Chapter 2 Hudson #2
My heart had stopped each time I'd watched it. And each time, the same thought had hammered through my skull: She could have died. She could have died and you weren't there.
That was when I'd finally snapped. When the carefully constructed walls had finally crumbled and I'd realized that keeping my distance wasn't protecting her anymore.
It was just making me watch her die from afar.
The first gray light of dawn was filtering through the windows when I finally gave up on sleep entirely. I'd dozed off for maybe an hour, my body too wired to fully relax, my ears straining for any sound that might signal a threat.
There'd been nothing. The night had passed without incident.
But that didn't mean we were safe. Lang and Briggs were still out there. Still watching. Still waiting for their next opportunity.
I needed a shower. And coffee. Preferably in that order.
I grabbed a change of clothes from my duffel bag and made my way to the bathroom as quietly as I could. Betty's bedroom door was still closed, and I could hear the soft rhythm of her breathing through the thin walls. Still asleep. Good. She needed the rest.
The bathroom was small, barely big enough for a shower stall, a toilet, and a sink with a cracked mirror above it. I turned on the water and stripped off my clothes while I waited for it to heat up, catching a glimpse of myself in the mirror.
I looked like hell. Dark circles under my eyes. Stubble that had crossed the line from rugged to homeless. A body covered in the scars and ink of a decade spent in the shadows.
The tattoos had started after I'd left her.
A way to mark the missions, the losses, the pieces of myself I'd left behind in places I couldn't talk about.
A sleeve of dark, intricate designs covered my left arm from shoulder to wrist. More ink spread across my chest and back.
A phoenix rising from flames over my heart, a compass on my shoulder blade, Latin words along my ribs that translated to Through darkness, I find my way.
Betty hadn't seen any of them. When we'd been together, my skin had been bare, unmarked. I was a different man now. A harder man. A man who'd done things she couldn't imagine.
I wondered what she'd think if she saw them.
I stepped into the shower and let the hot water pound against my shoulders, trying to wash away the tension that had settled into my muscles. It didn't work. Nothing short of knowing Betty was safe was going to ease the knot in my chest.
I stayed under the spray longer than I should have, letting the heat seep into my bones. Finally, when the water started to cool, I shut it off and reached for the towel I'd hung on the door.
That's when the door swung open.
Betty stood in the doorway, her hand still on the knob, her eyes wide and her mouth open in a perfect O of surprise.
For a split second, neither of us moved.
She was wearing a thin tank top and sleep shorts, her hair a wild tangle around her face, her feet bare on the cold tile. She looked soft and rumpled and so fucking beautiful it made my chest ache.
And I was standing there dripping wet, completely naked, the towel hanging uselessly from my hand.
Her eyes dropped from my face to my chest, then lower, then snapped back up so fast I almost laughed. Almost. But my body had other ideas. Ideas that were becoming increasingly obvious and increasingly difficult to hide.
I wrapped the towel around my waist in one quick motion, but the damage was done. I'd seen her eyes go dark and had seen her throat move as she swallowed and the flush that crept up her neck and spread across her cheeks.
She'd looked.
And she'd liked what she'd seen.
"Sorry. I didn't." She was stammering, her face now the color of a ripe tomato, her eyes fixed determinedly on a point somewhere above my left shoulder. "I forgot you were here. I mean, not forgot forgot, but I woke up and I had to pee and I just, the door wasn't locked."
"My fault," I said. "Should've locked it."
"Yes. You should have. That's….that's definitely a rule we should add to the list." She still wasn't looking at me. "Lock the bathroom door. Very important rule. Critical, even."
"Noted."
She nodded jerkily and started to back out of the doorway, but her eyes betrayed her. They dropped again, just for a second, tracing over my chest, my shoulders, the ink that covered my skin.
"You have tattoos," she said, and the words came out almost accusatory.
"Yeah."
"You didn't have tattoos. Before."
"No."
She was staring now, her earlier embarrassment apparently forgotten as she took in the sleeve on my left arm, the phoenix across my chest. Her eyes traced the lines, the shadows, the intricate patterns that told a story only I could read.
