Chapter 9
Hudson
My feet thudded as I trudged back down the stairs, the sound in rhythm with my heartbeat.
Olivia was killing me. Enough to make me reconsider the hate that simmered in my veins and accept the dull thrumming in my chest that never faded.
I swiped my hand down my face, trying to calm myself down and erase the image of her exposed body from my mind.
Fucking perfect, like she always was. Curves that teased, even if she had lost weight. And those stockings.
I stalked to my office, ripping the paper horses from my desk and shoving them into a drawer.
I’d considered tearing them up and throwing them away hundreds of times but could never bring myself to do it.
They were my only connection to her. The only tangible thing that reminded me it had been real. Not some dream.
Sitting, I leaned my elbows on the desk and rested my head in my hands, remembering the day I’d taken them down from my room.
I’d torn two sets, but when I came to the brown one, the delicately shaped chestnut horses hanging in a line over my bed where I’d kept them every year, I had hesitated.
With gentle hands, I had peeled the tape and folded the horses like an accordion before tucking them into my dresser.
They’d moved home with me and then to Montana.
And every time nostalgia hit, I would take them out and contemplate how a girl who had loved me enough to cramp her hands making lines of paper horses for my birthday, who had sworn her love to me in whispered vows and breathy moans, in the darkest nights and the brightest of days, could give it all up over a petty fight.
A stupid, senseless argument she had started and ended by walking out.
She had been my everything, and suddenly she was gone. Leaving me hollowed out and wounded.
I sat back, wiping my hand over my eyes and reminding myself that she had left me. With no good reason and no warning.
The sound of her steps on the stairs had me rising and heading to the kitchen, where she’d set her laptop up.
I rounded the corner from the living room and stopped in my tracks.
If it weren’t for the look of complete discomfort on her face, I would have thought we were back in school.
Gone was the elegant businesswoman, and with her disappearance, Olivia looked younger than her thirty-seven years.
It seemed funny that I still remembered her birthday after all these years.
That she was exactly a year and five days younger than me.
That I thought of her every September when we would celebrate our birthdays together, tangled up in my bedsheets after eating and drinking all day.
The jeans fit her figure too perfectly, highlighting the curve of her hips and her ass, which I couldn’t lift my eyes from as she turned with her shopping bag in hand and walked to the laundry room.
And that shirt. Shit, that shirt was snug and cut low enough to emphasize the swell of her breasts.
The blue color made the hues of her eyes sparkle when she turned back to me.
“I’ll just leave these for you,” she said, derailing the dirty thoughts that were forming in my head.
“I don’t think so.”
She turned to face me, the bag banging against her leg as she put her hands on her hips. “I don’t do laundry.”
I walked over to her, grabbed the bag and her hand. A mistake because it fit perfectly in mine. Small and soft to my large, rough hand. Dragging her to the washing machine, I plopped the bag onto the dryer.
“You do now. Should we start with the basics?”
Her pout enlarged her bottom lip, and I had the urge to lean over and drag my teeth over it.
“Take the clothes out. You’ll need to remove the tags like you did for the ones you’re wearing.”
She stared at me like I was explaining rocket science, and I stepped behind her. Her hair was thick and smelled like jasmine when I lifted it to check the back of her shirt.
“What are you doing?” she asked, her voice breathy.
What was I doing? I let the strands of her hair slip through my fingers as I pushed them to the side of her neck.
My fingers trailed down her neck to the shirt, her skin so soft I wanted to continue touching her, to tear the shirt off and take her against the washer.
To hear her cry out my name as I filled her.
Dangerous. That’s what having her here was.
Stirring up the need that had tormented me for years, a need no one could satisfy because there was no one like Olivia. No one undid me the way she did.
“Hudson?” A mere whisper that brought me back to the reality that I was pressed against her, my fingers fisted in her hair, my hand so close to sliding down her hip that I jerked it away.
I stepped back, untangling my hand from her hair, and pulled the back of her shirt to reveal the tag still in it.
“You can’t even take a tag off?” My voice was hoarse, and I took my irritation and let it feed my urgent need to calm my body down again. “What the hell happened to you? You’re like a child…no, even a child knows to take the tag off their clothes.”
