“Anyway, I guess I’m going to get back to work. Someone’s gotta keep this place afloat when Rae kills you in your sleep for being a total shithead.”
I give him a short, humorless laugh. “Wow. Thanks for the pep talk. I feel so much better now.”
“Anytime,” he says somberly as he pushes himself from his chair and makes his way to the door.
Every time I get done talking with Gaige, I always feel a little…confused. He makes sense—always does—but he also has this way of making you feel…thoughtful. It’s like he forces everyone to be the outsider he always claims to be, makes people step back and really look at things from a different angle.
“Hudson?” His voice pulls me from my thoughts. I glance up to find him still standing in the doorway, looking back at me. I raise an eyebrow and he continues. “For what it’s worth, I think you’re doing the right thing. And even going about it in the right way. You’re a smart man, but Rae’s an even smarter woman. She’s going to figure it out eventually and shit’s going to implode on you. But that’s okay. You’re an expert at taking a crap situation and making it pretty damn decent. You’ll be fine.”
He doesn’t give me a chance to respond before he walks out the door. I smile to myself because even though I’ve always felt like I’ve chosen some excellent people to call friends, Gaige just completely reaffirmed my belief in that. So, I’m going take what he’s said and attempt to stop worrying about it.
Attempt.
My door gets pushed open twenty minutes into me finally getting back into my groove after lunch. I’ve been a mess all morning. My attempt to try to focus and not think about Rae and how I might be fucking everything up royally is failing. Horribly. All I can focus on is how this is going to end. And I’m so scared it’s not going to go the way I want it to go.
Actually, I know it’s not.
“Knock, knock.”
“Hey. Come on in, babe,” I say to Rae, getting up from behind my desk and going to hug her. I feel a slight twinge in my chest as she puts her head down and goes the complete opposite direction of me. Intentionally.
I hate that there’s this hole between us. It’s dark and black and it’s sucking us both into a dance that I don’t want to dance. While we’re both dancing, we’re not dancing together. It’s the worst dance I’ve ever danced. And I suck at dancing.
“We need to talk.” She heads straight to the two chairs sitting opposite my desk.
I sigh loudly, closing the door and following her lead. She doesn’t look at me when I sit down. She doesn’t return my touch when I reach out and brush my finger across the back of her hands that are braced on her knees, her knuckles turning white from her strong grip. She just sits there, staring straight ahead.
“Rae…”
She flinches, like my saying her name has caused her physical pain. That twinge I felt in my heart earlier has now turned into a constant, dull ache. I don’t like this.
“You’re hiding something.”
It’s not a question. I hate it when she doesn’t ask questions and just states things. It makes my deceiving her seem more real.
Swallowing the lump of lies in my throat that are clawing their way to the tip of my tongue, I say, “I am.”
Rae
I am. He is.
My eyes are instantly on fire. Tears want to fall. No, not fall. They want to create a river. They want to fill the room, spill out into the hallways, and run all the way through town. Because right now, I’m hurting. Everything is hurting. Hudson’s been lying to me.
Lying. To me. His girlfriend. For God knows how long. I need to know how long. Wait. I don’t want to know the answer to that. Yes, I do. Wait. No. No, I don’t.
“How long?” I find myself saying.
I watch him slowly swallow the lies that want to spill out of his mouth. Again.
“A while.”
“How long is a while?”
“Long enough.”
His eyes dart across the room and I don’t like that he won’t look at me. I don’t like that his hands are shaking. I don’t like this. I feel…lost. Confused. Unsure. I want to know what exactly he’s been lying about, but I’m suddenly afraid to ask.
“What?”
“Huh?”
I swallow the accusations that want to jump out of my mouth, the proof I have that he wasn’t at work yesterday when he said he was. Instead, I play it safe, sticking with the only question I can muster right now.
“What…what are you lying about?”
He pales, his expression falling from one of confusion to one of panic. He’s scared. Worried. I just don’t know about what.
“I…” He starts. “I’m…uh…”
My patience is wearing thin. Whatever is going on, I just want to know about it. I want that other shoe to drop. I want to know the truth.
“It’s a simple question, Hudson. What have you been hiding from me?”
He lifts his hand to the back of his neck, the muscles in his arm bulging from how tight he’s squeezing. He’s panicking. Then I’m panicking because what. The. Hell? I’m the one who came in here to get the truth from him, the one who’s pushing him for info. So why am I now having second thoughts? Is it because I know something’s wrong? Because I feel like there’s this anchor unrelentingly dragging us into a choppy sea.
“Hudson.”
He opens his mouth again only to close it just as quickly. And then, Hudson drops to one knee. Apparently I don’t need to ask again.
Panic claws at me. Is he going to propose? I mean, normally that’s what one does when they drop to one knee. That or they’re tying their shoe. Yes! He’s just tying his shoe, he’s not proposing. He. Is. Not. Proposing.
Don’t be stupid, Rae. He’s fucking proposing. Holy shit! I’m…he’s…marriage. Together. Forever. Not that I haven’t already planned to have that with Hudson, but marriage makes it all so much more real. Permanent. I want that. I want to marry him.
