Chapter 3 Betty
Icouldn't think.
Big surprise there.
I pushed myself at The Flame tonight, hoping to exhaust myself enough to wipe the day off the map completely.
I lay on my bed, staring at the ceiling, aware of every sound coming from the other side of my bedroom door.
The creak of the couch as Hudson shifted.
The soft pad of his footsteps as he moved around the apartment.
Checking locks, I assumed, because that's what overprotective ex-boyfriends who ran billion-dollar security companies apparently did.
The low rumble of his voice as he talked to someone on the phone, too quiet for me to make out the words.
I pressed my palms against my eyes and groaned.
This was ridiculous. I was a grown woman. I'd spent the last ten years building a life without Hudson Cole in it. I'd dated other men, run a successful business, buried my father, and survived threats from two dirty cops who wanted me dead.
I was not going to lie here like some lovesick teenager, losing sleep because my ex was on my couch.
Except that's exactly what I was doing.
Because it wasn't just any ex. It was Hudson.
The man who'd been my first everything. First love. First heartbreak. First time I'd ever felt like I belonged to someone completely, body and soul.
And the first person to ever make me feel completely worthless when he'd walked away.
I rolled onto my side, pulling the pillow over my head like that would somehow block out the memories. It didn't. They came anyway, flooding in like water through a cracked dam.
The first time I'd seen him, I'd been working a shift at O'Malley's.
A dive bar where I'd tended bar before I'd saved enough to buy The Flame.
Some drunk asshole had grabbed my wrist when I'd tried to take his empty glass, and I'd been about two seconds from breaking his fingers when a shadow had fallen over the bar.
Hudson had been twenty years old, fresh out of basic training, still lean and young but already carrying himself like a man who could handle anything. He'd looked at the drunk, then at me, then back at the drunk.
"Let go of her," he'd said, his voice calm and cold and absolutely terrifying.
The drunk had let go.
And Hudson had looked at me with those dark blue eyes and said, "You okay?"
I'd fallen for him right then and there. Stupid, reckless, head-over-heels in love with a man I didn't even know.
We'd been inseparable after that. He'd come into the bar every night I worked, nursing a single beer for hours just so he could watch me. When my shift ended, he'd walk me to my car, then follow me home to make sure I got there safe.
Our first kiss had been in the alley behind O'Malley's, my back against the brick wall, his hands in my hair, both of us breathing hard and desperate for more.
Our first time had been in his tiny apartment, on a mattress on the floor, and it had been awkward and perfect and over way too fast. He'd apologized afterward, embarrassed, and I'd laughed and kissed him and told him we had plenty of time to practice.
We'd practiced a lot after that.
God, the things that man had done to me. The way he'd learned my body. The way he'd made me come apart over and over again, patient and thorough and completely obsessed with my pleasure.
No one had ever touched me the way Hudson had. No one had ever made me feel the way he did, like I was precious and powerful and completely, utterly his.
And then he'd left.
I threw the pillow off my head and sat up, angry at myself for going there. For letting the memories in. For lying here in the dark, remembering what it felt like to be loved by him when he'd proven beyond any doubt that his love wasn't enough to make him stay.
And then there was this morning.
I pressed my hands to my face, feeling the heat of my blush even hours later.
I'd walked in on him naked. Completely, gloriously, devastatingly naked.
And I'd looked.
God, I'd looked. I'd stood there like an idiot, my eyes traveling down his body before my brain could catch up and tell me to stop.
I'd seen the water dripping down his chest, tracing paths between muscles that hadn't been there ten years ago.
I'd seen the tattoos, dark and intricate, covering skin that used to be bare. I'd seen...
I'd seen everything.
And my traitorous body had responded like it remembered exactly what he could do with all of that.
Even now, hours later, I could feel the ghost of that response. The heat that had pooled low in my belly. The way my nipples had tightened under my thin tank top. The ache between my thighs that had nothing to do with fear and everything to do with want.
Stop it, I told myself viciously. He left you. He broke your heart. He wasn't there when Dad died.
But my body didn't care about any of that. My body remembered how good it had felt to be touched by him. How complete I'd felt when he was inside me. How he'd made me feel like the center of his entire universe.
My body was a traitor of the highest order.
