She smiled, a soft, contented grin that spoke of lost love but not of mourning. Sometime in the nearly twenty years since his dad had passed away, her expressions had turned from pure sadness to something softer. Something fonder. An undercurrent of melancholy, sure, but nothing like it used to be.
“He’d have wanted you to be happy. And he’d be real proud of you, sweetheart.”
He nodded, tipping his glass toward him as he stared down into the amber liquid. He’d had no doubt his dad would’ve wanted him to be happy. And that he’d be proud of him doing what he was doing. Hell, that was the whole reason Hudson was doing it in the first place. Sure, he’d felt a calling for adventure when he’d been young and had enlisted because of it, but the truth was, he could’ve fulfilled that hunger any number of ways. He’d chosen to follow in his dad’s footsteps specifically and join the army because he’d thought that was the best way to honor him.
“Well, now that we got that generic question out of the way,” she said with a wry lilt to her voice, “why don’t you tell me what this is really about?”
He breathed out a laugh and slid his eyes to hers. If there was one thing Marianne Miller was good at that didn’t involve pastry, it was reading her children and sussing out what was really bothering them. She’d been doing it as long as he could remember, and apparently her children’s ages were no factor in her ability to do so.
“Lately, I’ve been…” He scrubbed a hand down his face and over his coarse beard. For the first time in ten years, he resented the fact that he’d have to shave it off tomorrow. He’d been resenting a hell of a lot recently, and he didn’t want that. Didn’t want that emotion to sully a career he’d loved with his whole heart. “I’ve been wonderin’ if maybe my place isn’t in the army.”
“What would make you think that?”
“I don’t know, Momma. And I feel selfish for even considering leavin’. It’s always been my plan to retire from there, you know that.”
“I do.” She nodded, her focus trained intently on him.
His place was in the army, and he had an unspoken promise to fulfill to his father. To finish the career he’d never gotten a chance to.
Didn’t he?
Fuck, it was going to be hard to verbalize something he’d only ever known in his heart. But he had to try. If he had any hope of working through the clusterfuck of his mind, he had to try.
“What you don’t know is that I was doin’ it because Dad never got the chance to.”
Her breath hitched, but that was the only outward sign she gave that his words affected her. She had the best poker face he’d ever seen—something she’d no doubt perfected thanks to his and Kenna’s shenanigans during their teenage years—and it was nothing but a mask of serenity right now.
The lack of judgment shown there allowed him to continue. “I feel like it’d be disrespectful of me to throw away what Dad could never have just because I’ve tired of it.”
“Hudson…” She hooked her fingers over his hand which still gripped his glass, squeezing them tight until he met her eyes. “You don’t have a disrespectful bone in your body. I made sure of that.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Her lips quirked up at the side. “Your dad would be proud of you, no matter what. I think you could’ve grown up to do nothing but play video games and eat potato chips in our basement, and hestillwould’ve puffed out his chest and talked about you any chance he got.”
It’d been a long time since Hudson had cried over missing his dad—years, actually—but listening to his momma’s words, he couldn’t deny the familiar tightness in his throat and the stinging at the backs of his eyes.
“He’s been gone a long time now, but there’s not a day that goes by that I don’t think about him. He loved the army with his whole heart. Loved his career something fierce. The only thing he loved more than either of them was us.” She lifted her hand to cup his cheek and patted it lightly. “He’d be honored that you wanted to pay tribute to him this way, but I’m gonna tell you what I think he probably would’ve said himself if he were still here to do so.”
Hudson leaned forward, actually holding his breath as he waited for whatever wisdom his mom was about to bestow on him. Something to hopefully get him unstuck from this island of uncertainty he’d stranded himself on.
“Don’t be a dumbass.”
He barked out a surprised laugh, and then tossed his head back and laughed without restraint. It was times like these that made him wish desperately that he’d known his dad as an adult instead of just as a kid who saw him as his hero and not the flawed human he actually was.
“That’s…well, that’s…”
“The truth,” she said. “He was very wise.”
“What’re y’all laughin’ about in here?” Lilah asked, strolling into the kitchen as if nothing was amiss. Someone should probably tell her that her shirt buttons were done up askew and that Caleb’s shirt was on inside out.
Hudson narrowed his eyes. Yep, he was definitely going to be having that chat with his friend.
“We were just talkin’ about your daddy, actually, and how he’d tell Hudson not to be a dumbass.”
“Smart man,” Caleb said, taking the seat next to Lilah and across from Hudson.
Hudson simply held his friend’s gaze and then very pointedly glanced to Lilah’s shirt while lifting an eyebrow. Hudson could be an intimidating guy, and though Caleb was tall, he was taller and had about twenty pounds on him. Caleb coughed into his fist, but he didn’t back down. Didn’t shy away from Hudson’s questioning stare. He met it head on. Hudson admired the hell out of that.