She spun, anger etched in her features, fire in her eyes.
“There were no scissors, and I didn’t want to rip the material. Not that I should care, because I’ll never keep these clothes. They’ll go to charity when I return home so I don’t have any reminders of my time in this hellhole with you.”
The air hissed through my teeth, and I stepped further into her space, trapping her between me and the washer.
“Take the fucking clothes and go pack. I’m done with you. You can stay with Russ and Bridget. I’m sure the pig will stay away from you. They know to avoid rotten things.”
The absolute devastation that slashed across her face had me regretting my words.
She tried to recover, to hide it from me, but her mask had slipped, and she couldn’t seem to pull it back in place.
I turned my back on her and walked away, too pissed at myself, too annoyed with the situation to say what needed to be said.
To demand an explanation for why she had left me.
To tell her I had never gotten over her, that she had left me bruised and scarred so badly no other woman had ever gotten close enough to heal me.
To tell her there was no one who could, except her.
“I…” Her voice caught, and I glanced over my shoulder to see her as she had been when we were together.
Fragile and broken. Was she still like this, and I’d only seen the exterior that she wanted people to see?
I had been her shelter, but had anyone taken my place, or had leaving me left her out in the storm all these years as it battered her so badly that it shaped her into the woman she now was?
I scraped my hand through my hair and grabbed a pair of scissors from the kitchen.
Heavy steps made the only sound as I brought them over to her and turned her body again.
Snipping the first tag, I handed it over her shoulder to her.
Tugging at the back of her jeans, I freed her from the other one, only then seeing that her feet were bare.
The weather was turning colder, and my floors were the first to carry the chill.
“Don’t you have socks?” I asked, handing her the other tag.
She took a long inhale, and I saw the change in her body. How rigid she became, like she was building a wall over her skin, impenetrable. The shield against the storm. The one that had taken my place.
“No,” she snapped, looking around and grabbing the scissors from me. She dumped the bag of clothes onto the washer lid and started snipping tags. “I’m not an idiot, you know. I know how to do things, I just don’t have to, so I never think about it.”
“I never called you an idiot,” I said, my defenses lowering.
“But that’s what you think.”
I took her shoulders and turned her to face me. “I don’t think you’re stupid, Olivia. I know you’re not. I think you’re spoiled. That you stopped doing anything that you consider work, anything that makes you average like the rest of us. Anything that makes you…vulnerable.”
She tilted her head. “Cutting tags off clothes is vulnerability?” The tug of her lip matched her teasing tone.
“Give me those,” I said, pulling the scissors from her hand.
“But I’m not done being vulnerable.” She meant it as a joke, but it came out flat and too heavy. Her lashes fluttered as she dropped her eyes.
Lifting her chin, I forced her to look at me, losing myself in the myriad of hues in her irises. “You never have to hide your vulnerable moments from me, Olivia. Ever.”
She swallowed, her eyes growing large before she swiveled away from me. “Just let me have the scissors,” she said, her voice shaky.
With a sigh, I handed them back to her.
“I don’t know anyone who wears this stuff.” She held up the shirt I had picked out for her. “And this…this will look terrible on me. Where am I supposed to wear this?”
“To the festival,” I blurted out before thinking. “You’d look good in it.”
Shit, what was I doing? She wouldn't be here that long. Even if the storm washed the roads out, the river would recede in a few days. The storm was supposed to bring an unseasonably warm spell, and the road would dry up quickly. She’d be gone by mid-week, and I’d be back to my grumpy, lonely life.
But would I ever be the same now that I’d seen her again? I wasn’t inclined to think so.
She remained quiet, continuing to clip and mumbling about having bought too many things. Moving right past my comment because we both knew it was out of place. A slip of the tongue. A reminder of a time when our conversations flowed easily and comfortably.
“Now what?” she asked, piling the tags in her hand.
I walked over and grabbed the trash where she tossed them before handing me the scissors.
“You throw the clothes in the washer, and we go back to discussing the ranch.”
Replacing the trash can, I moved past her toward the kitchen. I grabbed my beer and heard her say, “Hudson?”