Chapter 20 Amelia
Amelia
I was lightly dozing when a knock sounded on my hospital room door.
“Come in!” I said, my voice still scratchy, as the door slowly eased open.
I’d been in the hospital for several hours now, long enough for the steady beeps of my monitors to become soothing background noise.
They’d decided to admit me overnight to watch my vitals and get me fully hydrated and warm.
The X-ray on my lungs had come back clear, which I think was a relief to everyone.
As for the cut on my foot, too much time had passed for me to get stitches, so they’d cleaned it out really well, bandaged it up, told me I couldn’t put weight on it for a while, and put me on an antibiotic.
A ball of blond joy flung the door open.
“Quinn!” My eyes filled with tears as my daughter threw her arms across my legs in a hug. “Come up here.” I patted the bed, and she used the chair to climb up next to me. I hugged her tightly enough to make her wiggle in my grip.
“Thank you,” I said to them, whole heartedly, the words getting locked in my throat with emotion.
Thank you for taking care of her. Thank you for bringing her to me.
Thank you for having two amazing sons. I couldn’t imagine what the last couple days must have been like for them—to think we were lost at sea.
Quinn was sucking her thumb, something she hadn’t done in over a year. “I couldn’t sleep without you or Uncle Hudson, so me and Grandma and Grandpa watched movies all night long.” She said it like she was scandalized, but also proud that she got to stay up and watch TV past her bedtime.
“You must be tired.” I glanced over her head at Elm and Anita, who both looked like they’d aged a decade in the last couple of days as they sat beside my bed.
“She fell asleep around three in the morning,” Anita said.
“With a sucker hanging straight out of her mouth.” Elm smiled softly at her. “I got a picture of it for you.” He pulled out his phone and swiped until he found it. There she was, sleeping sitting up, a saturated sucker-stick balanced on her lips. She looked like pure innocence.
“Have you seen Hudson yet?” I asked. It had been such a whirlwind of care since arriving, I hadn’t heard a word about him since we were separated. I was itchy with the need to make sure he was okay.
“No, we wanted Quinn to see you first,” Anita said. “There’s a whole circus of people down in the waiting room.”
“Who?”
“The wedding party, including Rosie and Dylan. And a reporter from that Hot Goss magazine that keeps trying to do a story on you.”
“Well,” I said, sounding as exhausted as I felt, “I guess I gave him a story on a silver platter.”
“How nice of you,” Elm joked dryly.
Hot Goss was going to write whatever they wanted about me. I only cared about making sure Hudson was okay. I’d never been happier to see someone than when they’d brought Hudson out of the treeline and onto the beach.
“Have you heard anything about Hudson at all?”
“We spoke to his doctor downstairs for a minute before they let us up here to see you,” Anita said. “Hudson broke his collarbone, probably when the boat went down. That combined with mild hypothermia and dehydration, and his body was in shock. He’s stable and is going to be okay.”
He’d saved me from drowning and carried me to the cabin with a broken collarbone? Somehow that did not surprise me. Hudson was … he was everything.
“I need to see him.” I swung my legs off the bed, and we all looked down at my bandaged foot. “I’ll hop.”
“That’s not a good idea,” Elm said, looking concerned.
“I’m going to see Hudson,” I insisted.
Quinn popped her thumb out of her mouth, and her eyes lit up. “Uncle Hudson? He’s here too?” She turned to me. “I have to tell him about staying up alllll niiiiight looooong.”
“Please,” I told the nurse.
Elm and Anita shared a knowing look, and then Elm stood. “I’ll track down a wheelchair. Don’t move.” He left the door open, and his conversation with the nurse drifted in. Well, one part at least.
“She should rest,” the nurse said.
“She won’t until she sees him. Love is irrational,” he said fondly.
Love?
The word felt like a slippery fish in my stomach—ungraspable and completely unfathomable.
I couldn’t meet Anita’s questioning look.
I held Quinn back as Anita and Elm pushed the door open quietly to Hudson’s dark room. “Let’s let him see his mom and dad first, okay?” I whispered softly to her.
“Can I sit on your lap?” she asked in a tiny voice.
The whole thing must have been so confusing to her.
I didn’t know how much she remembered from when Shiloh died, but that was the last time she’d visited a hospital.
And now to be here because I was hurt? I gathered her onto my lap, wincing only slightly when her knee hit my stomach and her elbow snagged my IV, pulling on the tape.
We got adjusted, and I inhaled her familiar scent of baby shampoo and sugar.
Quinn was all the best parts of me and Shiloh.
It was too dark to see Hudson from the doorway, and Anita and Elm were blocking him anyway.
But I saw them both lean down and hug him.
They remained there for a long time, bent over their son, and I could hear their sniffles.
The Blaires had been through so much the last few years, and it had changed them. Loss had changed all of us.
