Chapter 1 Betty #2
My heart slammed against my ribs as I grabbed the baseball bat from beside the couch and crept toward the door on silent feet. I pressed my eye to the peephole, my breath coming in short, shallow bursts that fogged the glass.
A man stood in the hallway.
Tall. Broad-shouldered. Dark hair and his face was turned downward so I couldn’t see it. He wasn't wearing a uniform, but that didn't mean anything. Lang and Briggs hadn't been in uniform when they'd murdered Chris Greene, either.
I tightened my grip on the bat, my palms slick with sweat.
The man shifted, turning slightly toward the peephole like he knew I was watching, and the dim hallway light caught his face.
My heart stopped.
No.
No, no, no.
It couldn't be.
"Betty." His voice was low and rough, muffled through the door but unmistakable. A voice I'd spent ten years trying to forget. A voice that still haunted my dreams, no matter how hard I tried to exorcise it. "Open the door."
The bat slipped in my sweaty grip, and I had to catch it before it clattered to the floor.
"I know you're there," he continued, his voice carrying that edge of command I remembered too well. "I can see the shadow under the door. Open up, Betty. Please."
Please. That one word almost broke me. Hudson Cole didn't say please. He demanded. He took what he wanted without asking permission.
Except when it came to leaving me. He'd been pretty damn polite about that.
I undid the chain with trembling fingers, then the deadbolt. Took a deep breath that did absolutely nothing to calm my racing heart. And yanked the door open.
There he was.
Hudson Cole. In the flesh. Standing in my hallway like it hadn't been ten years since I'd last seen him. Like he had any right to show up at my door in the middle of the night, looking like every fantasy I'd ever tried to burn out of my memory.
He looked older. Harder. The boyish softness I remembered from our early twenties had been carved away, replaced by sharp angles and rough edges.
His jaw was more defined, shadowed with a few days' worth of stubble that made me want to run my fingers along it.
A thought I immediately shoved into a deep, dark hole and buried.
His shoulders were broader, his chest wider, straining against a black t-shirt.
He'd put on at least twenty pounds of muscle since I'd last seen him, and there was a new scar cutting through his left eyebrow, a thin white line that hadn't been there before.
He wore dark jeans that hugged his thighs in ways that should've been illegal, and worn leather boots that looked like they'd seen combat. A duffel bag hung from one shoulder.
But his eyes. God, his eyes were exactly the same. That dark, stormy blue that had always made me feel like I was drowning. Like I was falling into something I'd never be able to climb out of.
They were locked on me now, sweeping over my face, my body, assessing every detail like he was memorizing me. Like I was something precious he'd lost and finally found again.
It made me want to slam the door in his face.
It made me want to throw myself into his arms.
I did neither. Instead, I raised the baseball bat and pointed it at his chest.
"What the hell are you doing here?"
His mouth twitched, not quite a smile, but close. "Nice to see you too, Betty."
"Answer the question."
"I'm here to keep you alive." His gaze dropped to the bat, then back to my face. "You planning to use that on me?"
"I'm considering it."
"Fair enough." He took a step forward, and I took a step back, my grip tightening on the bat. He stopped, holding his hands up like I was a spooked animal he didn't want to frighten. "Easy. I'm not here to hurt you."
"You already did that," I said, and the words came out sharper than I'd intended, edged with ten years of pain I thought I'd buried. "Ten years ago. Remember?"
"I remember."
"Then you should also remember that you lost the right to show up at my door in the middle of the night. So turn around, walk away, and go back to whatever hole you crawled out of."
"No."
The word was flat. Final. Infuriating.
"No?" I laughed, and even I could hear how bitter it sounded. "What do you mean, no? You don't get a say in this, Hudson. You don't get to just show up on my doorstep after a decade."
"Someone tried to kill you today." His said.
"Ran you off the road in broad daylight.
Your apartment was broken into three days ago.
You've been followed, threatened, and someone spray-painted the word snitch on your bar.
" He took another step forward, and this time I didn't move back.
I was frozen, pinned by the intensity in his eyes.
"So no, Betty. I'm not walking away. Not this time. "
My heart was pounding so hard I was surprised he couldn't hear it. "How do you know all that?"
"Because I've been keeping tabs on you."
"You've been what?"
"Keeping tabs." He stepped past me into the apartment, moving around me like he had every right to be here, like he owned the place.
Like he owned me. "Making sure you were safe.
I tried to stay away, but when I saw the traffic camera footage of that SUV hitting your car.
.." His jaw tightened, a muscle jumping beneath the skin. "I was on a plane within the hour."
I stared at him, my mind struggling to process what he was saying. "Traffic camera footage? How did you even get that?"
"I have resources."
"What the hell does that mean?"
"It means I run an elite private security firm, and I've had eyes on you for the past ten years.
" He dropped his duffel bag on the floor and turned to face me, his expression hard.
"It means I've known about every threat, every incident and every near-miss.
And it means I'm done watching from a distance while you get yourself killed. "
Ten years.
He'd been watching me for ten years.
The bat slipped from my numb fingers and clattered to the floor, but I barely noticed. All I could do was stare at him, trying to make sense of the words coming out of his mouth.
"You've been watching me," I said slowly. "For a decade. Keeping tabs. Making sure I was safe."
"Yes."
