CHAPTER 24
Hudson woke out of a deep sleep to his phone buzzing on the nightstand. He reached for it blindly. “Mrphello?” he slurred, trying to get his bearings. He hoped it wasn’t a plumbing emergency—a busted pipe or, God, a flooded house. Both kids were at home, so at least they were okay.
“Hudson?”
He shook the sleep off as his brain registered: it was Willa, and she sounded like she was crying. “Willa? Are you okay? What’s wrong?”
“There ... there ...” She hiccuped, and he was already out of bed, pulling on a shirt and a pair of jeans as he wedged the phone between his ear and his shoulder. He wasn’t even consciously thinking about his actions. “There was a skunk and it’s in the house and I think it sprayed everything!”
Ah, shit. While he was sure the skunk couldn’t physically hurt her, they were never good things to run into. “Did it get you? Are you sprayed?” he asked. Not that it would’ve changed anything other than what he’d bring over. He pulled on socks and shoved his feet into his work boots.
“No.” A loud sniffle and another hiccup. “But ... it ruined all my notes. I’m sure they smell horrible. And all my food’s in there. And the house, oh my God, the house smells so bad, I had no idea it could ... and I need that stuff. I’m supposed to have all this stuff ready for the chef, and it all smells rancid, and I don’t know what to do ...”
She started crying, gulping sobs that broke his heart.
“You hang tight, okay? I will be there in a few minutes.”
He waited for her to make a garbled noise that he was assuming was at least “okay” or “yes.” Then he grabbed his keys and headed over there.
She was sitting on the front lawn, hugging her knees to her chest and rocking slightly. He shut off his truck and rushed to her. Her tearstained face, lit by the dim light of the moon, looked up at him in anguish.
“I’m so sorry,” she half whispered. “I just ... I didn’t know who else to call.”
“Oh, sweetheart,” he murmured, before hunkering down on the ground next to her, crossing his legs, and pulling her onto his lap. She snuggled against him, and he felt hot tears through the thin material of the T-shirt he’d pulled on. He smoothed her hair and nuzzled the crown of her head as he made soothing noises. “It’ll be all right, baby, I promise.”
She clutched him harder, like a baby koala bear tightening its grip, and snuffled.
He wasn’t sure how long they sat there, him rocking her and nuzzling her, her holding him like he was a life preserver. But finally, eventually, she pulled back a little, rubbing at her eyes and nose.
“Oh my God, I made you a mess,” she said, sounding appalled and starting to pull away, but he looped his arms gently around her, rubbing her back in calming circles.
“I genuinely don’t care,” he said.
“I soaked your shirt!”
“Really don’t care,” he echoed, smoothing some tears from her cheeks. Her eyes looked puffy, and her expression was one of exhausted pain. “I’m glad that you thought of me. I’m going to help, okay?”
She blinked. “How?”
“First, I’m going to see if the skunk is still there,” he said, which brought another round of tears. “I’m going to assess the damage, okay? Then, tomorrow, I’m going to look at getting some special fans and filters—the kind that the big damage-repair places use for, like, mold mitigation and things. Don’t worry. We’ll get you back to normal in no time.”
She sighed, and it sounded like a child who had stayed up too late and was fighting sleep. “But ... I can’t sleep in there now,” she said, sounding confused.
“I know.” He hugged her. “It’s late. I’m going to take you home with me, okay?”
She still stared at him, like he’d suddenly started speaking in pig latin for no reason. “Home?”
“My home. My house,” he clarified. “You can crash with me until we get your house stuff figured out.”
“This is going to be expensive, isn’t it?” She sounded a little nervous, and also defeated.
“It doesn’t have to be.” He’d make sure of that.
She knuckled at the last of the tears in her eyes. “You can’t keep doing favors for me, Hud.”
“Why?” He nudged her chin up so that she was looking at him. “Why can’t I? I’m not expecting anything. You need help, and I can give it. Why won’t you let me?”
She swallowed hard enough for him to see her throat working. “I’m not used to this.”
“Don’t know what to tell you there, other than get used to it. Because I like helping you feel better, and I’m going to do it every chance I get.” He nudged her off his lap, then tugged her to her feet. Even though it was summer, there was still a cool breeze coming off the sound, and she was just in a T-shirt and jeans and bare feet. She was shivering. “I’m going to have you get in the truck, okay? I’ll be there in a minute.”
She didn’t respond, just had a blank expression, not aloof this time but lost, exhausted, and possibly near her breaking point. So he walked her over to the truck, putting her into the passenger seat of the cab. She went with him without a word, seeming so tired that she was as pliant as Play-Doh.
