The smell of pizza filled the apartment as Hudson returned with our food. My stomach growled embarrassingly loud, reminding me just how long it had been since I’d eaten anything resembling a proper meal.
“Plates?” he asked, setting the boxes on the coffee table.
“Second cabinet on the left,” I directed, already reaching for a garlic knot. “And there’s beer in the fridge if you want one.”
We ate in silence for a few minutes. I was halfway through my second slice when I finally spoke again.
“Show me the app.”
Hudson wiped his hands and reached for the laptop, reopening it and navigating to the prototype. “It’s still in development, but the core functionality is there.”
He turned the screen toward me, and I leaned forward, genuinely curious despite myself. The interface was sleek and intuitive. Exactly as I’d envisioned it. I reached out, touching the trackpad to navigate through the screens.
“This is... impressive,” I admitted, scrolling through the various features. “It’s almost exactly how I pictured it.”
“I had your original sketches as reference,” he said. “And Callan’s team is exceptional.”
I continued exploring the app, each screen confirming that this wasn’t just a superficial gesture. This was my vision, brought to life with Hudson’s level of attention to detail.
“How much did all this cost?” I asked suddenly, wondering about the financial implications. Professional app development wasn’t cheap, especially at this level of quality.
“It doesn’t matter,” he replied. “The business sold for enough to cover it.”
“Hudson.”
“A little over two hundred thousand so far. With perhaps another hundred thousand to complete development and launch.”
I nearly choked on my pizza. “Three hundred thousand dollars? Are you insane?”
“Probably.” He didn’t seem concerned about the amount. “But it’s your app, Mari. It deserves to be built right.”
I stared at him, truly speechless for once in my life. Three hundred thousand dollars. My app. My dream. Handed back to me on a silver platter by the man who’d stolen it.
“I don’t understand you,” I said finally. “Any of this.”
“What don’t you understand?”
“Why go to these lengths? The public confession was one thing, but this...” I gestured to the laptop, to the legal documents, to the whole situation. “This is extreme.”
Hudson was quiet for a moment. “When I was growing up, my father had a saying: ‘A Gable never admits failure because we’re never wrong.’”
“God, he really is a pretentious ass.”
“Yes, very much so. It was his way of saying that image was everything, and actual integrity meant nothing.”
He took a sip of his beer before continuing. “I lived by that philosophy for years. Everything was about appearance, about maintaining the Gable reputation, about being seen as successful no matter the cost. And then I met you.”
“Me?”
“You, with your ridiculous half thought out plans and your absolute refusal to back down and your complete disregard for whose toes you stepped on as long as your clients got their perfect day.” A genuine smile touched his lips. “You were everything I wasn’t allowed to be—authentic, passionate, occasionally chaotic but always real.”
I didn’t know how to respond to that, so I reached for another garlic knot instead.
“When I stole your app idea, I told myself it was just business. Just strategic repositioning. But it wasn’t. It was theft, plain and simple. And it cost me the one thing in my life that had felt real. The only thing that I actually… Well, that I actually loved.”
Oh shit.
Shit. Shit. Shit.