"When did you..." She trailed off, shaking her head. "Never mind. None of my business."
"After I left." The words came out before I could stop them. "Started getting them after I left."
Her eyes met mine, and something shifted in her expression. Something that looked almost like understanding, though I couldn't imagine what she thought she understood.
"What do they mean?"
"Different things." I watched water drip from my hair onto my shoulders, watched her eyes track the droplets as they slid down my chest. "Some of them are missions. Some are people I lost. Some are just reminders."
"Reminders of what?"
Of you, I thought. Of what I gave up. Of why I can't afford to let myself feel too much.
But I didn't say that. Instead, I just shrugged. "Things I don't want to forget."
She was quiet for a long moment, her eyes still tracing the ink on my skin. Then she seemed to catch herself, and the walls slammed back up so fast I could almost hear them.
"I'll just." She gestured vaguely toward the living room. "I'll wait. Take your time."
She fled.
There was no other word for it. She turned and practically ran out of the bathroom, the door swinging shut behind her with a bang.
I stood there for a long moment, water still dripping down my skin, my body aching with a want so fierce it bordered on painful.
She'd looked at me like she wanted to eat me alive.
And God help me, I wanted to let her.
I got dressed quickly and ran a hand through my wet hair. No point in delaying the inevitable awkwardness.
When I emerged from the bathroom, Betty was in the kitchen, standing in front of the coffee maker with her back to me. Her shoulders were tense, her posture rigid, and she didn't turn around when she heard me approach.
"Coffee will be ready in a minute," she said, her voice carefully neutral.
"I'll make breakfast."
"You don't have to."
"You need to eat." I moved past her to the refrigerator, close enough that I could smell her. It took every ounce of self-control I had not to reach out and touch her. "When's the last time you had a real meal?"
She didn't answer, which told me everything I needed to know.
I opened the fridge and assessed the contents. Eggs. Bacon. Some cheese that was probably still good. Butter. Not much, but enough.
"You still take your coffee black with two sugars?" I asked as I pulled out the eggs.
She turned to look at me, her eyebrows raised. "How do you know that?"
"I remember."
"From ten years ago?"
"I remember everything about you, Betty." I cracked an egg into a bowl, keeping my eyes on my task. It was easier than looking at her right now. Easier than seeing the confusion and suspicion warring in her expression. "Every damn thing."
She was quiet for a moment. Then: "That's creepy, Hudson." She hesitated. "What else do you remember?"
I cracked another egg. Added some cheese. Started whisking.
"I remember you hate mornings. That you're not fully human until you've had at least two cups of coffee. That you sing in the shower when you think no one's listening, badly, I might add, and that you always burn toast no matter how carefully you watch it."
"I do not."
"You do." I glanced at her over my shoulder and caught the ghost of a smile on her lips before she could hide it. "You get distracted and forget about it, and then the smoke alarm goes off and you curse like a sailor while you're fanning the smoke out the window."
"That happened one time."
"It happened at least a dozen times when we lived together."
She opened her mouth to argue, then closed it again. "Fine. Maybe more than once. But that doesn't mean." She stopped, shaking her head. "We're not doing this."
"Doing what?"
"This." She waved her hand between us. "The reminiscing. The remember-when. We're not going to stand here and pretend the last ten years didn't happen."
"I'm not pretending anything." I poured the eggs into a heated pan, watching them sizzle. "I'm just making you breakfast."
"While remembering my coffee order and my toast-burning habits."
"Is there a rule against that too?"
She glared at me, and even pissed off, she was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen. Her hair was still wild from sleep, her face bare of makeup, her curves soft under that thin tank top. I wanted to cross the kitchen, pin her against the counter, and kiss her until neither of us could breathe.
Instead, I scrambled the eggs.
"There should be," she muttered, turning back to the coffee maker.
We ate breakfast at her tiny kitchen table, sitting across from each other in a silence that was somehow both awkward and familiar. She ate more than I'd expected and I tried not to feel smug about it.
