Chapter 29
Chapter Twenty-Nine
UNFRIENDLY NEIGHBORHOOD SPIDERMAN
HUDSON
What in the ever-loving fuck are the chances.
The text came in as I was pulling on my jacket, the SOS ping hitting something primal, the way fire alarms are designed to.
Not fear, exactly. Something faster. I don't have a word for what that does to a person.
I just know I was moving before I even thought to text back.
Instinct pulling ahead of logic before logic even had its shoes on.
We hadn’t been in a good place, despite trying to get her to have a conversation, she made it clear what she needed was space.
Good fucking job, Hudson. Look what that allowed to happen.
The fact that she was standing in her apartment with a government agent and her SOS came directly to me. She set it all aside when she actually needed help. Thank fucking god.
She opened the door, and whatever she was trying to communicate with her eyes and overacting landed with all the subtlety of a thrown brick.
She’d already made up something foolish and backed herself into a corner, and her cheeks were red and her eyes were terrified, and all I know is there isn’t much I wouldn’t have done to change that.
Which is exactly how I ended up on the balcony.
Stood there long enough to look down once, against the advice of every action movie I'd ever seen, and immediately understand why they say not to. I’ll never do that again.
I’d say I’ll never scale the side of an apartment building seven floors up again either, but I wouldn’t have imagined I’d be in this position now. So, who the fuck knows.
I gripped the railing and swung one leg over.
Then the other. And I was standing on the wrong side of it, back flat against the building’s exterior wall, both hands locked white-knuckled, one still clutching the railing as the other gripped the wall itself.
There was nothing between me and the city except the early morning air, which is less romantic and much more fatal than it sounds.
‘This is insane,’ said the fully functioning part of my brain.
‘She needs you,’ said the rest of it.
Guess which part won? No. Fucking. Contest.
The exterior of the building has about eighteen inches of a ledge that allowed me to shuffle my feet the distance between my balcony and hers, which from the inside feels like a shared wall and from the outside feels like the Grand Canyon.
One foot planted. Then the other. Following step by step. My back scraped the wall as I had one hand still gripping my railing, one arm outstretched toward hers.
For a moment I imagined what Lucas would say in my eulogy. ‘He died trying to protect the woman—’ Oh fuck it. I take what felt like the biggest breath of my life and released my hand that was clinging to my railing so the other could reach hers.
Then both hands on the railing, both feet on the narrow ledge, nose to nose with her bathroom window which was, thankfully, open, because of course she leaves it open, because she has never once in her life thought to herself perhaps I should close this massive view to the outside world.
I got one leg through the window, then my torso, and then the shower head, which I had not considered would actually be on, hit me directly in the side of the face with full pressure.
Both feet landed in the tub and I grabbed the curtain rod on pure reflex. It held. By the mercy of whatever contractor installed it thirty years ago and the grace of something I’ve only ever been skeptical about, it held.
I stood in the running shower, fully-dressed, soaked from the neck down, hair plastered flat, curtain rod still in my hands like I was holding a trophy for the worst morning of a calendar year.
And somehow still, the first morning I woke up alone in my apartment after she told me to leave? Still might win.
When I cracked the door and called to her, she came running, towel in hand, and the way I wanted to wrap my hands around her. The way I almost did. But I was entirely on the back foot coming into it, no clue what she had already said.
She seemed surprised I got her, like I wouldn’t have done whatever it takes, for her.
It’s not fair to her, how I feel. I told her it would be a risk, she agreed to it as I laid her on her bed.
And it should be clear to her it means I’ll risk life and limb if I have to.
But I was filled with rage when I saw the fear on her face.
The steamed bathroom did nothing to hide it, none of the tension between us evaporated, it took the life of the steam that filled the room to push us closer together.
And under different circumstances, she’d be bent over the sink so I could see her face as I took her from behind.
But I was not letting this man spend another second in a place that is hers. He was on the kind of power trip that believes his job title gives him license to be worse than he is. He uses it to justify every miserable thing he’s ever done and why no one wants to fuck him.
When I stepped into her living room, towel low, clothes on the bathroom floor, the man was exactly what I expected. Brown suit, clipboard posture. Shit-eating grin on his face fueled by some red-pill thread.
I made it undeniably clear that there was a threat in my voice and he scampered his way pathetically out the door. Little does he know, I’m about to clear the rest of my fucking morning just for this.
I can feel Louisa behind me, barely breathing, her presence a warmth I have memorized without meaning to.
I can feel the exhale she releases when the latch clicks.
And I stand facing the closed door with my hands at my sides, clenched in fists a few phone calls will handle instead, and something I can’t name pressing hard against my sternum.
I turn around.
She’s got her back against the wall in an oversized t-shirt and leggings, feet bare, eyes enormous, but the relief on her face looks temporary. The absolute devastation of how much I want to protect that face. I take the few short steps toward her.
“You climbed…” She pauses. “The fucking…” Her voice gets louder, “BUILDING?!" she screams. She shoves me in the chest, and for all the feelings I’ve had in the last ten minutes, in the last few days, I am shocked in a way I can’t explain.