“Rae…I…,” he starts. He’s making eye contact, but it’s not real eye contact. It doesn’t feel like our eye contact, that special thing we share where I swear we can see into each other’s souls.
My momentary high is gone in a flash. Something feels off.
“I love you. So much. You know that.”
I don’t like that he’s stressing certain words. I feel like he’s trying to convince me of something, convince me to say yes.
“Will you marry me? Please?”
Desperate. He sounds desperate and unsure. His voice is unsteady. I need him to be sure. He’s looking at me with insecure eyes. Hudson isn’t insecure. Flags fly up. This feels wrong. This isn’t what I wanted in this moment. I wanted to feel secure in his question and in my answer. I don’t. None of this is like it should be.
He’s looking at me expectantly, and all I can feel is that stupid fucking anchor pulling at me, dragging me down to the depths of the sea. The waves are choppy. Or maybe those are my breaths? Because I know now what I’m going to say—no. And it’s going to hurt us both. I don’t know how it’s going to change our relationship beyond today, but I know it’ll change it. This will become our new anchor. This is what will weigh us down. But I have to do it. For us. For our future. We can’t start something as important as this when it doesn’t feel right.
“N-no,” I say unsteadily.
“No?” I don’t know whether his voice is uncertain or relieved.
“No, Hudson. I won’t marry you. Something feels…off.” I phrase my statement as an opportunity for him to say something, to come clean.
He doesn’t. And my heart breaks even more.
“I…I have a ring. Just not here.”
I stare at him, unsure of what to say, because a ring is the last fucking thing I care about right now.
“I’m, uh, going to head back home,” I finally manage.
He doesn’t reach out to stop me from leaving. I don’t like that he doesn’t reach out. I don’t like that he hasn’t asked again. I don
’t like that he’s not begging me to marry him. That just proves to me even more that something isn’t right.
“Rae.”
I let my hand linger on the doorknob, turning around to face him. I raise a brow in question.
“Will you be there tonight? When I get home?”
“Will you be honest with me?”
His eyebrows scrunch together. “I have been honest, Rae. I want to marry you.”
My feet move, and before I know it, I’m standing right in front of Hudson, close. He’s staring down at me, his eyes clouded with confusion, pain, and anger.
“And I want to marry you too, Hudson. So badly. But I can’t. Not until you’ve been honest with me…”
“I have been…”
“Really honest with me. You haven’t been that. Something’s off. We need to fix that before we can move forward.”
He sighs and I feel his breath on my face. I want to inch closer to him. I want to press my lips to his, to kiss away this weirdness between us, to feel him. Hudson makes the first move, leaning forward, tilting his head just right. He lifts his hands and cradles my face. His lips hover over mine. He’s hesitating too.
“Rae,” he breathes.
This moment right here feels like the real deal. This feels normal, like what it’s supposed to be like with Hudson. This is us floating rather than sinking. I love it when we float.
He dips his head lower, his lips brushing against mine in just the slightest. “Rae, I—”
“Knock, knock, boss,” Liam, one of Hudson’s employees, calls as he opens the door. “Oh, shit.”
The spell is broken. Hudson and I take a step back from one another, putting back the distance that’s been steadily growing between us.
Liam clears his throat. “Um…uh…sorry, man.”
“It’s fine, Liam. We were just finishing up our conversation,” I say coolly.
I retreat to the door, rushing to make my escape, to get fresh air so I can clear my head. For a moment, just a split second, everything felt right again. And then reality crashed in and wrongness settled.
A hand curls around the door just as I’m about to pull it shut.
“Tonight?” Hudson asks.
Do I want to go home to him? Of course. Do I want to go home to a house full of awkwardness? No, not at all. But I need to. I need to face this. We need to face this. Tonight may give us an opportunity to talk about things, to open up a little further.
Hopefully.
This time, I don’t look back at him. “I’ll see you at home, Hudson.”
I swear I hear a sigh of relief before he clicks the door shut behind me.
Hudson
I feel like an intruder in my own home. Every move I’ve made has been calculated, careful. I’m tiptoeing around our conversation from this afternoon, around the proposal. Correction—the shot-down proposal.
She said no. I mean, an extremely small part of me thought she would with everything that happened last night. But I honestly thought this, asking Rae to marry me, would make things better, not worse. I was very wrong. It’s actually made things worse, if that was even possible. Then again, how stupid could I be for thinking a proposal was the way to fix what’s wrong? Not that that’s what I was doing. Well, not entirely. Actually, not mostly. Nope. Not at all. This was all because I fucking love Rae. Maybe the timing has something to do with why I picked today to do it, but that’s not the reason I want to marry her.
But I’m also an asshole because she’s right. I have to fess up to what’s been going on with her dad. And now. Or else this is going to ruin us. Hell, it may even still be able to. But I have to get this off my chest.
“Daddy? Did you hear me?”
I turn to Joey. “Of course I did.”
Lie. Lie lie lie. That seems to be all I do these days.
“Then can I?”
“Can you what?”
Joey scowls. I look to Rae for help, hoping like hell she was paying attention. She rolls her eyes and answers Joey’s questions with a “yes.”
