by Vi Keeland
He frowned. “I can go…”
“No, no…” I shook my head. “You don’t have to go.”
Hudson caught my eye. “I was hoping we could talk.”
I nodded and thumbed toward my bedroom door. “Sure, yeah. Let me just go turn off the water and get dressed.”
“Why don’t you take your shower? I’ll wait.”
I did need a few minutes to gather my thoughts. I’d planned to deliberate for at least a few days on how to tell him what I knew. Now I had only the time it took to take a shower. “If you don’t mind, that would be great. Thank you.” I motioned toward the couch. “Make yourself at home.”
In the shower, my head was a jumbled mess, and I felt a little lightheaded. But I didn’t have time for a complete meltdown, so I stood under the water, closed my eyes, and took a few deep breaths until it felt like the world had stopped spinning so fast.
There was no easy way to begin the conversation I needed to have, and I could no longer hide behind any doubts I’d fabricated about the information. Everything lined up. Even Fisher was convinced. So I guessed I’d just have to start from the beginning. Hudson already knew I read diaries, and I was pretty sure I’d told him about the one where the woman got married at the New York Public Library. So I suppose something like, I read this diary a while ago… is how I would start. But then what? Did I say, Hey, by the way, did you ever suspect your wife was having an affair? That made me hyperventilate.
What if I’m wrong?
What if I’m right?
What if telling him takes the most sacred thing in his life away?
Am I ruining a little girl’s life?
Would I want to know if my dad wasn’t really my dad?
Oh, God. That thought made my head spin even more. The way my parents slept around, it was entirely possible that my father wasn’t my father.
Oh, Lord. Who cares about my family? I wished it were me this was happening to, not Hudson and his beautiful little girl.
For the rest of my shower, random thoughts popped into my head, and I alternated between trying to keep up with them and trying to calm myself down with slow breathing. Would I die if I climbed out my bedroom window to escape? When my hands started to get pruney, I knew I had to pull my shit together.
So I turned off the water, dried off, brushed out my hair, and pulled on sweats and a T-shirt before wiping the steam from the mirror and giving myself a little internal pep talk.
Everything’s going to be fine. No matter what the outcome, eventually things will fall into place the way they’re supposed to be. It may be a bumpy road, but if a diary about a man I’m crazy about made its way into my hands before I met him—there’s a reason for it. Somehow God put this in my hands, and, in the end, everything will be right.
I took one last deep breath and whispered to myself, “It’s all in fate’s hands now.” Then I opened the bedroom door.
Only to find it wasn’t in fate’s hands.
It was in Hudson’s.
Because I’d left the diary on the coffee table, and he was currently reading it.
He looked up. “Why the hell do you have my ex-wife’s diary?”
CHAPTER 31
Hudson
“I don’t understand. Why would Lexi sell her diary on eBay, and how the hell did you wind up with it?”
Stella shook her head. “I didn’t buy that diary on eBay. Evelyn gave it to me for my birthday.”
“Evelyn? Evelyn Whitley?”
“Yes.”
“How did Evelyn get it?”
“I have absolutely no idea.”
“When did she give it to you?”
“For my birthday last year—so about eighteen months ago.”
I wasn’t sure what the hell was going on, but I knew Evelyn and Lexi didn’t speak anymore. I remembered a day a couple of years ago when I’d gone to pick up Charlie, and my ex-wife had been in a particularly bitchy mood. She’d asked me if I kept in touch with Evelyn. Of course, I didn’t. Evelyn was my sister’s friend, and not one I was too fond of to begin with.
“I just read the first page. It starts on the day we met.”
Stella looked pale. “I know.”
I rubbed the back of my neck, feeling something between bamboozled and angry, but I tried to stay calm. “You just happened to receive my ex-wife’s diary? From the woman you were pretending to be the night we met?”
“It sounds far-fetched. I realize that. But, yes, that’s what happened. I had no idea it belonged to your ex-wife until the other night.”
“The other night? At my house when you said you had a headache and bolted?”
She nodded. “That’s when it all clicked together.”
I’d gone over that evening in my head a dozen times, trying to figure out what the hell had happened. One minute we were fine and laughing, and the next she was out the door. I shook my head. “I don’t understand, Stella.”
She sighed. “Do you think we can sit down to talk about this?”
I dragged a hand through my hair. “You sit. I need to stand.”
Hesitantly, she walked over to the chair and sat down. I started to pace in the living room. “What happened the other night at my house?”
Stella looked down and spoke to her hands. “Charlie said her full name, and I remembered it from a diary I’d read a while ago. Do you recall I told you I’d read the diary of a woman who got married at the library? That I used to go sit on the stairs and look for the people I’d read about?”
I was so confused. “You were looking for me and Lexi?”
Stella nodded. “I didn’t know it at the time, but yeah…I guess I was.”
It seemed incredulous that my ex-wife’s diary could fall into my new girlfriend’s hands by coincidence. But even if that’s exactly what had happened, I still didn’t get why Stella got so freaked out the other day.
I held up the diary. “So this is why you’ve been avoiding me? Because you realized you’d read my ex-wife’s diary?”
She continued to avoid my eyes. “Yes.”