“What choice did I have?” I say it back, not mincing my own words, my tone harsh and I don’t care.
“I don’t know but—” she screams at me. In all the time we stood face to face fueled by something a lot simpler than whatever it is between us now, she never screamed, not like this.
“But nothing!” I cut her off. “I wasn’t going to leave you alone in here.” I throw my arm out to the room as I scream it.
She pushes off the wall. “You can’t just—” she begins, visibly flustered before starting again. “You don’t get to be reckless and then stand there like it's nothing.”
“What would you have me do?” My heart is racing, and her nostrils flare like I’m the only place she can direct rage.
I’ve almost missed it, when so much that’s happened has caused her fear.
“You texted me. So here I am,” I say, stepping closer, making her take steps back towards the wall where I lay my palm next to her face.
“No matter the reasons, no matter what happened between us, you’re my fucking wife. You understand? That’s not nothing.”
Our eyes are locked in a dangerous game, and it doesn't matter what happened.
“So what do you want, Louisa?” The question carries more weight than it should, because it isn't really about the window at all.
“What is it that you actually want from me? Because the last time you told me what you wanted, I gave it to you.”
“You’re right, you did. And you regretted it by the time the sun came up,” she says for the first time, ready to talk about it.
“That’s not what happened.” And I mean it as a kindness, but she doesn’t look at it that way. “I’m trying to protect you. We’re so close to the end. I’m not going to let anything jeopardize that, not even this.”
“That’s the problem,” she says quietly. “You’ll do that, you try to protect me without even including me.
” She pauses, frustrated, trying to find the words.
“And I’ll let you.” She looks at her hands, the ruby sitting on her finger where it has lived since I slipped it on.
“You make every decision like I'm something to be managed.”
“Louisa—”
“I don’t need you to regret it.” Her voice is very steady. “I just need to know you don’t.”
She’s perhaps more decisive than I’ve ever seen her.
I should tell her now. I need to, before the omission becomes the lie.
But she has spent her entire life being handled, her father's disappointment dressed up as high standards. I'm not her father. I know the difference between protecting someone and deciding for them. I do. Except I’m standing here making the same calculation, and the only honest distinction I can find is that mine comes from love, which is exactly what every person who has ever failed her would probably say. Telling her the truth now will confirm what she thinks is true. And I don’t know where that will leave us.
We’ve just barely survived this round. She's still breathing carefully, holding herself together by her will alone.
With the immigration interviews just over a month away, she has too much riding on this, and I can’t be the thing that unravels her.
I bought her apartment and didn’t tell her, which looks like every other time someone decided what was good for her without asking.
She needs to be chosen, not managed. I know that.
And I'm doing it anyway. So I tell myself it’s protection.
That I’m keeping it until after, until she has what she came here for.
Then I’ll let her go and it won’t matter if she hates me again.
Which has always been the plan. The worst plan I've ever had.
“I don’t regret it,” I say finally to her. Her shoulders relax the smallest amount. “But we both know it can’t happen again.”
“Right, someone could get the wrong idea,” she says. Not knowing how much I already have.
The morning light from her windows cuts flat and honest across the floor between us, but I won’t look away from her face, which looks like there are too many things she wants to say, but she holds them tight to her chest.
“Come on,” I offer instead, taking her hand, her eyes tracking mine. “Come home with me.” I walk us both out the door.
It was an eventful morning, all before 9 a.m., which is great, because it means by ten, I’m already on the phone with Lucas.
I have a perfectly good home office, it’s not large, but it does the job.
Though I always seemed to gravitate towards working from bed.
No wonder why. Now, with her on the couch, turning on sitcom background noise, as she sips a cup of tea to calm herself from her morning, I’m working from the kitchen island. Where she remains in view.
“What happened this morning was not standard. He entered without consent, recorded without two-party agreement, approached her alone without prior arrangement,” Lucas says.
“We have absolute grounds to file a formal complaint and request reassignment of the officer on your case. Am I missing anything?” He pauses, giving me a chance to correct any of his understanding of what happened.
“That’s it,” I confirm. Lucas isn’t an immigration attorney.
But he’s got contacts. He also just has more breadth of knowledge on these things than I do.
Even when we were in law school, throwing himself into community support, where he could offer advice.
His wife, Paola, is also a naturalized citizen, so he has some familiarity with the paperwork.
“How’s everyone doing,” he asks. I glance up from my laptop and see her curled under a blanket in the corner of the couch.
“We’ll be okay,” I say. In some ways, it’s true. In others, I’ve never believed myself less.
“I'll make some calls,” Lucas says. “New case agent by end of the week.”
“Today.”
“Today,” he confirms. A beat hangs on the line between us, and then, “Hud, I’ll handle this. I’ve got you, both.” I know he means it. I know that if I go to war, I couldn’t raise an army if I tried. But Lucas, they would all follow him. The irony is that if I have him, I don’t need an army at all.
As he’s hanging up I hear him, saying something in fractured Portuguese to Paola. Learning the language for her. And I know the only language Louisa has learned for me lately is mixed messages.