“Heeeey, take a deep breath. I’m here for you, and whatever it is, we’ll get through it together, okay?”
“Promise?” I can’t help but ask the one thing that’s on my mind in a constant loop, because I really want that to happen. I want him to know the truth and to get to the other side together.
“Of course! Come here.” He lets go of my hands, and before I can react, Hudson pulls me over to him and engulfs me in a hug. His arms circle tightly around my body without making me feel constricted. Despite my position, I let out a deep breath and relax into him.
Although my nerves and hormones are going a little crazy, feeling him so close and having his scent surround me calms me almost instantly. When he starts rubbing my back in gentle, hypnotizing circles, my breath slows down even more.
I feel like he’s just become the Charlie-Whisperer. Is that a thing? It should be.
“There.” More rubbing. “Much better.”
My face is squished into his shoulder. “Thank you—for everything. You’ve been nothing but awesome.” Perfect really. So incredibly good for me, and Mira too.
“Anytime. No need to thank me at all.” Something touches my hair, and I stiffen.
Did he just kiss my head?
Pulling back from him slowly, I slide away from him a little. There’s a momentary flicker of hurt in his eyes when I put distance between us, but I feel vulnerable right now. And under no circumstances is Hudson someone I want to have regrets with.
Not to mention I can’t think clearly when I’m that close to him.
First, I need him to know about Mira’s and my life before anything more happens.
He deserves to have a choice.
I swallow loudly, the lump in my throat barely moving. “Okay, let’s start at the beginning then.”
Leaning back in his seat, Hudson tries to get into a comfortable position, his gaze solely focused on me.
My voice is shaky, but I push the words out anyway. “I guess, like most stories, mine starts with my childhood too. My mom has always been more absent than present. Once, when I was older, she told me that both my older sister and I were accidents, that she never wanted to have children. She didn’t know who fathered either one of us, which shouldn’t have been a surprise since she was usually either high or drunk. That’s also the reason she couldn’t ever hold a job, so we lived with my grandma for as long as I can remember.
“And thank goodness for that woman. My mom went in and out of our lives like a flimsy little mouse, until I was almost ten. That’s when she left for good. On my sister’s eleventh birthday, she decided it was a great time to tell us that she was going to get married and leave us to travel the country with her soon-to-be husband—a guy we’d never even met. That was the last time I saw her.”
Hudson hasn’t so much as blinked yet, and I’m not sure if that’s a good or a bad sign. I decide that continuing is the best solution.
Might as well just get it all out before I chicken out.
“We never talked much about her, and Grandma did the best she could to raise us girls on her own. Sadly, once my sister was old enough—or at least she thought she was—she started to follow in our mom’s footsteps with her lifestyle. I swore then and there that I’d never be like them. I wanted to control my life, not have it control me. I never wanted my emotions to dictate my decisions and my goals in life. I wanted to have a good life and a family one day, not end up in a gutter, with alcohol poisoning or an overdose.”
Telling this story to Hudson is strange. Besides talking to Monica about it, I’ve never seen the point of reminiscing about all the negative aspects of my past. On some weird level, I have to admit that it feels good, almost freeing.
Hudson comes a little closer, as if he can sense I might need the support. “I’m so sorry. I can’t imagine how hard that must’ve been for you—for all of you. And I totally get the emotions thing. I’ve chosen to turn my emotions off a few times over the years, especially after the whole Addy thing, when it just became too much. But then I learned something very important. Without the negative, I’d also miss the positive, and wouldn’t that be quite tragic.”
“You’re absolutely right. Mira has taught me that much already.” We both have matching smiles on our faces at the mention of my baby girl.
Sadly, it also makes me think of what I have to tell Hudson next, and my smile vanishes again. Looking down at my hands in my lap, I play with the seam of my shirt. “I got into a routine that worked for me, even though my life was rather monotonous—school, studying, work, and helping my grandma—until I met Sebastian my first year of college. He was a few years older and everything I thought I needed and wanted.”
I was such an idiot. “We both had similar values and goals of what we wanted out of life—his law career was the most important thing to him, but he also wanted a wife by his side and some children in the future. He was calm and level-headed, and very matter-of-fact. He also didn’t drink excessively or do drugs, so he was a winner in my book. We started dating and one thing led to another. We got engaged a couple years later, and we were going to get married last summer.”
Hudson inhales sharply when I glance up at him, and he looks like he hasn’t decided which emotion to express first. His eyes show a hint of anger while the softness still remains in them. Rubbing his hands over his face, he gives me a pleading look. “But you didn’t get married, right?”
I shake my head. “No. I spent part of my summer in France last year, learning from some of the best pastry chefs in the world. I had been back for a few days when Sebastian canceled the wedding. It was only two weeks before we were supposed to get married.”
He jerks back a few inches. “Seriously? What the hell? What kind of person does something like that? That’s so messed up. What an asshole.”
