Chapter 24
CHAPTER
TWENTY-FOUR
WILDE
T he sound of the motorcycle isn’t unexpected, but I’d hoped it wouldn’t come. I don’t want to see Hudson.
Giving the tools back was an … error in judgment.
I’m scared of who I’ll become if I leave.
It’s like Hudson plucked those same words from my mind seventeen years ago and made me face them. The person I am now would look very different if I’d headed back to LA and stayed there.
I push through my front door and wait on the porch for him, not wanting to risk him inside with any of my things. There’s enough room on my porch for the two chairs to the right of my door, but I ignore those and set my arms on the railing, hoping that I give off I’m not here to talk vibes.
He pulls up behind my truck, and something twists in my gut as he pulls off the helmet. His blond hair is a mess from being covered, and that same lock kicks up in the front, just as obstinate as the rest of him .
The T-shirt he’s wearing shows off his arms, the shorts hugging his powerful thighs, and even though I tell myself not to, I can’t stop my mind from filling with images of him naked.
Hudson attempts a smile as he approaches. “I got your present.”
“Don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“My tools.” He tucks his hands in his pockets. “You gave them back after all.”
I drop his gaze and refocus on the trees behind him. “Changed my mind about needing them.”
He paces a few steps forward, and I want to tell him to stop, but I lock my jaw anyway. “You know what we’re going to use them for, don’t you? The whole reason you took them in the first place?”
He already knows the answer to that, so I don’t bother responding.
“Wilde …” The crack in his voice tugs my attention back to him. “Why did you give them back?”
“Better things to do with my time.”
“Than look after your town?”
He’s baiting me, and it almost works. I bite down on my tongue because the more I talk, the more he’ll stick around, and I’m ready for him to go now. He couldn’t take the return for what it was, could he? Then again, I don’t even know what it was, so it’s a bit much to expect him to.
All night, I was unsettled, overly aware of the tools I’d hidden at Ziggy’s place and knowing that when it came right down to it …
they didn’t matter. The brothers would get more.
They’d keep coming and coming, mindlessly focused on their end goal, and while I could delay them as much as possible, the end result would be inevitable.
“Can we talk?” Hudson asks suddenly .
“Isn’t that what we’re doing?”
“No. I’m talking. You’re ignoring me.”
That sounds about right to me, but I still maintain that’s as close to talking as we get. I don’t want anything more than that, especially not from someone determined to ruin my whole life.
He knows better than to wait for a response that won’t come, but instead of cutting his losses and heading back to his bike, Hudson climbs my front stairs. He passes by close enough that a wave of sweet scent fills my nose, and then he drops into one of the two chairs sitting behind me.
I refuse to turn toward him, but having my back to him doesn’t feel smart.
“I have a shitty temper,” he says, and it makes me snort. I knew that about two seconds after meeting him. “I don’t know why. My parents weren’t ever angry people, and my brothers aren’t like that either.”
“Maybe you’re just an asshole.”
“Maybe. I got mad at your friend. Ziggy.”
That makes me whip around. “What did you do?”
“Nothing.” He eyes me suspiciously. “Got angry and shoved him into a wall. Our foreplay, basically.”
If he weren’t sitting, I’d probably do the same to him now. “Ziggy had better be okay.”
“He is. I apologized.” Hudson slumps down further in his chair. “Made me feel a bit bad about it, actually.”
“Good.”
He looks me over. “And how many times have you manhandled me?”
“Yeah, but the difference is that Ziggy is a sweet guy. Unlike either of us.”
Hudson doesn’t argue because he knows I’m right. As much as I don’t want to admit it, there are similarities between us that stretch deeper than us both ending up in Wilde’s End.
“How did you know his name?” I ask, hating that I’m extending the conversation.
“He told us.”
Ziggy willingly speaking to people he knows is rare; him willingly speaking to strangers … I almost don’t believe him. “You didn’t beat it out of him, did you?”
“No.” He has the audacity to look offended. “Kennedy is also a sweet guy. Ziggy told him.”
That sounds closer to what I’d expect. “Why are you here?”
“That question again …”
“If you’d stop showing up, I’d stop asking it.”
Hudson pats the chair beside him, and it’s natural instinct to refuse.
I’m curious though, and I know it will shock him if I take his offer, so on a whim, I do.
I shouldn’t move closer; everything in my body, from my racing heart to my unsettled gut, lets me know it.
I settle back in the chair, the creak of the wicker a warning that I’m way too close.
Which is ridiculous when I literally had my dick in his mouth last night.
He glances over at me, and I’m struck again by how close he was as we jerked him off, how those same eyes burned into mine.
“How many of you live here?” he asks.
I answer truthfully, which I think surprises me as much as him. “Twenty-seven.”
“That many?”
“Yes.”
“I was expecting you to say, like, five …”
“What does it matter?”
Hudson shifts in his chair, gaze flicking away. “Wanted to know how many lives we’re ruining. ”
I don’t have an answer for that, not that I think he’s looking for one.
