Chapter 8 #3
I glared at him over my shoulder, seeing him drop the pen and turn to me, frowning as his eyes landed on my feet.
He shook his head and reached for me, dragging me over to him.
My pulse thudded, all my defenses freezing as we lingered there, close enough that one more step would have me in his arms. A flash of hunger grazed his eyes before he bent and tugged my leg up, sending me off balance.
I grabbed onto his shoulders, noting how solid he was, how strong.
He tugged my shoe off and threw it across the room.
“What are you—”
“Shush. You don’t need to wear heels around me, and they look damned uncomfortable.
” He dropped my leg and took the other one, his hand lingering on my calf before it smoothed down to my foot where he ripped the shoe off and threw it.
He didn’t drop my leg immediately, his eyes finding mine and reminding me of the times he would watch me as I fell apart, my fingers pulling at chunks of his hair, his wicked grin clear against my most intimate spot, a sexy gleam to his eyes.
Air refused to flee my lungs, and my hold on his shoulders tightened.
But he broke the contact, cursing under his breath as he dropped my foot and rose, turning his back to me and gripping his hands on the island.
I stared at his back, so many words pressing for me to free them.
To tell him the truth. All of it. To admit that my heart was still his, every fragment that remained in the pile where it had turned to ash the day I walked away from him.
To have him hear my reasoning and to have my second chance. Just like Gabe had.
But second chances weren’t for me. Gabe was the one who got everything.
My father chose him every time, placing him first even when I had been first. I’d never resented Gabe, and I knew he would have given everything to me if he could have.
But it still hurt. Every harsh word, every insult, every insinuation that I was something less because I was a woman.
Every strike he landed against Gabe for even the slightest infraction he blamed on me.
“Why don’t you draw anymore?” Hudson was back to pretending the tension didn’t exist between us. That he hadn’t just held my gaze while heat scored us both.
I stepped around the island, suddenly aware of his height even to my solid five-ten height.
Where I towered over most men, especially in heels, Hudson always made me feel small.
At six-four, he was a towering wall, and I had once thought of him as my fortress.
The defense nothing could break through to hurt me.
With him, I had been safe, tucked away in his arms at college, with reality and the viciousness of my life only creeping back in when I returned home for breaks.
Even after my mother had died, being with Hudson had shielded me from the pain.
I could pretend when I was with him. Pretend my life was perfect, that my family was, that what the media reported as my mother’s undetected heart condition was the truth.
Not that she’d taken her life to escape hers. To escape my father. To leave us.
The revenge plot faded, only surfacing when Gabe would call me, his mind calculating ten steps ahead of me, building our finances and LLCs before I’d even gotten through my junior year.
With Hudson, nothing mattered until it did, and everything came crumbling down on me.
The fairytale I’d lived ended, and I stepped back into the real world. Cruel, cold, lethal.
I took my seat on the other side of the island again as Hudson pushed the notepad to me, then grumbled about me forgetting my drink. He turned and with thudding steps, took a glass from the cabinet, filling it with tap water. He planted it in front of me, saying, “Answer the question.”
“I don’t drink tap water, and why is it so important?”
His eyes narrowed. “You used to drink cheap beer from a keg, and you won’t drink tap water? Drink the damn water and answer the question.”
I squared my jaw, ready to fight him, but an enormous rush of exhaustion sank into me. His gaze never left mine as he watched me take a sip. I rubbed my lips together at the smoothness of the water. Foreign, but somehow refreshing.
“Well water,” he said as if I knew what that was. Maybe I should have since the ranch was ours. “Softener makes it better than that bottled crap they charge you two dollars for.”
“Interesting.” I set the water down and stared at it as it sloshed up and down, trying to settle into its state of dormancy again.
“Why don’t you draw, Olivia?” His voice was smooth, almost gentle, and I closed my eyes, letting it soothe me.
“Because there’s no place for it in my life.”
“But you loved to draw. You always did it.”
“No,” I said, with a shake of my head. “Not until I was away at school. And only there,” I admitted, peeking up at him.
Heavy and concerned brown eyes waited for my explanation.
I took the pad and looked at his sketch of the ranch.
“So, here’s what I’m thinking. With your knowledge of horses, this ranch needs to be restructured.
” I drew lines down the image, separating it into quadrants.
“Training is your specialty, that and breeding,” I said, thinking of the books in the living room.
“You have an eye for horses, and you're exceptional with them.”
“It’s been a long time since I’ve worked with horses, Olivia.”
My gaze rose to him. “And what do you call those two creatures in your barn? Summers of working with the best trainers in high school and then transitioning to the farm in Pennsylvania where you became a trainer. Every summer, every break, every off-season from lacrosse—that’s where you were when you weren’t with me. ”