Chapter 18
EIGHTEEN
2 Days til Christmas
“Ocean?”
The low voice drifted into my dark room.
I’d closed the curtains for the first time. I didn’t want to see the beautiful views anymore. I was curled under the covers in Hudson’s thermal shirt that he left behind. The same sheets that we’d shared every night over the last three nights.
Three nights.
How could everything inside of me feel different after so few days?
Q didn’t wait for an invitation. He just sat on the end of the bed. “You can’t stay in bed all day.”
“What does it matter?”
“You’re the one who dragged us all out here in the middle of snow country.”
“I see you all the time,” I mumbled.
“Kent got here an hour ago.”
I slipped my blanket down from where it was over my head. “He did?” Kent was the only one who knew about Hudson. I could only imagine what my brothers had been talking about.
“Yeah.” Q was in a pair of plaid sleep pants and a Hozier T-shirt. It couldn’t be that late.
“What time is it?”
“Two in the afternoon.”
I sat straight up. “What?”
“Yeah. Are you honestly telling me you’re going to mope around about some douche rag?”
“He’s not a douche rag.” I threw my pillow at him. “He’s one of the nicest men I’ve ever known.”
“Sure didn’t sound like it when he told you to fuck off.”
“He didn’t use those words.” I tucked my knees under the shirt, surrounding myself with his scent. “I did lie to him.”
“You don’t know him.” Q rolled onto the bottom of the bed like he had when we were kids and put his head on his stacked arms. “What, you knew him like a week?”
Worse.
Not even close to a week. “It doesn’t matter.”
“It’s just lust.” He winced saying it. “We’ve all had a fling, O. It seems intense at the time, but the longer you spend with them, you see it was just a moment.”
“Maybe,” I murmured.
It didn’t feel like a fling. It felt like I lost out on something really special. Something that could have been a future.
“It was only a few days. But it was long enough for me to fall in love with you.”
“Or the woman I thought you were.”
I’d given him more of me than I’d offered to anyone in my life.
Even my family.
Which shook me more than I thought was possible. I loved my family. I fought for my family—especially Rio and Q—beyond comprehension.
But I was always the one taking care of them. Always the one worrying about them. Oh, they loved me—I knew that. But they were happy to live their lives all around the world.
I was the one who couldn’t step away. Hell, I was even still babysitting my brother after all these years.
My parents were always working or corralling the younger kids. I’d been the oldest girl and had been expected to jump in to help at every turn.
And I had.
Willingly. It wasn’t exactly a burden, but there had been little room for what I needed. I loved my family and my brothers and my sister. It had been second nature to watch out for all of them.
I’d never noticed that no one took care of me until Hudson. He worried about me on a level no one ever had.
And it made me want to take care of him right back. Looking at a future was so overwhelming because I’d never planned for myself.
Only for the people in my life.
Quentin sat up and crawled up to the top of the bed to sit beside me. He wrapped his long, ropey arms around me. “How can I help?”
I leaned into him, sniffling into his shirt. “I don’t know. I ruined it all.”
“You’re the best fixer in the world, Ocean. You’ve run my tour better than my own manager. You’ve got time if it really matters that much.”
Did I?
I didn’t know how long Hudson would be here. Heck, I didn’t know where he was. It was a big lake.
And for a small town, it still had way too many people in it. Was I supposed to knock on doors?
It was almost Christmas, for God’s sake.
And I planned to be with my family. They were supposed to come first. I’d made this entire trip about them and now I was so focused on Hudson that I would miss out on them.
He gave me one more squeeze. “Take a shower and come downstairs. Kent is worried about you.”
“Did you tell him?”
“I told him that jackass hurt you.”
“Oh, great.” I pushed him away from me. “That isn’t going to help me get him back.”
“Do you really want him back? Knowing he’s going back to wherever he’s from in a few days?”
“Yeah. I’ll always wonder if I don’t try. And if he doesn’t want me back after I grovel, then I’ll know I tried.”
“All right. I’m heading over to Rory’s place tonight for a quick visit. Maybe he’ll know where this idiot lives.”
“Oh, that’s brilliant.” I threw my arms around him, and he let out a grunt.
He patted my back. “I still don’t like him.”
