Chapter 24
Hudson
The soup sloshed in the containers as I juggled them while I opened the door.
It was past ten, and my stomach was growling.
I’d checked on Olivia before leaving for town, finding her sound asleep on the couch, the robe clutched in her hands, a peaceful calm over her expression.
Seeing her so sick had been a punch in the gut earlier.
I hated seeing her hurt, and a sense of helplessness had come over me.
I’d done the only thing I could think of, supported her and cared for her.
It was what I’d always done for her and always would… if she let me.
That was the thing that continued to confound me. The back and forth that plagued her, like an internal battle with warring sides of herself. Every time I thought she was fine, she would waver, and an unrelenting sense of dread continued to coil inside of me.
The door opened, and I pushed inside, juggling the packages and scolding myself for being too worried to make more than one trip. I didn’t bother taking my boots or coat off and went straight to the island to drop the packages.
When I turned to the living room, Olivia was sitting with her legs folded in.
One of my old college hoodies engulfed her body, her bare ankles peeking out from between it and where the blanket covered her feet.
She looked adorable and sexy, a mature version of the girl I’d fallen for when we were teenagers.
“Where did you dig up that old thing?” I asked, taking my jacket off.
“In the back of your closet.”
“Snooping for anything in particular?”
She gave me a shrug as I hung my jacket and pulled my boots off.
“Just a piece of you.” Calm and confident, with no sign of the fractured woman I’d held in the shower earlier. Something that had the worry gnawing at me because I suspected that meant she’d made a decision that had caused the change.
“Haven’t seen that since school. Forgot I had it, actually.” It was a complete lie because I’d failed to donate it the hundred times I’d tried. The memory of her wearing it was still burned into my mind, and I could never part with it.
“What did you bring me?”
I cocked my brow, giving her a sideways grin.
“And you assume any of this is for you?” It was.
I’d stopped in multiple stores, the need to spoil her driving me.
More socks, these with rabbits on them, a candle, a romance book Rick at the bookstore recommended, a journal made of soft pink leather, and the hat she’d ordered for her nephew.
All things I hadn’t needed to get, except for the hat.
But I wanted her smile, her laughter. To cherish them and store them away when she left.
The thought stabbed me with an intense flare of pain that had my heart faltering.
“Isn’t it?” That smile nearly broke me.
“Yeah, it is,” I told her, rubbing the back of my head as she jumped from the couch and ran to the island.
It was almost like she was a lost girl locked in a woman’s body.
Not a woman who had everything money could buy.
The sweatshirt draped over her long limbs, covering her almost to her knees.
Her mauve toenails were bright against the brown flooring.
I blocked her with my body, and she looked up at me with pouty lips. “You were gone a long time.”
“True, but you’re worth it.” The smile grew, the hues of her eyes a myriad of shades that nearly knocked the air from me. “Feeling better?”
“Much. I took a nap and had a cup of tea.”
“You need water.” Shit, I sounded like a father. Not that she would notice because her father had been a dick.
“I had some, but I’m getting hungry.”
“Good thing I had Jessie pack up some noodle soup for you. She packed up some rolls, too, said the bread would soothe your stomach.”
“That was nice.”
Our eyes stayed locked, heat growing in my chest along with an uncomfortable sensation because her voice was too smooth, too steady.
I cleared my throat, stepping from the island so she could get to the packages, but she didn’t move toward them.
Instead, she came closer, lifted on her toes and pulled my mouth to hers.
Searing like a brand, the kiss reached so deep into my body that my toes curled.
And within the kiss, I sensed it—the resignation, the decision.
Fuck, she was leaving me. The acknowledgment struck me like a freight train, and I grabbed her waist, tugging her against me as if that would keep her there.
I’d known it was coming. We had no choice because she had a life there and I had one here, but I’d hoped we could work something out.
Travel back and forth, have her work from my place some weeks.
Me…well, I hadn’t worked that out yet. But she had.
In the time I’d been gone, whatever emotional carnage she had experienced in the shower had driven her to decide without me.
Maybe it had been my words. Honest and raw, they had come from me unbidden and untethered.
“Olivia,” I murmured, my hold so tight I feared I would hurt her. “Please don’t…” I hated the pleading in my words, remembering how they had come in a rush of emotion when she’d left me all those years ago.
“I need to,” she said, halting our kiss and dropping her head. “I have no choice.”
“You have a fucking choice, Olivia.”
She lifted her eyes. No doubt sat in them. No tears. Only resignation. “I want to spend tonight and tomorrow pretending this will never end.”
“It doesn’t have to end.” My voice went hoarse, my defenses rising as my mind screamed that it had warned me not to lower them. Not to let her back in. My chest convulsed as if a thousand strokes were lashing it.
“I don’t know who I am anymore.”
I searched her eyes, understanding pushing at my periphery.
“You’re my girl,” I said, tucking a curl behind her ear.
“I am, but I don’t know who she is because I left her behind when I walked out on you.”
Then don’t walk out again.
“What do you want, Olivia? What will make you happy?” Because all I want is for you to be happy.
“Time.”