"But you never called."
"No."
"Never texted. Never sent a letter. Never showed up to explain why you left."
His jaw tightened. "No."
The anger hit me like a wave, so sudden and so fierce it nearly knocked me off my feet.
"My father died, Hudson." My voice cracked on the words, but I forced myself to keep going.
"Two years ago. He had a heart attack in his kitchen, and by the time the paramedics got there, he was already gone.
I buried him in the same cemetery as his parents, in a plot he'd picked out himself because he'd always been practical like that. And you weren't there."
Something cracked in his expression. "Betty."
"You were keeping tabs on me, but you couldn't be bothered to show up when I lost the only family I had left?" The tears were coming now, hot and angry, streaming down my cheeks before I could stop them. "You couldn't send a card? Flowers? A goddamn text message?"
"I wanted to." His voice was rough, strained. "God, Betty, you have no idea how badly I wanted to be there. But I couldn't."
"Couldn't what? Couldn't pick up the phone? Couldn't get on a plane? You just said you were on a plane within an hour when you saw me almost get killed, but when my father died, when I needed you more than I've ever needed anyone, you stayed away?"
He didn't answer. Just stood there, his hands curled into fists at his sides, his jaw clenched so tight I could see the muscle jumping beneath the skin.
"I hate you," I said, and I meant it. I meant it with every fiber of my being. "I hate you so much I can't even see straight."
"I know."
"Then why are you here? Why now?"
"Because I couldn't stay away anymore." He took a step toward me, and even though every instinct I had was screaming at me to move back, to put distance between us, my feet refused to cooperate.
"Because watching you almost die today broke something inside me that I didn't even know was still intact.
Because those two dirty cops are going to try again, Betty, and I'm not going to let them succeed. "
"I don't need your protection."
"Too bad." He was right in front of me now, close enough that I could smell him, and God, it was unfair how good he still smelled. "You've got it anyway. Whether you like it or not."
We stood there, barely a foot apart, and the air between us crackled with ten years of unspoken words.
My skin prickled with awareness, every nerve ending suddenly alive in a way they hadn't been in years.
Decades, maybe. This close, I could see the individual stubble hairs on his jaw, the faint lines at the corners of his eyes, the way his chest rose and fell with each controlled breath.
This close, I could remember exactly what it felt like to be pressed against that chest. To have those arms wrapped around me. To have that mouth….
Stop it, I told myself viciously. He left you. He abandoned you. He wasn't there when Dad died.
I took a deliberate step back, putting distance between us. "Go back to wherever you came from, Hudson. I'm too tired for this."
"Two men tried to kill you today." His voice dropped lower, rougher. "They're going to try again. They're going to keep trying until you're dead or they're behind bars. So you can hate me all you want, and you should, I deserve it, but I'm not leaving. Not until this is over."
I stared up at him, my chest heaving, my hands shaking.
I wanted to scream at him. I wanted to hit him, to throw things, to make him feel even a fraction of the pain he'd caused me.
But more than that. More than the anger and the hurt and the bitter, burning resentment, I was exhausted.
Tired of being afraid. Tired of looking over my shoulder. Tired of pretending I could handle this on my own when I so clearly couldn't.
And as much as I hated to admit it, and as much as it galled me to even think it, having Hudson here made me feel safer than I had in weeks.
"Fine," I bit out, the word like glass in my throat. "You can stay. But there are rules."
"Name them."
"You sleep on the couch. You don't touch me.
You don't look at me like." I waved my hand vaguely, unable to put into words the way he was looking at me right now, like I was the sun and he'd been living in darkness for a decade.
"Like that. And we are not talking about the past. Not about why you left, not about what happened between us, not about any of it. You're here to do a job. That's it."
"Understood."
"I mean it, Hudson."
"I know you do." His mouth curved into something that wasn't quite a smile. "Couch is fine. I've slept in worse places."
I didn't ask what those worse places were. I didn't want to know.
"Bathroom's down the hall. Extra blankets are in the closet." I scooped up the baseball bat from where I'd dropped it and headed toward my bedroom. "Try not to make too much noise. I need to sleep."
"Betty."
I stopped but didn't turn around. I couldn't. If I looked at him again right now, I'd either start crying or throw the bat at his head.
"I am sorry," he said quietly. "About your father. About all of it. I know that doesn't mean much coming from me. But I am."
I didn't respond. Just walked into my bedroom and closed the door behind me.
I waited until I heard him move into the living room, heard the creak of the couch as he sat down. Then I locked the bedroom door, not because I thought he'd come in uninvited, but because old habits died hard, and sank down onto my bed.
The tears came then. Quiet and hot, soaking into my pillow as I curled up on my side and let myself fall apart.
For my father, who I still missed every single day.
For myself, for everything I'd been through and everything still to come.
And for Hudson. For the man I'd loved and lost, who was now twenty feet away on my couch like the last ten years hadn't happened.
I pressed my face into the pillow to muffle my sobs, but I knew he could probably hear them anyway. He'd always been able to read me too well, know me too deeply.
That was part of the problem.
But even as I cried, even as my heart ached with old wounds and new fears, I couldn't deny the truth that settled over me like a weighted blanket.
For the first time in weeks, I felt something other than terror.
I felt safe.
And I hated that he was the one who made me feel that way.