I'd spent ten years in the cold.
Being near her, even like this, felt like finally stepping into the sun.
Chapter 3: Betty
Icouldn't think.
Big surprise there.
I pushed myself at The Flame tonight, hoping to exhaust myself enough to wipe the day off the map completely.
I lay on my bed, staring at the ceiling, aware of every sound coming from the other side of my bedroom door. The creak of the couch as Hudson shifted. The soft pad of his footsteps as he moved around the apartment. Checking locks, I assumed, because that's what overprotective ex-boyfriends who ran billion-dollar security companies apparently did.
The low rumble of his voice as he talked to someone on the phone, too quiet for me to make out the words.
I pressed my palms against my eyes and groaned.
This was ridiculous. I was a grown woman. I'd spent the last ten years building a life without Hudson Cole in it. I'd dated other men, run a successful business, buried my father, and survived threats from two dirty cops who wanted me dead.
I was not going to lie here like some lovesick teenager, losing sleep because my ex was on my couch.
Except that's exactly what I was doing.
Because it wasn't just any ex. It wasHudson.
The man who'd been my first everything. First love. First heartbreak. First time I'd ever felt like I belonged to someone completely, body and soul.
And the first person to ever make me feel completely worthless when he'd walked away.
I rolled onto my side, pulling the pillow over my head like that would somehow block out the memories. It didn't. They came anyway, flooding in like water through a cracked dam.
The first time I'd seen him, I'd been working a shift at O'Malley's. A dive bar where I'd tended bar before I'd saved enough to buy The Flame. Some drunk asshole had grabbed my wrist when I'd tried to take his empty glass, and I'd been about two seconds from breaking his fingers when a shadow had fallen over the bar.
Hudson had been twenty years old, fresh out of basic training, still lean and young but already carrying himself like a man who could handle anything. He'd looked at the drunk, then at me, then back at the drunk.
"Let go of her,"he'd said, his voice calm and cold and absolutely terrifying.
The drunk had let go.
And Hudson had looked at me with those dark blue eyes and said,"You okay?"
I'd fallen for him right then and there. Stupid, reckless, head-over-heels in love with a man I didn't even know.
We'd been inseparable after that. He'd come into the bar every night I worked, nursing a single beer for hours just so he could watch me. When my shift ended, he'd walk me to my car, then follow me home to make sure I got there safe.
Our first kiss had been in the alley behind O'Malley's, my back against the brick wall, his hands in my hair, both of us breathing hard and desperate for more.
Our first time had been in his tiny apartment, on a mattress on the floor, and it had been awkward and perfect and over way too fast. He'd apologized afterward, embarrassed, and I'd laughed and kissed him and told him we had plenty of time to practice.
We'd practiced a lot after that.
God, the things that man had done to me. The way he'd learned my body. The way he'd made me come apart over and over again, patient and thorough and completely obsessed with my pleasure.
No one had ever touched me the way Hudson had. No one had ever made me feel the way he did, like I was precious and powerful and completely, utterly his.
And then he'd left.
I threw the pillow off my head and sat up, angry at myself for going there. For letting the memories in. For lying here in the dark, remembering what it felt like to be loved by him when he'd proven beyond any doubt that his love wasn't enough to make him stay.
