I winked at him. “You’re leaving BuzzCorp, aren’t you? It’s time for your exit interview. Don’t worry. I’ll be very, very comprehensive.”
Problem: It had been several days since I’d last had sex with Hudson.
Proposed Solution: A little closet quickie to seal our new romance. Our real romance. A romance that would last forever.
Epilogue
Blast-Off
Two years later, I sat in an office in Huntsville, Alabama, perched on the edge of my desk watching a closed-circuit TV monitor like I’d spontaneously combust if I took my eyes off the screen.
Malcolm offered me a job at SkyTech a few weeks after OFest, and I took it. Got promoted six months in. Now today was our first big test launch.
Hudson came up behind me and pressed a kiss to the crook of my neck.
“It’s going to go fine,” he breathed against my skin.
“You don’t know that.”
“Yes, I do. Because you designed it.”
When I first met Hudson, I would have been terrified of failing on this scale. But now failure didn’t scare me so much. If this rocket blew up, I knew I wasn’t going to get kicked out of the industry again. Malcolm would give me the space, resources, and time to diagnose the problem, fix it, and have a successful takeoff next time.
Just like in my relationship with Hudson, I finally had a softplace to land. Somewhere to make mistakes, try again, and grow into someone better.
The relief was nearly indescribable. After a lifetime of flinching and running at the slightest hint of trouble, I now belonged somewhere. I wasn’t scared of my own shadow. I was finally free to be the person I’d always been, deep down inside.
On my television screen, our rocket went through its final-stage checks. At this point, there was nothing I could do. The math had been run. Every bolt and weld checked. Every ounce measured and remeasured for maximum lift. So I sat on my hands and tried to corral the butterflies running roughshod through my belly.
“We can go join the rest of the team in Mission Control, if you want,” Hudson said. “It’s not too late.”
“I know. But…I think I want the privacy. If it blows, I want to process it before I talk to the team. If it’s a success…I don’t want to cry in front of everybody.”
“This is a big deal. Of course you’re gonna go through it when everything’s said and done. They would understand any emotion you threw at them.”
“Trying to get rid of me?” I teased.
“No, trying to distract you before you kick a hole in the carpet.”
I glanced down at my leg, which had been absent-mindedly tapping out a drumline chorus on the floor below. “Oops. Sorry.”
Removing himself from his sentry point over my shoulder, Hudson sauntered over to the television, cutting into my line of sight for the first time in hours. Now remotely developing an app for an amusement park company (you know the one), he’d taken the day off to support me in the launch—and for his trouble, he’d done everything from holding my hand to drinking my hot chocolate when I was too nervous to finish it to listening to me ramble about The Math™ for an hour and a half.
Leaning against the wall, he drank me in. I flushed under his scrutiny. Even after two years, moving in together, and adopting a mutt named Moogie, he still knew how to make me feel like the most beautiful woman in the galaxy.
“You know what? I think I have a better way to distract you.”
“Is that so?”
“Mm-hmm. Come here.”
Without further ado, he was on his knees in front of me, gently nudging my thighs apart.
Oh shit.
I giggled and tried to push him away, to no avail. “I really can’t—”
He kissed the inside of my leg and raised one challenging eyebrow. “Really can’t what?”
