Chapter 8
HUDSON
The morning had started so well, waking up with Serena beside me. She’d been sound asleep, and I couldn’t bring myself to disturb her when I saw the purple bruises beneath her eyes. It was enough knowing she was there when I went downstairs.
Then she left without saying goodbye while I was busy in my home office.
I hated how empty my house felt without her here, but I understood how important Avery was to her.
The way she looked after her sister was one of the things I loved about Serena.
She was only twenty-six, nine years younger than me, but she was a fuck of a lot more mature than most people in Hollywood.
I had a busy day ahead of me, so I just sent a reply text thanking Serena for a great night before hopping in the shower.
As I made a coffee for the much-needed caffeine jolt before heading out to a lunch meeting with my agent and a couple of studio executives, my phone rang.
Sarah’s name lit up the screen, and I figured she was checking to make sure I would be on my way soon since she was meeting me at the restaurant.
Skipping the usual greeting, I answered, “Yes, I’m ready to go and won’t be late.”
“Hudson, I’m so sorry.” She sounded frazzled. “There’s a bad accident on the 405. Emergency crews are everywhere. I’m stuck in traffic, and there’s no way I’ll make it to lunch on time.”
Sarah had been with me for five years and took her role of keeping my daily life in order seriously. She was probably more upset about being late than I was. “There’s not much you can do when you’re stuck in a twenty-six-lane parking lot.”
“Tell me about it,” she sighed. “I’ll send Maddie instead.”
“Yeah, that’s fine.” I stepped into the garage. “Have her meet me there in twenty.”
“Will do. Might as well let her earn her keep since she’s on the payroll.”
She hung up before I could respond to her sarcastic comment.
Sarah hadn’t complained when I hired Maddie, even though she was the one who had to train my friend when I sprang the news I’d hired a third assistant on her unexpectedly.
She’d been a good sport about handing some of her easier tasks to Maddie, so I figured I could cut her some slack and decided not to take her to task for what she said later.
But I’d keep an eye on how she and Maddie interacted going forward.
I didn’t want to lose a good employee because my friend hadn’t yet found another job.
With that in mind, I did a quick search online while I drank my coffee.
I didn’t care about carrying Maddie on my payroll, but we might be reaching the point where it’d just be easier if I helped her get another job.
Her office experience back in Indiana, combined with a reference from me, should land her an interview for just about any job she wanted.
When I spotted an open positions posting from the agency I’d used when I hired Paul and Sarah, I fired off an email to my contact there to see about getting Maddie in for a meeting with them.
It was a solution I should’ve come up with sooner, but she’d been so insistent on wanting to find a job herself that I hadn’t put much thought into helping her beyond giving her a temporary position with my team.
With that done, I headed out. It didn’t take me long to make it to the meeting since it was at a private social club not too far from my house.
The lunch itself was low-key, the kind of thing that happened on this patio overlooking the ocean all the time.
It was an exclusive spot, designed for the echelon of the industry.
Membership was hard to come by, with a stricter vetting process than their other locations.
This made it coveted by studio execs and A-list celebrities.
We were seated at a quiet corner table overlooking the water, talking through a potential action project that could be my next big franchise move.
The conversation flowed easily, with location ideas and a few laughs about past stunts gone wrong, since I was known for preferring roles that gave me the chance to do a few of my own.
I kept one ear on the business and the other on making sure the vibe stayed relaxed.
Maddie sat quietly beside me, taking notes on a pad of paper without drawing attention to herself.
She’d complained about not being able to use her phone while she was at the table, but the restrictions were one of the things I liked most about this place.
But she did her job, even reminding me of a scheduling conflict when the producers started pushing dates. She was efficient, professional, and stayed in the background exactly the way a good assistant should.
I felt a quiet satisfaction watching her work. It felt good to give her purpose after everything she’d been through.
One of the producers leaned back, swirling his iced tea. “So, Hudson, we’re thinking of an early spring start if we lock the script. You still good with the physical commitment? We’d need you in the gym six days a week for the fight choreography.”