“Thanks!” Joey shouts. Then she’s pushing away from the table, dumping her plate in the sink, and running up the stairs all within five seconds.
“Don’t run!” I yell after her. I glance over at Rae. “What is she doing?”
Rae stares at me blankly. “She just asked if she can be excused to go play on the Wii.”
“Oh.”
“Glad one of us was paying attention.” She grabs her plate and mine, walking them to the sink and throwing off cold air in her retreat.
I stand and follow her, placing both of my hands on the counter on either side of her waist, caging her in so she can’t run this time. She stiffens instantly. I hate that she stiffens.
Lowering my lips to her ear, I say, “We need to talk.”
This time she shivers. I love that she shivers. It means something is still there between us. I need so badly for something to still be there. I don’t want distance between us anymore.
She spins around, but I refuse to back up in the slightest. We’re standing so close that I can feel her chest brush against mine every time she breathes. And right now, that’s a lot because her chest is rising and falling in rapid succession. From what, I’m not sure. But judging from the fire dancing behind her eyes right now, I think it’s safe to say she’s not very happy with me.
“Now you want to talk. Not this afternoon when I came to you asking for the truth? You want to do this now?”
“Hell yes I want to do this now. I shouldn’t have to walk around my own damn house like I’m gonna run into a tripwire at any moment. That’s not fair.”
“Your lies aren’t fair, Hudson.”
Her words hit me like a fucking brick. I guess I deserved that though.
Sighing, I lean into her, needing to feel her. I rest my forehead against hers, our lips barely grazing. “Will you kiss me? Please?”
She sighs this time and I catch a tear rolling down the side of her cheek. “I hate that you even have to ask that.”
“I hate asking it.”
I notice she doesn’t answer my question, but I don’t care. I press my lips to hers. We don’t move. We don’t try for more. We just stand there, holding our lips together, taking this moment in. Then suddenly, we’re really kissing. I don’t know who reaches for whom first, but we’re instantly wrapped up in one another. Within seconds, I have her up on the counter, her legs wrapped around me, writhing her tight, small body against mine. My cock is standing at attention, pressing into the heat between her legs. I hear a moan and I don’t know who it came from.
Then I’m stumbling backwards, being pushed away, and Rae is crying. Hard.
“What the…?” I scrub a hand over my face and move back in to her, gathering her in my arms, squeezing her tightly, trying to take away all the hurt. “I’m sorry, Rae. I’m so fucking sorry.”
“You…” She sniffles, wiping her cheeks on my shirt. The tears soaking through feel like fucking fire. “You can’t fucking do that, Hudson. You can’t just use kisses and sex to get out of this. It’s too big. I don’t know what you’re hiding, but I can feel in my gut that it’s a big one.”
I hate this. I hate that I’ve been hurting her for God knows how long now. I wonder…
“How long have you felt this way?”
“Not long, really. Just a couple weeks. I’ve just noticed you’ve been working on the weekends a lot, but it doesn’t ever feel like you’ve actually been working when you come home, ya know?” She gives a humorless laugh, pushing me off her again. “Of course you know. Because you haven’t been working.”
She looks at me, her eyes lit up with anger. She’s fucking pissed and I don’t blame her one bit.
It’s time. I take a step back from her, letting us both have room to breathe.
“You’re right. I have been hiding something from you.”
“How long?” She repeats the same question from earlier today and I wonder why she keeps asking that.
&n
bsp; “Why does it matter?”
“Because I want to know how long you’ve been dishonest with me. I need to know. Given my past, you should understand that.”
I wince because this ties so much into her past, and I know that’s what will be the real kicker here. That’s what’s going to get her.
“Since two months after the beach.”
I can see it—she wants so badly to explode, to rage. But somehow, she manages to wrangle it all in and whisper, “Almost a year.”
I inhale sharply at her words. Because fuck. It doesn’t feel like that long. This feels so much worse than it did just moments ago.
“Rae, I…”
She holds her hand up to me, and I shut up instantly. “No. Stop. I don’t want more lies, Hudson. I don’t want excuses. I want the truth.”
I gingerly take a step toward her, a little scared of how she’s going to react to what I’m about to say. “I’m…I’m scared to tell you.”
“You’re scared? That’s about the most bullshit thing you’ve ever said to me. You need to tell me. And now. Or you’re going to run this relationship straight into the ground.”
I don’t budge, but instead direct my stare to the ground. I can feel her staring at me, willing me to speak. I don’t. I just...stare.
“Please.”
A shaky breath. A slight gasp. A quiver to my legs.
What I’m about to say is going to change our relationship in a big way, and I’m so much more terrified than I ever admitted before. I don’t want to lose her. But that’s the risk I took when I started this whole thing. That’s the gamble I made when I decided to start seeing Ted on the weekends without her knowing. This is the moment it’s all been leading up to, and I have to tell her. Now. Or she’s right, I will run this relationship into the ground. I can’t let that happen.
“I’ve been seeing someone because you won’t.”
Her brows furrow in confusion for a split second before pain seeps into her gaze. I know she’s connected the dots the moment a strangled breath falls from her lips.
Here's to Forever Page 4
