towards me and took my hand, then pulled me out of the bathroom. I asked what he was doing but he just led me to the bed and sat me down. He sat beside me.
“I’m not making excuses for him, or anybody else. As much as I want to beat some sense into War and Connor, that isn’t for me to stick my nose into either, but from the way Rosa tells it, it’s a miracle your dad is still here.”
“Meaning?” I sat up, glaring at him, my back straightening.
“It killed him, losing her. Almost literally.”
I turned my head away. Now the image of my father being suicidal was in my head. I wanted to be angry with him, I had every right to be. I could also see it from his point of view. It wasn’t a decision I ever would have come to, for whatever reason, that was the one he made and nothing I said or did now would change that.
“I’m not saying you can’t feel angry or hurt and I know it’s got to be confusing, for both you and War. Especially you though, after what that bitch put you through and the lies she told you.”
“I just don’t know which way is up right now.”
Hudson shifted and knelt down on the floor in front of me. He placed both hands on my thighs and stared at me until I looked at him. “You don’t need to,” he told me. I frowned at him as he took hold of my chin and moved nearer to me. “I’m not going anywhere. And whether you like it or not, or if you believe it right now or not, you belong here, Waverley. That life you were living away from us, you already said it yourself it was falling apart, it isn’t what you want.”
I couldn’t even get mad about what he was saying, because it was true. I had felt like that. I even told him that, when we were at his house that day, the first time he kissed me again after all those years. The reality of knowing my heart was whole again had hit me like a truck.
“Plus, If you ever, ever leave me again, I’ll fucking follow you and drag your ass back home. This is where you belong. You get that?”
“You were doing so well,” I rolled my eyes.
“I’m just stating the truth.”
He was. Out of all the people I’d been around the last few days, Hudson had never lied to me. I held his eyes and my heart started to pound. His eyes lowered to where my shirt opened, like he could hear it, before he looked back up at me. I could see the lust in his eyes but he held back, waiting for me to make the first move. So I did. I leaned forward and kissed him, pushing my fingers up through his hair.
Hudson leaned into me, resting his palms on the bed on either side of my thighs as he kissed me back. Our tongues tangled as the kiss deepened and I thrust forward, so I was pressed against his chest. A groan slipped out of his throat and his hands moved, immediately going for the buttons on my shirt. I wasn’t about to stop him.
“I’ve needed to do this from the moment I saw you in that motel,” he said, pulling back a little to see what he was doing before coming straight back at my mouth. He was trying to be gentle but that wasn’t who Hudson was. I grabbed my shirt and pulled it off my shoulders, he helped me get it down my arms and off me.