I nodded, the move an exercise in discretion because I really wanted to shake her and scream that she’d had fifteen years. We’d lost so much time that we had no more to forfeit.
“Then that’s what I’ll give you.”
She scrunched my shirt in her hand and pulled me back to her. “I don’t want to think about it until I can no longer avoid it. I want to spend tonight and tomorrow with you, not worrying about anything but when you’ll touch me again.”
I smoothed my hand over her cheek and tipped her chin, kissing her and hoping she could feel how badly this was hurting me. How seeing her leave on Monday and knowing she might not return would kill me, and I didn’t think I’d ever recover.
Her hands wrapped around my neck, fingers digging into my hair as she nearly climbed my body, as if she could climb right into me. I knew then that she was well aware of what this would do to me because it would do the same to her.
Picking her up, I walked her to the living room and spent the next hour memorizing every fine detail of her while our soup grew cold.
I rubbed my nose, watching as the black sedan approached the house. With every stone that crunched below its tires, my heart cracked a little more.
“Olivia,” I called up the stairs before picking up her suitcase and moving it to the door. Only a week ago, I’d brought it in, never realizing how much would change in a week.
Her heels clicked down the stairs, and I moved to the island, my eyes raking over her body. She was all power and sex appeal. Nothing like the woman who’d curled up in my sweatshirt or ridden carefree across the fields with her long hair streaming behind her.
A red, ribbed turtleneck accentuated her chest and tapered to where her black belt defined the darker-shaded gray slacks. Her hair was loose and pulled to the side, and a rich shade of lipstick stained her lips, her charcoal eyeshadow making the golden hues of her eyes pop.
I tucked my hands in my pockets, fearing I would reach out and touch her, knowing if I did, I would never let her walk out. I really didn’t know why I wasn’t fighting this. Only those words, I don’t know who I am anymore, kept me from doing it.
I’d spent all of Sunday touching her. Only leaving my bed to get us food and use the bathroom.
And this morning, she’d woken me, climbing onto me and riding me so hard I’d nearly blacked out.
That didn’t stop me from taking her again in the shower.
It was the last time she’d let me touch her.
Right before she’d donned her mask again, telling me she needed to pack and closing the guest room door.
This was the first time I’d seen her since.
The suitcase had been outside the bedroom door when I’d gone up to check on her.
She stopped a few feet from me, and it took everything I had not to pull her to me.
“Hudson, I—”
“Don’t, Olivia. Let’s just make this as easy as we can.” Easy? Nothing about this was easy. I didn’t know when she would return, or if she ever would. “I packed up the things I got you Saturday and put them in a bag,” I said, nodding to the brown-handled bag near the suitcase.
Her phone buzzed, and I winced as she looked at it. “The driver’s here.”
“I know.”
She opened her mouth to speak, and I turned my back on her. I couldn’t listen anymore. I knew she needed space, time to figure herself out, but that didn’t mean this didn’t hurt. I tugged the door open and took the bags out, hearing her heels set a constant rhythm behind me.
The driver greeted me and took the bags from me.
As he shut the trunk, Olivia’s hand rested on my arm.
Twisting around, I inhaled, the act like nails scraping down my throat.
She’d put her coat on and tied it around her waist. She could have been a model, she looked so poised, perfect, and beautiful.
I didn’t know what to say to her. Tell her how agonizing this was?
Confess my love again? Beg her to stay? It wouldn’t matter.
She had to leave. We’d both known she would.
Our only mistake was believing this could last. And maybe it would…
once she figured things out. Unable to stop myself, I reached out and tangled my hand in her hair, pulling her mouth to mine.
She went limp in my arms, her mouth parting for me, emotion surging forth and embedding itself into my soul.
Her hands climbed up my chest, a whimper slipping through her lips and only causing me to deepen the kiss.
When she was breathless, her body trembling, I parted my lips from hers, ending the kiss.
“I love you, Olivia Icinda. Every facet of you, every inch of you. You don’t have to be perfect for me or anyone. No matter who you are, I’ll always love you.”
Emotion flickered in her eyes, but no tears came. She wouldn’t let herself cry, not this version of her.
“I know, and that’s why I need to leave.”
Her words were like a sword that cleaved my chest in two.
“Because I love you?”
“Because you love someone I don’t know and I need to find her, to…love her, too, before I can let you love me without the fight.” My words in the shower. Ones that had shifted the mood and pushed her to this point.
I nodded, and she took my face in her hands. Searching her eyes, I covered her hands with my own.
“And if you never return to me?”
She flinched, and I knew it was a possibility. That she would never find herself, that the mask would reform and she would force herself to forget who she was with me. To forget that I loved her.
“I love you, Hudson.” She brought my face down and kissed me again.
As her lips separated from mine in a slow, hesitant moment, she exhaled as if she were leaving something behind.
A hint of her soul, a sliver of her love, a reminder of her touch.
Before I could soak it in, she was gone.
Climbing into the car without looking back.
The driver gave me a sad look as he closed her door and walked to the front of the car.
I stood there, staring at the driveway long after the car had left, tears streaking their way down my cheeks, my hands too gripped against the onslaught of anguish to wipe them away.