Once he got her belted in (just for his own peace of mind, since by that point it really seemed like she’d checked out for the night), he did a quick survey of the kitchen. The skunk must’ve made it out the door, and yeah, the smell was bad. Eye-wateringly bad. Her kitchen was toast for the short term, and the rest of the house wasn’t going to be much better. He’d figure out how to save things from there. In the meantime, he grabbed her key, locked the doors, and then headed back out to the cab, hoping the scent didn’t cling to his clothes.
It apparently did a little, if the way her nose wrinkled when he climbed behind the steering wheel was any indication. “God, I did not need this,” she moaned. “I’m supposed to show photos and recipe stuff to the guy this week, in Seattle!”
“I mean it, I’ve got this.”
He turned on the car, then cranked up the heater. When he noticed she was still shivering, he pulled a blanket from behind the seat and covered her with it. In the darkness, he heard her say, “I’m used to going to the ER at this time of night.”
He stilled. “Your husband?”
“We used to joke that his shit never happened during daylight hours,” she said, even though there was no humor evident in her voice. “At least the really dramatic stuff. He had tons of doctors’ appointments—neurologist, endocrinologist, and the usual garden-variety stuff. But when it looked like he was going to die, or when things just jumped the rails, it was always at like three in the morning.”
His heart wrenched. He’d had moments of worry as a parent, but this—he couldn’t imagine. “That must’ve been really hard.” Which was an understatement, but what else could he say?
“It was.” Her voice was soft, just loud enough to be heard over the engine. “There were days when I was so scared and so tired that I thought I’d just collapse. And ...”
There was a hitch, a small one, before she continued, her voice only a little thready as she continued.
“I didn’t have anyone to call. My parents were older, and while they didn’t hate Steven, they’d disagreed with our marriage. The fact that I was ten years younger than him, and that we’d gotten married just a little over a year after I graduated from college. They thought that I was being foolish, and they told me that if I was going to make that decision, they couldn’t support it ... and that was before they found out he had a chronic illness.”
He put the truck in drive and headed for the house. He didn’t say a word, just listened to her as the story poured out, her voice watery.
“And if I called his parents—they would’ve dropped everything, but they also couldn’t necessarily help ,” she said. “His father’s default was just getting angry. Once, I called them, and they showed up at the ER, and his dad got kicked out for being belligerent. He was a big fancy business lawyer of some sort, and used to getting his way—and used to getting louder when he didn’t, until he did get his way. So they said he was verbally aggressive, which, let me tell you, only made what I was trying to do harder. His mother was trying to placate her husband and basically wringing her hands over her son.”
“That sounds so fucking hard.”
She sighed softly. “You wind up doing what you have to. I got used to checking his blood sugar on my phone in the middle of the night, keeping track of his meds and all the side effects—neuropathy, depression, pain control, the whole smash. Making sure his pump wasn’t acting up. After a while, it just became routine. Like, your-disaster-is-my-Tuesday kind of thing.”
He wanted so badly to hold her. He pulled into his driveway, parking in his spot near the farmhouse. When he killed the engine, he turned to her, stroking her cheek.
“I am so very, very sorry,” he finally said. “That you lost your husband, and that you had to go through all of that, all by yourself.”
“I’m not telling you that to make you feel bad for me,” she countered, her eyes shining, not with tears but with gratitude. “I’m telling you because tonight was the first time I’ve ever felt like I could call somebody and they’d make it better.”
He got out of the truck and went to her side of the cab. He opened the door. She stepped out ... then gave him a hug.
He tucked her against his ribs and nuzzled her hair, faint skunk smell or not. He held her tightly but carefully, wanting to be able to help her for as long as he could.
Maybe forever, he realized. If she’d let him.
He forced himself to focus on practicalities. “I can give you some clothes you can use as pajamas. You’ll probably want to take a shower—not that you really smell of skunk,” he reassured her, “but just to feel better. Then you can—”
He froze, realizing.
Jeremy was home, sleeping in his room.
Kimber was also home, sleeping in her room.
“—take my bed,” he said.
Apparently she, too, had done the bed math in this situation. “Where are you going to sleep, though?”
“Our couch is pretty comfortable.” Which it was. Well, comfortable enough to sit on. Maybe not the best for actually sleeping, but he wasn’t planning on sleeping that long anyway. Between thinking of her and getting up and getting a move on fixing her problem, he didn’t think he’d crash for more than a few hours.
She bit her lip, distracting him. “I don’t want to put you out of your bed, Hudson.”
He tucked her hair behind her ear. “Kimber gets up early, and I think you need to get as much sleep as possible,” he insisted. “I don’t mind, really.”
“You already got up at three in the morning to bail me out,” she countered, digging her heels in and crossing her arms. “I can’t make you have a bad night’s sleep too.”
He was tired, and he was about to make his case, when she surprised him.
“Why don’t we just share?”