I paced a few times, trying to see the full puzzle, but I was missing a few pieces. “Why? If this was all some big coincidence, why not just tell me?”
Stella was quiet for a long time. That was freaking me out.
“Answer me, Stella.”
She looked up for the first time. Her eyes were filled with tears, and she looked completely distraught. I felt torn between wanting to hold her and wanting to scream at her for whatever the fuck craziness she had going on.
Unfortunately, the latter won out, and I barked, “Goddammit, Stella. Answer me!”
She jumped in her seat and tears streamed down her cheeks. “Because…there are things…in the diary entries.”
“What things?”
Lexi and I didn’t have a great relationship, especially at the end. But I wasn’t ever cruel to her. I hadn’t given her anything to write about that would freak Stella out.
Stella started to cry harder. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
I couldn’t take seeing her upset, so I walked over and kneeled in front of her. Pushing strands of wet hair from her face, I spoke quietly. “Relax. Stop crying. Nothing Lexi could have written in some diary is going to hurt me. This hurts me, seeing you so upset. What’s going on, sweetheart?”
Trying to calm her only seemed to trouble her more. She sobbed, her shoulders heaving. So I pulled her in for a hug and held her until she calmed down a little. Once she did, I tilted her chin up so our eyes met. “Talk to me. What has you this upset?”
Her eyes jumped back and forth between mine, and it felt like I was watching her damn heart break.
“Lexi…” She sniffled. “She talks about having an affair.”
I blinked a few times. “Alright… Well, I didn’t know she had an affair. But I guess I can’t say I’m shocked. I caught her in lies about meaningless things over the years, and at one point I had suspected she might be seeing someone, although she always d
enied it. Lexi’s pretty selfish and did some shady shit, including hiding money and disappearing until late at night. Is that what’s been eating at you? You thought I’d be upset to find that out? It’s not pleasant to hear, but that part of my life is over.”
Stella closed her eyes and shook her head. “There’s more.”
“Okay…what? What is it?”
“The man she was sleeping with, she wrote that he was your best friend.”
My face wrinkled. “Jack?”
“She never says his name, but she refers to him with the letter J... And...” Stella swallowed once more and took a deep breath. “Lexi doesn’t know who the father is.”
I had to be in some serious denial, because I had no idea what the hell she was talking about. “Father of who? What do you mean?”
Stella’s lip trembled. “Charlie. She doesn’t know who Charlie’s father is. She was sleeping with both of you at the time she was conceived.”
***
Until a week ago, I’d felt like I had the world by the balls. I remember watching my little girl cook me dinner with the woman I was crazy about—the two of them laughing and smiling—and thinking how right everything finally felt after so long. And now…it felt like the world had me by the balls.
At first, I didn’t believe it. Not that Lexi wasn’t capable of doing that type of shit, but I couldn’t believe my best friend was. At a very minimum, that part had to be wrong. J could stand for a thousand names; there was no way Jack would do that to me.
But when I was on my third scotch, sitting at a bar where I’d met my buddy countless times, I remembered a particular Valentine’s Day years ago. I’d been up in Boston on business for a few days. My flight home had been scheduled for the evening. I’d told Lexi I’d take her out to dinner when I got home, but I’d finished up early and decided to take a midday flight and surprise her. When I walked in, Jack had been in our apartment. I remember having a fleeting uneasy feeling, but then Jack had said he’d asked Lexi to go shopping with him to buy his new girlfriend—now his wife—a gift for Valentine’s Day. He’d said she loved emeralds and remembered Lexi had a necklace with one, so he’d figured she would be able to help him pick out a quality stone for a ring. I’d honestly thought nothing more about it—this was my wife and my best friend, for fuck’s sake.
A few years later, I’d sat across from Lexi in my attorney’s office. She had her hands folded on the conference room table, and I noticed an enormous emerald sparkling on her finger. Our negotiations had gotten contentious by that point, so I’d made a comment about her ridiculous spending and motioned to the ring. She’d flashed a wicked smile and said she’d had it for years—a gift from a man who actually appreciated her. I’d never seen the ring before, but Lexi had a shitload of jewelry, so again, I chalked it up to nothing and my ex just trying to get under my skin.
Rattling the ice cubes that had barely had a chance to melt in my glass, I decided to make a call. I didn’t give a fuck if it was 2:30 in the morning.
A groggy woman’s voice answered on the third ring. “Hello?”
“Do you have an emerald ring?”
“Hudson? Is that you?”
I heard a man’s voice grumble in the background, but couldn’t make out what he’d said.
“Yeah, it’s Hudson, Alana.”
“It’s the middle of the night.”
“Can you just tell me if you have an emerald ring?”
“I don’t understand…”
My voice boomed. “Just fucking answer the question. Do you or do you not have an emerald ring from your husband?”
“No, I don’t. But what’s going on, Hudson? Is everything okay?”
Alana must’ve covered the phone, because I heard muffled voices, and then a few seconds later, my supposed best friend came on the line. “Hudson? What the hell is going on?”
“Your wife doesn’t have a fucking emerald ring.”
“Are you drunk?”