My heart is racing in my chest like a herd of wild horses. “Sadly enough, at that moment, I couldn’t give a crap about not getting married to him anymore. What broke my whole world apart was what had happened the day before, when my life as I knew it shattered.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Hudson’s face is a display of confusion and anger, and I don’t blame him one bit. I can almost see the wheels turning in his mind, coming up with all sorts of different scenarios to what I’ve told him.
He’s probably wondering why in the world I wouldn’t care about my canceled wedding.
What could possibly be worse than that?
After all, that was a big part of the bad experience he had with his crazy ex—on top of the whole faking to become pregnant, of course.
My mind is in overdrive too, trying to prepare me for what’s to come. I want to back out on my word so badly, get up right now and run away from this whole conversation, because this sucks. It never gets easier. It feels like something is blocking my airways, making it suddenly hard to breathe.
I try to swallow but without a lot of success.
“Shh. Hey, it’s okay. I’m right here.” Hudson puts his arms around me, rubbing my upper arm gently, almost as if he’s afraid he might break me otherwise. “Please, you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to. I never would’ve asked had I known it’s that bad for you. I can’t stand to see you like this.” His voice breaks at the end, and I make myself look up at him and his clouded expression.
Sniffing loudly, I force the tears away. “I have to, Hudson. It’s going to break my heart all over again, and I’m afraid of your reaction, but you deserve to know. I need you to know.”
He shakes his head. “I don’t know. Are you sure? It’s clearly hurting you, and I hate that.”
I nod, not trusting myself to talk about how I feel right now. Instead, I return my focus to my story, all of a sudden just wanting to get it all out and over with.
“You might have guessed that Sebastian wasn’t too fond of my family, especially my sister, Rachel. She was the problem child, turning out to be just as bad as my mom always was. She saw a lot of different guys, got into dr
ugs, drank a lot, and never even tried to keep a job. I found her passed out on my grandma’s doorstep more than once, and she barely ever remembered how she got there. My grandma was an angel to keep a roof over her head. I’m sure a lot of people would’ve kicked her out, but luckily for my sister, our grandma was different.”
The thought of Grandma and her kind nature makes me smile. Thinking about her still makes me sad, but the good memories of her are so much stronger that it’s gotten easier to focus on those.
“She sounds like she was an extraordinary person. I’m so sad you lost someone that special, especially after everything you had to go through already.” His hand finds mine, and I hold onto it like it’s my lifeline.
“She was my rock. She and Mo kept me alive all those years when life wanted to pull me deep under. Everything that happened with my mom and my sister was very overwhelming to me. At times, it almost felt too much to deal with. If it wasn’t for them, I might’ve given up at some point, I’m not sure.” I shrug, stunned at the words that just came out of my mouth.
Before now, I don’t think I realized those thoughts were there, at least not on a conscious level, and it’s pulling the ground away from under my feet. But now isn’t the time to digest that. “Forget I just said that. I don’t...I didn’t mean it the way it came out.”
He’s rubbing one of his eyebrows, his gaze flitting over the backyard for a moment before returning to me. “Are you sure? Sometimes we say things out loud without realizing they’re true until then.”
I keep nodding, not wanting to even think about that possibility.
Instead, I focus back on that horrible day in my past, the words ready to replay it all. “The day before Sebastian called things off was my final wedding dress fitting. My grandma and Rachel came with me to the bridal shop. It was a lovely day, and I could finally enjoy time with my family since Rachel had changed drastically over the previous year. She had distanced herself from her old friends and their lifestyle. She was more like the old Rachel from when we were younger, the one I had loved and missed so much. Everything was finally falling into place, and life was good.”
Hudson sat as close to the edge of the couch as possible without falling off. I wonder if he’d be pacing around if it wasn’t for me and my obvious nerves. “What happened then? What changed things so drastically?”
“When we were done at the bridal store, I parted ways with my grandma and Rachel and headed back home to my small apartment.”
Hudson holds up a hand, his eyebrows pulled tightly together. “Wait a second. You didn’t live with...with Sebastian?” He spits out the name, the dislike obvious in his voice.
“He didn’t think it was appropriate until we were married.”
The confusion on his face grows after that statement.
Giving our hands a quick squeeze, I remind him of the connection we still have, the one that gives me the strength to get through all of this. “I was okay with it. To be honest, I actually liked it. I stayed the occasional night at his place after he threw a dinner party or some other social gathering, but it felt good to still have my own four walls too.”
He nods, but from the looks of it, he might be biting his tongue.
“Since I needed a few things, I stopped at the store on my way home. It took a little longer than I thought, and when I walked through the front door of my place, my phone kept ringing. It was the police, telling me about an accident that my family had been in.”
Hudson lets his head hang low for a moment before he snaps his gaze back to mine with a distant look in his eyes. “No.”
“My grandma died on impact, and Rachel was at the hospital with severe injuries. It didn’t look very good for her, and they told me to get there as soon as possible.” Taking a deep breath, I’m unable to look up at Hudson. I need all the strength I can muster to get through the rest of the story, my words now barely a whisper. “Mira was in the car too. By some miracle, she didn’t have a scratch on her.”