I set him back and grinned. “You just don’t like him because he gave me all the good orgasms.”
“God, no.” He stood and rushed for the door. “Never say that again.”
“So many orgasms. On the floor, in the shower, on the couch.”
“Stop!” He covered his ears, then returned. “Wait, which ones?”
“All of them.” I smiled brightly.
Okay, so it wasn’t all of them, but the horror on his face was worth it.
He shut his eyes. “Gross. Just go shower and show your face. Rio had a connecting flight in Boston, so the three idiots are all coming in together this afternoon.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. Kent is going to pick them up in a few, so get down there.”
“Okay, okay.” I zipped into the bathroom and took a quick shower. I hadn’t worn anything other than sweats and holiday sleepwear for days. I took care with a pair of dark jeans and a soft gray sweater with a knit pattern of trees at the end of the sleeves.
I found a matching pair of fuzzy green socks. Hopefully, that would be good enough for Rory’s get-together later.
Sighing, I studied the state of my splotchy face. There wasn’t much I could do with it, so I just put on my tinted moisturizer and some mascara, so I didn’t look like roadkill.
Because I was most certainly tagging along with Q for that get-together with his producer.
Downstairs, Kent and Q were arguing about football. If it wasn’t hockey, it was football with those two.
It didn’t help that they both loved teams who were mortal enemies.
“There you are.” Kent spotted me coming down the stairs and stood.
My eyes filled again. Kent and I had a special bond being the eldest of the Hawkins brood. I went right to him, and I looped my arms around his solid middle.
“Wow, what have you been doing?” I squeezed again before stepping back. “I swear, you got bigger.”
He lifted a hand to brush away the tear that had escaped. “I knew I didn’t like him from the video call. I have some of my tools in the truck. Pretty sure I can get Levi to help me bury the body in a place no one will find him.”
I laughed. “You will not. I was the one who was in the wrong.”
Kent glanced back at Q. “Not what he said.”
“Yeah, well… Quentin’s wrong.”
“You try walking in on your sister half naked with a dude.” Q was sitting on a blanket draped over the couch.
I laughed and the lump in my throat receded. “I’ve walked in on you countless times.”
“Not the same.”
I shook my head. “Ass.”
Kent draped his arm around my shoulder. “Q told me he was a jackass.”
“No, I’m afraid I’m the jackass.” I turned into his chest for a moment—his familiar scent of sawdust and pine as comforting as the hug.
“Is that fuckhead’s car still out there?”
I nodded toward the kitchen. “I need coffee for this.”
Both of them followed me into the kitchen. I fixed coffee for all of us and passed out cookies.
“Man, these are cool.” Quentin picked up the Spiderman gingerbread man.
“Hudson drew those.”
Q snarled and bit the head off.
I shook my head and picked out a thumbprint cookie I’d made. “Okay, so you know he crashed. During the worst of the storm, he was driving home to his family’s place that’s somewhere on the lake like this place. He shouldn’t have been on the road. One of the big city plows was doing its job.”
I took a sip of my coffee, chilled at the thought of how much worse it could have been when Hudson had been pushed off the road.
“He was driving a stupid tiny car without any steering or weight to combat this weather.”
“Idiot,” Kent muttered.
“Rental. There weren’t any left. It was a Versa, for God’s sake.”
Kent grunted. He drove a monster Silverado and thought cars were inferior unless it was an Aston Martin. Q tried to buy him one after his first million, but Kent had told him to save his money.
I cupped my fingers around the hot mug. “You should have seen me getting him out of the car.” I smiled behind the lip of the mug. That had been the first time he’d called me Angel.
A horn honked outside, and Q perked up. He pulled his phone out and grinned. “That’s my bike.”
We both followed him out into the living room, then to the entryway. Quentin barely took the time to put his boots on before he was out the door to where a truck had his beloved Arch custom motorcycle.
He’d done a song for a video game that had used Keanu Reeves as the voiceover, and they’d bonded over bikes. He and the famous actor had made Q a custom bike that actually was now part of the Arch lineup.
One of the few things that made my little brother nerd out was working with him.
I had a feeling some of the nomad life that Quentin was longing for was because of his friendship with the actor. If that urged my brother to go out and get away from the music machine for a little while, I was all for it.