I ignored him. Whether I was drunk or not didn’t change the facts. “You know who does have a fucking emerald ring?”
“What are you talking about?”
“My ex-wife. That’s who has the fucking emerald ring. The one you told me you went shopping to get for your new girlfriend when I came home from Boston early.”
The line went quiet for a moment. Eventually, Jack cleared his throat. “Where are you?”
“The bar down the block from your house. Get your scrawny ass down here, or I’ll be at your apartment in ten minutes.” Without waiting for a response, I hung up and tossed my phone on the bar. Then I held up my empty glass to the bartender. “I’ll take another.”
***
Jack said nothing as he settled himself on the stool next to me.
I couldn’t even look at him. My voice was eerily calm as I stared down into my glass. “How could you?”
He didn’t immediately respond. For a moment, I thought he was going to try to play dumb, or worse, deny it—but at least he gave me that much respect.
“I wish I had an answer to that question,” he said, “other than I’m a fucking piece of shit.”
I scoffed and brought my drink to my lips. “Probably the first honest thing I’ve heard out of your mouth in years.”
Jack raised his hand for the bartender and ordered a double scotch. We waited until his glass was filled to continue.
“How long?” I asked.
He sucked back half of his glass and set it down on the bar. “About a year.”
“Were you in love with her, at least?”
Jack shook his head. “No. It was just sex.”
“Great,” I sneered. “Twenty-five years of friendship for just sex. Lexi didn’t even give a good blowjob. She was all fucking teeth.”
Through my peripheral vision, I saw Jack hang his head. He shook it for a long time. “I think I wanted to win at something,” he said. “You were always smarter, stronger, taller, more popular, and got all the girls you could handle. After we were dating for a few weeks, Alana admitted that the night we met her in that bar, she and her friend had walked over to talk to us after she’d called dibs on you. Even my wife would’ve picked you over me if she’d had the choice.” He shook his head again. “We were drunk the first time it happened, if it’s any consolation.”
“It’s not.”
We sat side by side for a solid ten minutes without either of us saying another word. I finished off my fourth scotch while my loyal friend sucked back his double. I wasn’t a big drinker, so the alcohol had really hit me. My vision was blurry, and I felt the room starting to spin.
Taking a deep breath, I turned to face Jack for the first time. He did the same, meeting my eyes as he blew out a jagged exhale.
“Is she yours?” Just asking the question caused a physical ache in my chest, and my voice cracked when I spoke again. “Is my daughter yours?”
Jack swallowed. “Lexi was never sure. As far as I know, she still isn’t.”
I pulled out my billfold. Tossing two hundreds on the bar, I raised my hand to call the bartender. “Hundred for the drinks. The other hundred is to not help him up.”
The bartender looked confused, so as I stood and steadied myself, I pointed to the piece-of-shit man I’d called my best friend for more than two decades. “He was fucking my wife while I was married to her.”
The bartender’s brows shot up, and he looked between us.
“Turn around,” I muttered at my oldest friend.
Jack turned in his seat to face me. I had to close one of my eyes to only see one of him, but he never raised his hands as I hauled back and landed a punch square in the center of his face. It was the least he could’ve done—taken it like a man.
“You don’t tell my piece-of-shit ex-wife that I know,” I warned before turning toward the door. I never bothered to look back to see if the bartender helped him off the floor.
CHAPTER 32
Stella
Almost a week had passed, and I still hadn�
��t seen Hudson. Though I supposed he was more entitled to disappear than I’d been when I was avoiding him.
I suspected he’d told his sister something, as Olivia had never once mentioned his name. The last of the Signature Scent samples came in, the artwork we’d shot in California for the boxes had been approved, and today, Thursday, the warehouse had started shipping the orders that had come in from the Home Shopping Channel. It was a monumental day; the dream I’d had for years had come true. Yet I wanted nothing more than to go home and climb into bed.
But Fisher wouldn’t let the occasion go uncelebrated no matter how many times I told him I wasn’t in the mood. So I wound up meeting him for dinner after I left the warehouse. He was already seated in a booth when I arrived, an ice bucket set up next to the table.
I slid into the seat across from him.
“Alright, now I know things are bad. I just watched you come in. The hostess has a giant vase of flowers on her podium, and you didn’t even try to smell them.”
I attempted to smile. “It doesn’t feel like I should be smelling the flowers today.”
“That’s where you’re wrong. Today is precisely the day you should be stopping to smell the flowers, my Stella Bella. You put your heart into this business, and today your first orders started shipping.” He lifted the bottle out of the ice bucket and filled an empty glass in front of me before filling his own. “I even sprung for the good stuff.”
While he of course meant well, seeing the gold label on the bottle of champagne—the label that had been on the bubbly we’d swiped from Olivia’s wedding months ago—just felt like coming full circle. And the circle was now closed. Hudson and I had started and ended with these bottles. A heavy feeling settled in my chest.
Fisher lifted his glass in a toast. “To my smarty pants girl. You worked through the rain for years and finally got your rainbow.”
I smiled. “Thank you, Fisher.”
The waiter came and took our orders. I wasn’t in the mood to eat, but I felt like I had to give it my best effort because Fisher was trying so hard.