That last bit must have been too much for Hudson because he drops my hand and jumps up from his seat. I don’t say a word and let him walk around a bit before he comes over to my side of the couch. He kneels down in front of me and takes both of my hands in his.
A single tear runs down my cheek this time. “Rachel didn’t make it. I was able to see her for a minute before they took her away for surgery, but she never came back. I saw her long enough to make her a promise, though—the biggest one I’ve ever made in my whole life.”
My hands are shaking, or maybe it’s Hudson’s. His eyes look glassy, and it’s almost too much for me to handle at the moment.
“I promised Rachel I’d take care of her baby girl. Mira isn’t my baby, Hudson, she was Rachel’s. She’s my niece.” There. I said it. The words are out, and I feel lighter and completely heartbroken at the same time.
His eyes go as wide as I imagine they can possibly go. There are only a few people that know about this and that’s for a good reason. It’s a big pill to swallow, too big for some people.
Without uttering a word, he sits down next to me and pulls me onto his lap. We sit without speaking for a long time when he starts humming a melody into my ear. It’s beautiful but also sad, which makes me cry even harder. I don’t think I can fully grasp what this man is doing for me tonight. Letting me share my story with him while caring and offering so much support is truly a gift. Not a lot of people are willing to give something like that.
When my tears finally slow down, I pull back to look at him. I’m painfully aware I must look like a mess, but I take comfort in the fact that he’s still here.
His eyes shine with so much sympathy, I have to bite the inside of my cheek to keep more tears at bay.
Our faces are only inches apart, and I wish we were in a different situation than we’re currently in.
If I want to finish the story, I need to put some distance between us. Hudson lets me go reluctantly when I slide off his lap and back over to my seat.
“Sebastian was on a business trip when it all happened and didn’t get back until the next day. Since I hadn’t been able to reach him, all I could do was leave him a message to come and see me at my grandma’s house. It was easier for me to stay at their place, with all the baby stuff already there. Despite what just happened, I also found some comfort in being there. By some miracle, Mo was in the city at that time. She cleared her schedule immediately so she could stay with me for a while to help.”
I swallow. Hard. “She’d just left to get a few things from her place when Sebastian dropped by. We sat down and I explained to him what had happened. It took him all but two minutes to look at all the baby things around us before he turned back to me with what I had dubbed the ice-cold lawyer face. He told me he didn’t want to deal with my problems and that the wedding was off. And then he left. He had the few things I left at his place packed up and sent to me.”
A noise is coming from beside me, and I’m almost sure Hudson just growled.
I glance up to see his jaw is set in a grim line, and his hands are balled into tight fists at his side. “That worthless piece of shit.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Since it seems like it’s going to take Hudson a while to cool down after everything I just told him, I give him the time he needs. I let him roam around, his steps heavy, his fists only unclenching so he can shove them roughly through his hair, pulling on strands in between.
Losing both my sister and grandma in one day, and then having Sebastian leave me the day after in what was, without a doubt, the absolute worst moment of my life was beyond devastating. Just when I thought I’d already hit rock bottom, his betrayal had me spiraling down even further. His reaction showed his true self, unwaveringly cruel and cold-hearted, a person I didn’t know existed until that very moment. He purposefully decided to be appalling, to abandon me and a little baby at a point in life where I needed his help and support more than ever before.
Hudson’s calm voice startles me; it’s s
o contrary to his still tense form. “How old was Mira when it happened?”
“She was only a few weeks old, not even a month. I’d only seen her a couple of times before that day. Mira wasn’t even supposed to be born until I returned from France. But she seemed to have different plans and came early while I was still gone—even though my trip was almost over at that point. I wanted to book an earlier flight back, but my sister insisted I stay overseas and finish my course first. We skyped a few times until I flew home, so I was able to spend some time with her and Mira. You should’ve seen Rachel. She was already such a proud mom. It was clear as day that she loved her little baby with all of her heart.”
Another rough shove through his hair. “I... I really don’t know what to say. I can’t put into words how sorry I am about all of this. Shit. You lost your family, especially when you’d finally just gotten closer to your sister again. Then you’re left with her baby, and your scumbag of an ex-fiancé leaves you hanging like that. I hope, more than anything, that karma is going to bite his ass extra good. How cruel and heartless he must be to do something like that. To anyone, but especially to someone like you—someone wonderful, caring, and just genuinely good. Not to mention, an innocent little baby. I can only hope he and I will never cross paths, or I won’t be responsible for my actions.”
Jumping up, I walk over to him, putting a hand on his chest in an effort to calm him. “He’s not worth it. I was angry and devastated for so long until I realized one day that it’s useless. It’s not worth it, and more importantly, it sadly won’t change what happened either. So, I decided to stop thinking about him as much as I could, because, to be honest, I’m not even sure if he ever so much as spared me a thought after he left me at my grandma’s house that awful day, so—”
Baking With A Rockstar (A Brooksville Novel Book 1) Page 17