Kent rested his forearm on my shoulder like when we were kids. “Is he okay?”
I peered up at him. Worry had pinched his brows together. I patted his chest. “He’s just burnt out. If he sits still for more than a few minutes, he gets anxious. He’s been pushing so hard for so long, I think he’s afraid if he stops, everything will go away.”
“Maybe that’s a good thing.”
Watching Q smile as the two drivers unhooked the bike from the back of their flatbed, I wondered the same. But I was well versed in the music business now and knew that people could forget you if you didn’t keep up with the churn and burn.
There was a lot of pressure on him.
“I’m trying to convince him to take some time. I think he needs it.”
“He’s too fucking skinny.” Kent drew his arm away to fold them across his chest.
Q was lanky and muscular, thanks to running around a stage for years. He worked out with a trainer to keep him in fighting shape for his grueling schedule. But he had gotten a bit lean in the last few months, thanks to the pressure of so many shows.
Kent backed away from the porch and closed the door when it didn’t look like Q would be coming in anytime soon. He checked his watch—an actual watch. No Apple smart watch for my big brother. A sturdy one that included a near unbreakable crystal since he was so hard on himself working with all the old houses.
“I gotta go get the idiots.”
I grinned. It was something we’d all adopted calling each other over the years. “I’m really glad you made it.”
“Me too. My buddy is working on an extended remodel on an old Victorian here. I think he’s calling in a marker.”
“Which one?”
“Archer. He says the place is haunted.”
I laughed. Archer Baldwin was a stone mason and since that was a dying art, he and my brother often overlapped on bigger rehabs. “So, you’re sticking around here?”
“Looks like it. Lots of old houses over here with deep pockets.”
I gave him another hug. “This area kinda gets under your skin.”
“Think it’s the dude under your skin.”
“He was under my sheets at least.” I knew it would make him uncomfortable, which made me laugh like a lunatic. “Your face.”
“I know you’re an adult—you’re almost thirty, for fuck’s sake, but I don’t want to think about that.”
“It’s okay, I don’t want to think about you and your love life, either. Or lack of one.”
“You don’t know that,” he grumbled.
But I knew.
Ever since Kent’s fiancée had up and left three years ago, he’d shut down. It was why he traveled so much these days. He’d been happy to do most of his work in the Catskills until then.
Now he wanted to be anywhere but back in Rawlings.
Personally, I didn’t think it was any loss. Joanie had been a user from the jump. Nothing Kent had done had been good enough for her. We’d all been relieved not to have her attached to the family permanently.
Kent, not so much.
“I really do have feelings for Hudson.”
He sighed. “Even though you were trying to hide him when I called?”
“It’s complicated. I didn’t really tell him about my family.”
“Oh, sis.”
“I know. I just got so used to not telling people about Q and now with Rio blowing up…”
He sighed. “I think your mama bear might be worse than Mom’s.”
I tipped my head back, the rolling guilt making my chest hurt. “I talked about all of you plenty. I just left a few things out.”
“Oh, that our brother is a gazillionaire, and he has paparazzi jumping out of the bushes everywhere he goes?”
“Yeah, that part.”
“Sure it wasn’t your instincts leading you?”
“Actually, my instinct was to tell him, and I kept stuffing it down.”
He sighed. “Well, shit. Had to happen eventually. I still don’t like him.”
“You don’t know him.”
“Still don’t like him if he made you cry.” He pulled his Carhartt coat off the coat rack and shrugged it on.
Problem was, I’d given him reason to.
The guilt eating me alive was what had made me cry. And seeing Hudson’s face when he realized just how many things I’d left out.
The betrayal hurt more than any words he could have said.
And I wasn’t quite sure how I was going to fix it. I didn’t even have Hudson’s phone number. I was pretty sure the fact that I’d barely looked at my phone since he’d come in my life was a miracle.
I only hoped Rory would have a lead for me.
“I’ll be back.”
I nodded. “Be careful. Might get icy.”
“I will, Mom.”
I laughed and opened the door, leaning my cheek against the jamb. The plows were out in full force and the distant whoosh of cars and trucks on the roads marked the end of life’s standstill.
I’m coming for you, Hudson MacGregor.