“Absolutely.” I grinned. “You know I live for that stuff. Just make sure the stunt coordinator doesn’t try to kill me on day one again.”
The table laughed, and Maddie made a quick note, probably to block out gym time in my calendar.
My mind drifted to Serena. She looked so tired this morning. I hoped whatever Avery needed hadn’t taken up so much time that Serena didn’t get the chance to rest.
My agent leaned forward. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. The quote is good, but I’d like to see more detail on the backend percentage and the box-office bonus. Hudson is worth every cent you’ll pay in the end. You’ll fill those seats with his name alone.”
“Now, John. It’s not like we’re lowballing you here,” one of the execs murmured.
I zoned out while John haggled with them. He was damn good at his job, so I had the utmost confidence he’d finagle them into the best possible deal.
When the check came, I signed it without a second thought, still riding the easy energy of the meeting. Tom, the head honcho at the studio, joked, “With what John wants us to pay you, I guess I won’t argue too much about being the one who should pay.”
John clapped him on the shoulder. “I’ll just get you to pay a rental fee for his private jet to make up for it.”
Maddie fell into step beside me as we headed toward the exit, but her heel caught on a hand-woven rug. She stumbled forward with a little yelp. I reached out and put my hand on her lower back to steady her, keeping her upright until she regained her footing.
“You okay?”
“Yeah, thanks.” She laughed, her cheeks a little pink as she straightened her blouse. “These heels can be a killer.”
I didn’t think anything of it until an hour later. Back at the Malibu house, Maddie was gathering her things to run some quick errands for me—picking up dry-cleaning and a few things from the store.
She glanced at her phone and froze. “Oh no.”
“Is traffic that bad?” I asked, assuming she’d put the address for the cleaners in her maps app and was still surprised by how long it could take to go five miles in Malibu.
“I wish, but I think I might’ve messed up again.” At my stunned look, she rushed to add, “It’s not my fault this time. Like at all. See.”
She turned the screen toward me. Someone had gotten a photo of us from inside the social club, which shouldn’t have been possible.
Even worse, it had been taken at the exact moment I’d steadied Maddie so she didn’t fall on her ass.
The shot showed my hand resting on her lower back, her head tilted back like she was looking up at me.
The caption on the biggest gossip site was the worst kind of clickbait.
Hudson Holt’s mystery woman? Action star spotted getting cozy with assistant while girlfriend Serena Watts keeps low profile after recent red-carpet drama.
I stared at the photo, annoyance flaring first, quickly followed by worry. The last thing Serena needed right now was a headline that made it look like I was cozying up to someone else while she was still dealing with the fallout from the dress fiasco.
I was just being a decent human being, but the media loved twisting innocent moments into scandals. Serena would understand when I explained, though. She knew what the vultures were like.
“Don’t worry about it.” I handed the phone back to her. “It’s bullshit tabloid crap. They twist everything. I’ll explain to Serena.”
Maddie looked relieved, her shoulders relaxing. “Thanks, Hudson. I really didn’t mean to cause any trouble.”
“I know.” I raked my fingers through my hair. “The bigger issue is how the fuck someone even took this photo. I’ll see if they can figure out what the hell happened.”
“Yeah, that’s so weird when I couldn’t even use my phone basically the whole time I was there.”
She gave me one last apologetic smile and headed out to run the errand, leaving me standing on the deck with the ocean crashing below.
I pulled my phone out of my pocket and fired off an email to my publicist, agent, and lawyer.
Having my photo taken at the social club was bad enough, but that image being used to imply I was cheating on Serena with Maddie was completely unacceptable.
I normally ignored shit like this because I knew how hard it was to control the narrative.
Gossip sites were very careful with how they worded things, making it harder for celebrities to succeed in defamation claims. Proving a negative was difficult, but even that wouldn’t be good enough because it was written as conjecture, not fact.
And if I somehow managed to pass that hurdle, I still had to prove they acted with malice since I was a public figure.
The best I could hope for was a retraction, so I put my team on finding a way to make that happen. Because I was starting to worry that all these moments I thought weren’t a big deal were starting to add up to something I didn’t want to look at too closely.