I gave up on sleep around three in the morning. My mind was racing, my body was restless, and lying in bed was only making both worse.
I grabbed a hoodie from the chair by my window and pulled it on over my tank top. It fell to mid-thigh, covering enough to be decent. Barely.
I opened my bedroom door as quietly as I could and padded out into the living room.
Hudson was awake.
Of course he was.
He sat on the couch, his back against the armrest, his long legs stretched out in front of him. His phone was in his hand, the screen casting a pale glow across his face, highlighting the sharp cut of his cheekbones and the shadow of stubble along his jaw.
He'd changed into a plain white t-shirt and gray sweatpants, and the casual clothes somehow made him look even more dangerous. More accessible. More like the man I remembered.
He looked up when I walked in, and his eyes did that thing again. That slow, thorough sweep over my body that made me feel like I was standing in front of him naked.
"Can't sleep?" he asked, his voice rough with exhaustion.
"No." I headed for the kitchen, very aware of his gaze following me. "You?"
"I don't sleep much."
"That's not healthy."
"Neither is someone trying to kill you, but here we are."
I grabbed a glass from the cabinet and filled it with water, then turned to lean against the counter. He was still watching me, his phone forgotten in his lap, his full attention focused on me like I was the only thing in the room worth looking at.
"You should try to get some sleep," I said, taking a sip of water. "You look like hell."
His mouth curved into a small, dangerous smile. "You look good."
My stomach flipped. "Don't."
"Don't what?"
"Don't do that. Don't look at me like that."
"Like what?"
"Like you still have the right to."
The smile faded, and something darker flickered in his eyes. He set his phone down on the coffee table and stood, moving toward me with that predatory grace I remembered too well.
I should've backed up and put more distance between us.
My body didn’t agree.
He stopped a few feet away, close enough that I could smell him. My body hummed with awareness, every nerve ending lighting up like I'd been plugged into an electrical socket.
"I know I don't have the right," he said quietly. "But that doesn't change the way I feel when I look at you."
"And how's that?" My voice came out breathier than I'd intended, and I hated myself for it.
His eyes dropped to my mouth, lingered there for a long, heated moment, then came back up to meet my gaze.
"Like I never left."
The words stole what little breath I had left.
"But you did leave," I said, and my voice cracked on the last word. "You left, Hudson. You walked away and didn't look back."
"I looked back every damn day."
"Then why didn't you come back?"
He took another step closer, and I felt the heat of him, the sheer overwhelming presence of him. "Because I was doing things that would've put you in danger. Running missions that didn't exist, hunting men who would've used you to get to me without a second thought."
"So you made that decision for me?" I set the glass down on the counter with more force than necessary, my hands shaking. "You decided I couldn't handle it? That I didn't deserve a choice?"
"I decided I wasn't going to be the reason you ended up dead."
"Well, guess what, Hudson? Someone's trying to kill me anyway!" The words burst out of me, louder than I'd intended. "So congratulations. All that noble sacrifice bullshit was for nothing."
He flinched, and I saw the pain flash across his face before he could hide it.
"It wasn't for nothing," he said, his voice barely above a whisper. "You got to live your life. You bought your bar. You built something. You were safe for ten years."
"I wasn't safe!" I stepped toward him, closing the distance between us, too angry to care about proximity anymore. "I was miserable! Do you have any idea what it was like? Waking up one day and the man I loved was just... gone?"
"I know." His hands came up like he wanted to touch me, then dropped back to his sides. "I know, honey. And I'm sorry."
"Don't call me that."
"Why not?"
"Because you don't get to. Not anymore. You don't get to stand there and look at me like I'm still yours.
You don't get to call me honey and act like the last ten years didn't happen.
" I was right in front of him now, close enough to see the individual flecks of darker blue in his eyes, close enough to feel the warmth radiating off his body.
"You broke me, Hudson. Do you understand that? You destroyed me."
"I know." His voice was raw, scraped down to the bone. "I know I did."
"Do you? Because you don't seem to get that I spent years trying to put myself back together. Years trying to forget you. And I never could." My voice broke, and I hated that it did, hated that I was showing him how much he'd hurt me. "No one ever measured up. No one ever made me feel..."