"So what's the plan?" she asked, setting down her fork. "You said you're here to protect me. What does that actually look like?"
"My team is coming in today to upgrade your security. New locks, cameras, motion sensors. Same at the bar." I pushed my empty plate aside. "I'll be with you whenever you leave this apartment. If I can't be there for some reason, one of my guys will be."
"Your guys?"
"My team. Black Hawk Protection. Best in the business."
She studied me for a moment, her expression unreadable. "You really did build an empire, didn't you?"
"I built a company. The empire part was an accident."
"Right." She didn't sound convinced. "And you're just going to... what? Follow me around twenty-four seven? Don't you have a business to run? Important clients to protect?"
"I have people for that." I met her eyes, holding her gaze. "Right now, there's only one client that matters."
"I'm not a client, Hudson. I didn't hire you."
"No. You're not a client." I leaned forward, resting my elbows on the table. "You're more important than any client I've ever had. And I'm not leaving until those two cops are behind bars and you're safe."
She stared at me, her lips parted, her chest rising and falling with each breath. The air between us felt charged, electric, like the moment before a storm breaks.
"Why?" she asked quietly. "After everything, after ten years of staying away, why now? Why do you suddenly care?"
"I've always cared." The words came out rough, scraped raw. "Every single day, Betty. I never stopped."
"Then why?"
"Because staying away was supposed to keep you safe.
" I stood abruptly, needing to move, needing to do something with the restless energy building inside me.
"That was the whole point. I left because I thought…
." I broke off, shaking my head. "It doesn't matter what I thought.
I was wrong. Staying away didn't protect you from anything.
It just meant I wasn't there when you needed me. "
She was quiet for a long moment. "When my dad died."
It wasn't a question, but I answered anyway. "Yes."
"You knew. You knew when it happened."
"Within hours."
"And you still didn't come." Her voice was soft, but it cut deeper than any shout. "You watched me bury him, and you didn't come."
I turned to face her, and the pain in her eyes nearly brought me to my knees.
"I know," I said quietly. "And I will never forgive myself for that.
I should have been there, Betty. I should have.
" My voice cracked, and I had to stop, had to swallow down the guilt that threatened to choke me.
"There are a lot of things I should have done differently.
But I can't change the past. I can only try to do better now. "
She looked at me for a long, searching moment. I didn't know what she was looking for, or if she found it. But finally, she nodded.
"Okay," she said.
"Okay?"
"Okay, you can stay. Okay, you can protect me. Okay, we can try to get through this without killing each other." She stood, gathering her plate and mug. "But I'm not forgiving you, Hudson. Not yet. Maybe not ever. You need to understand that."
"I understand."
"Good." She moved past me toward the sink, her shoulder brushing against my arm, and the brief contact sent a jolt of electricity through my entire body.
She felt it too. I saw her stiffen, saw the way her breath caught, the way her steps faltered for just a second before she kept moving.
But she didn't look back. Didn't acknowledge it. Just set her dishes in the sink and said, "I need to be at the bar by noon. Can your security people work around that?"
"They'll make it work."
"Fine." She turned, crossing her arms over her chest, and the movement pressed her breasts together in a way that made my mouth go dry. "I'm going to take a shower. Do you think you can manage not to walk in on me?"
The image hit me like a punch to the gut. Betty in the shower, water streaming down her curves, her head tilted back, her lips parted...
"I'll try," I managed, my voice coming out in a squeak like a teenager.
She narrowed her eyes at me, clearly catching the strain in my tone, but didn't comment. Just turned and walked toward the bathroom, her hips swaying in a way that I was almost certain was deliberate.
The door closed. The lock clicked.
And I stood there like an idiot, my hands curled into fists, my body aching with a want I had no right to feel.
This was going to be torture.
Absolute, exquisite torture.
I was going to endure every second of it, because being close to her, even when she hated me, even when she kept me at arm's length, was better than being apart from her.
I'd spent ten years in the cold.
Being near her, even like this, felt like finally stepping into the sun.