“Why is everyone crying?” Quinn pulled her thumb from her mouth to ask.
“Everyone was worried, and we’re so happy to see each other.” I nudged her head off my shoulder. “Want to run in and see him?”
“I’m scared.”
“Of Uncle Hudson?”
“No.” She held me even tighter around the neck. “It’s dark in there.”
Elm came back out to the hallway, his eyes wet and red.
“Sorry we abandoned you out here.” He took the handles of the wheelchair to push me in.
It took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the dim room.
Hudson was lying on the hospital bed, attached to even more wires than I was.
His right arm was in a sling and resting on his stomach.
His eyelids were heavy, but he managed to smile when he saw us.
I had never been so happy to see someone in my entire life.
I wanted to throw myself off this chair and onto his bed next to him, wrap my arms around him, and assure myself that he was there, real, and okay.
Quinn buried her face in my chest before I could enact my plan.
My eyes hungrily took in every battered, beautiful inch of him. “I can’t believe we’re wearing the same outfit,” I teased to keep myself from tearing up.
“Yesterday, black. Today,” he looked down, and then up again, “faded green. We’re destined to coordinate.”
I blushed at the reference to our matching underwear. He had noticed. I tried to will coolness into my cheeks before Anita noticed my reaction, but she was way too observant.
Elm pushed us right next to the bed, and Hudson reached out a hand to rest on the top of Quinn’s head. “Quinny, what’s wrong?”
When Quinn didn’t respond, I said, “She’s nervous about how dark it is.” Processing all this, I mouthed to him. Hudson nodded, concern in his eyes.
“Well, I can fix that.” Elm went to the drapes and cracked them open to bring in some natural light. Hudson, normally golden and healthy, looked like he had the transparent skin of a ghost. Still handsome, for the record. Those Blaire genes were really something. “Better?
Quinn nodded and lifted her gaze to take in Hudson. His hand was still on her head, his thumb brushing over the fine hairs sticking out from her braid. She reached up and took his hand and then pressed her little cheek to his palm.
My heart melted. Hudson’s eyes were red, and he blinked a few times.
“That’s a hand-hug,” she informed him matter-of-factly. “Grandma taught me how to do that downstairs, because she said your arm is broken and you can’t do a big hug right now.”
“Well,” he cleared his throat a few times. “I already feel so much better. You give the best hand-hugs in the world.”
“I know,” she said. She turned toward him, finally seeming more like her normal self. “Guess what? I stayed up allll niiiight looong.”
“Noooo,” Hudson said, pretending to sound shocked. “That’s not possible.”
“It is possible. Because I did it.”
“Wow. What was it like?”
“Eh,” she said with an eye roll that blasted me into the future ten years to when she’d be a teenager.
Elm gasped. “Just, eh? What about the movies? The popcorn? The sucker?” he said, dramatically.
Quinn giggled and gave Hudson another hand hug. “I wanted Mommy and Uncle Hudson there.”
Hudson asked her about what movies they watched, and Quinn went into all the details.
For someone who described her entire evening as “eh” she sure had a lot of excited things to say about it.
Elm and Anita had done an amazing job of helping her not be too scared, even when they must have been terrified themselves.
Quinn held Hudson’s hand in her lap, petting it every now and then as if to make sure he was real. I understood the impulse. I reached out too and needed to feel his hand in mine.
He startled as our fingers touched and then adjusted to give me more space. Was he pulling away on purpose? Did he think that had been an accident?
I reached again, more firmly this time, and grasped his thumb in my hand. He shot a surprised look at me, but didn’t pull away this time. I didn’t even know what message to give him with my look. All I knew was that just as surely as I needed my next breath, I needed to touch him.
His hand relaxed after a moment, and then his fingers gently brushed over my knuckles.
I didn’t know if he even realized he was doing it.
I took in every angle of his face—the sharpness of his cheekbones, the overgrown stubble on his chin and neck, his straight nose and piercing brown eyes fringed by dark lashes.
I knew exactly how soft his full lips were.
And how hard his chest was underneath that gown.
How had I not noticed any of this before? Or I had, but it was like seeing him in a whole new light. A light with soft edges. One that was warm and enticing. One I was insatiably drawn to.
He and Quinn were engaged in a serious conversation about what flavor of sucker was the best when it suddenly hit me like a wave hitting our boat. Hard enough that I was glad to already be sitting.
That new light I was seeing Hudson in? It was the light of someone who was falling in love.
But how could I be in love with my late-husband’s brother?
With Hudson? He was my best friend. My ride or die.
The person I trusted more than anyone else in this world.
The person I’d missed so much when he was gone, I’d ached with it.
The person I couldn’t take my eyes off of.
The person whose hand felt exactly, perfectly meant to be in mine.
I didn’t understand it. Couldn’t understand it.
But also, couldn’t deny it.
Oh no.
I was falling for Hudson Blaire.