“What do I do?” he finally says.
My eyebrows pull tight, and I study the side of his face. His lips are quirked as usual, but he somehow manages not to look happy. “About?”
“The town.” He glances my way, and our eyes meet for a prolonged moment before he looks away again. “If we sell the place, you’re going to end up with the same issues you have with us. Anyone who buys it will want to redevelop the town to make money.”
Unfortunately, he has a point there. “I said I’d buy it.”
“How do you have that kind of money? No offense …” He taps the side of my house. “But this doesn’t scream luxury.”
“I have everything I need. And the rest isn’t your business.”
“Can you try to meet me halfway? I’m giving you honesty. You could try to do the same.”
“I was being very honest.”
He props his hands behind his head in a way he likes to do and a way that I like him doing. Probably too much. “We’re not going to get anywhere, are we?”
“I made you an offer.” One I can’t help but notice he didn’t jump at, so that tells me Hudson doesn’t actually want to sell.
“We didn’t come here to develop the place.”
“Just a lucky coincidence, then?”
“No, like …” He huffs. “That was the purpose I told Kennedy and Hartwell, but …”
“But?” I kick myself for asking when what I should be doing is getting him off my front porch.
Hudson taps one of his booted feet against the wooden deck, an erratic, uncertain pulse like he’s echoing the thoughts running through both of us.
“Kenny’s a lover. Literally. If it was him you were fucking, you would have come home to a house full of flowers and him ready to feed you chocolates. He comes on … strong.”
“Damn,” I monotone. “Picked the wrong brother.”
Hudson flips me off with his good hand and keeps talking. “I swear it’s every other month that I’m having to pick him up after he’s had his heart broken.”
I have no idea what any of that has to do with me.
“Then there’s Hartwell. You’ve probably already put together that they’re twins.
And it’s like Kennedy got all the feelings and Hart got none of them.
He’s just empty. All the time. Loves to joke about dying, and I know he’s not serious, but I also think there’s a small part of him that doesn’t care either way.
I’m lost on how to reach either of them, and I’ve tried.
I’ve tried to fix things for them and make it easier on them, but I’ve reached the point where I don’t even know what that is. ”
“And you?”
He lazily looks my way. “Me?”
“You’ve told me a whole lot about your brothers, but last night, you said that you’re the one who’s scared to leave.”
He almost looks like he’s going to shut down, but this is a challenge, and Hudson meets those head-on. For all he says about having a short fuse, he’s not scared of anything. “If I can’t help them … what’s the point?”
“What do you mean?”
He lightens his voice like that might somehow make what he’s going to say easier.
“I’m fucking powerless. I see them hurting all the time, making the same mistakes all the time, and I can’t do anything about it.
It’s … exhausting. And if I’m that fucking useless, then—” He bites off his words like maybe he went too far.
“I used to have a problem. In high school. I made a bit of a name for myself at parties as being able to get … stuff. ”
Stuff . I stiffen where I’m sitting, the lightness to the conversation pulling tight in an instant. Too quickly, this feeling of dread washes over me, and whatever he says next, I can’t take in.
“One thing led to another, and it wasn’t good. It felt like the more I could get my hands on, the more people liked me, and then when they got whatever they were after, they disappeared too. Anyway, usual sob story: I started partying too hard, moving from one high to the next and?—”
“ Leave .”
Hudson’s head snaps my way, all fake lightness gone as confusion kicks in. “What?”
“I don’t know what the fuck you thought you were doing by coming here—” I’m struggling to keep my voice level. “—but you need to fucking go. Now .”
“I’m trying to … to … connect with you. To make you understand that I’m not here to purposely ruin your life. That I?—”
I shoot forward in my chair so fast I’m not even aware of moving. “I don’t fucking care! I don’t want to know you or who you were or any of this shit. Now, get the hell out of my house!”
Hudson’s gaping, blinking at me like he’s not sure what’s happening, and I’m honestly not sure myself.
My heart is thudding, face building with emotion that’s trying to force its way out of my eyes.
Every little scar on my arms and chest and back feels like they’re trying to burn through my skin, and as he glares at me and I glare at him, it feels like all the oxygen around us is growing thin.
His shock melts like a snowflake in spring, and he whispers, “I never want to go back to that. So no. I’m not leaving Wilde’s End. Just wanted you to understand.”
And I know I should say something, but the rippling hurt I keep locked away in my chest is threatening to make itself known. I keep my jaw clamped shut, my hands in fists on the armrests of the small chair.
Hudson stands, and there’s emotion trying to beg its way out of his eyes as well, but all we can do is glare at each other until he leaves.
I hear the engine long after it’s stopped echoing through the trees.
Then the scent comes back to me. Oil and fuel and blood. Fresh rain. Pain everywhere.
I swallow thickly before his name can slip past my lips, and so it fills my head instead.
Kyran …