Forever With You (25 page)

“Hmm.” She looked me over as if sizing me up. Then her attention went to the crowd tearing it up on the dance floor. She took another swallow of her drink. “I heard you saying something about addiction to Liesl. Are you a former alky?”

I laughed. She was as curious about me as I was about her. Perhaps if I spilled my story, she’d spill hers. Except at the moment, bonding wasn’t exactly on my priority list. “Uh-uh. Not happening. You have your secrets, I have mine.”

Gwen smiled. “I’m good with that.”

“So this is where the party is.” David leaned over the back of the sofa between our heads.

“Ha ha. Sarcasm. Nice.” Gwen finished off her glass and set it on the table next to her.

David ignored Gwen and turned his attention to me. “This night is supposed to be my last chance with my favorite people. And my most favorite people is over here moping. What’s up with that?”

His reference to me as his
favorite
people made me tense only slightly. He was on his way out of town. No need to worry about his intentions.

And he was right. This night was about him, not me. “Shit, I’m sorry, David. This is supposed to be a party, and I’m crashing it with my bad mood.”

He crossed around in front of the sofa and sat on the low table in front of us. “Why are you in a bad mood, anyway? You were so…
peppy
…the last two days.” His brows lifted, hopeful. “Trouble in paradise?”

It was sweet how he never stopped trying. “I hate to disappoint you, but I don’t think so.” Though telling Hudson about my lapse in self-control might alter that.

Why hadn’t he called yet? And did Jordan really know how the NYC legal system worked?

I bit my lip with worry. “There is the fact that I could be arrested soon.” It was easier to let info slip with David than Gwen.

David glanced questioningly at Gwen. “Don’t look at me,” she said with a shrug. “She doesn’t tell me jack shit.”

He wrapped his hands around the edges of the table on either side of him. “I think I need to hear more.”

For half a second I considered spilling it all. But that wasn’t fair to David. He’d been a good manager and a good friend. Was this any way to send him off?

“No, you really don’t need to hear more. Forget I said anything. Please. I’m being melodramatic.”
Hopefully.

“Let me know if I can do anything?” That was David. Never the type to push or pry. At one time, I’d fooled myself into thinking that could be enough for me. That he’d be safer. That he was the guy that would keep me sane.

Now I knew differently. Though Hudson pushed and pried and drove me crazy, he was the nearest thing to clarity I knew.

That was why I needed him so desperately at the moment.

But sitting around lamenting his absence wasn’t going to bring him to me. And it was a hell of a lousy way to say goodbye to my friend.

Putting on the happiest face I could muster, I set my glass down. “You know what you can do, David? You can cheer me up.” I stood up and nodded toward the floor. “Let’s dance, shall we?”

“I thought you’d never ask.”

Instead of joining the rest of the crowd in the center of the floor, we stuck to an empty corner. A few minutes into the dance mix of David Guetta’s
Titanium
, I felt better. It had been forever since I’d let myself loose, since I’d stopped worrying and fretting and just lived in the moment. I closed my eyes and let the beat overtake me, let my feet and hips move as they liked. Sweat gathered at my brow and my breath got short, but I was alive—alive in the way that only the club made me. Soon my anxiousness dissolved and all I was thinking about was the present—the music, the lights flashing around us, the friend standing in front of me. It was exactly what I needed.

I wasn’t sure how long we’d been dancing or how many songs had played before the DJ faded into a slow song. The club never played slow songs. I looked to David, my brow raised.

“Someone must have requested it.” He held his hand out for me. “Let’s not waste it, shall we?”

A voice in my head nagged that it was a bad idea. If David had asked for the song to be played—and I was certain he had—then he’d meant it for me. He’d meant it as a means to get me in his arms. It would be wrong—I had a boyfriend that I loved with my entire being. Hudson wouldn’t like it, and that was reason enough to not engage. Every impulse in my body said to walk away.

Except there was a flicker of emotion in my chest that I couldn’t ignore—a need for closure, perhaps, or a touch of melancholy for what once was or what could have been. Or maybe it was simply the alcohol and the adrenaline and the need for someone to hold me after all the stress and anxiety of the day.

And Hudson wasn’t there, so what could one dance hurt?

Without another thought, I took David’s hand and let him pull me into his arms. He was warm in a way that I’d forgotten. Like a giant teddy bear. He wasn’t nearly as cut or as trim as Hudson, but he was strong and easy to fall into.

I rested my head on his shoulder as we swayed together. Closing my eyes, I listened to the words of the song and relaxed into our final embrace. The singer was familiar, but I couldn’t remember his name. He sang to his love, telling her that she was in his veins, that he could not get her out.

They were words that made me think of Hudson. He was so deeply imprinted on me that he’d seeped through my skin and into my veins. He was my life force, each pulse of my heart sending another shock of love through my body.

Was this how David felt about me?

A strange mixture of panic and sorrow and a little bit of contentment washed over me as I realized that it was exactly how David felt about me. If I had any doubt, it was cleared when he began singing the words at my ear.
“I cannot get you out.”

I stopped moving with him and leaned back to look at his eyes. He knew, right? Knew that this was wrong, that I was spoken for? That I didn’t feel the same way about him?

If he did know, he didn’t care. He pressed forward, taking my lips in his before I knew what was happening. His kiss was shocking and unwelcomed. Immediately I pushed him away.

The sadness in David’s eyes pierced through me. I knew that depth of heartache. It tore me up to know I was the cause of his.

There was nothing I could do for it but shake my head and bite back tears.

David started to speak—to apologize maybe, or to try to persuade me to give him a chance. Before he said anything, though, his eyes moved upward to a point behind me, his expression stricken with alarm.

I knew without looking who was standing behind me. Wasn’t it fate’s sick way of paying me back for all the shit I’d pulled in my lifetime? Put the person who I wanted most in the situation I wanted him in the least? That’s why he hadn’t returned my call, why I couldn’t reach him—he’d been coming home.

Slowly, I turned toward him. His jacket was off, his shirt wrinkled from traveling. He’d loosened his tie and his jaw had a layer of end-of-day scruff. It was his face that I focused on, though. The pain in David’s eyes was nothing compared to what I found in Hudson’s. The anguish there was unbearable, his expression filled with so much pain I wondered if there could be any balm to soothe it.

For the second time that night I asked myself,
god, what have I done?

Chapter Nineteen

I swallowed back the panic that surged through me. I could fix this. I had to be able to fix this.

“Hudson.” I took a step toward him. “It’s not what it looks like.” I didn’t actually know what it looked like, having no idea how long he’d been standing there. Did he see that I’d pushed David away?

His face was stone. “Maybe we should discuss this in a more private setting.”

“Okay.” It was more a squeak than a word. But I headed toward the employee office and assumed he’d follow.

He did.

We took the stairs without speaking. I didn’t feel his eyes on me as I walked. He didn’t even want to look at me. Despair washed over me. I’d been so desperate for him, and now I’d fucked it up. Again.

I didn’t turn to face him again until he’d shut the door behind us in the office. When I did, I almost wished I hadn’t. The forlorn look I’d seen downstairs was even worse than I’d remembered. Was there really anything I could say to erase that?

With feeble words, I tried. “
He
kissed me, Hudson. I didn’t kiss him. And when he did, I pushed him away.” It was the truth. If he’d been there long enough, he’d have seen it.

“Why were you in his arms in the first place?” His tone was low and gravelly. It was more emotion than he generally displayed, and it killed me.

A tear trickled down my face. “We were dancing. It was a party.”

His eyes flared. “You were in his arms, Alayna. In the arms of someone who has made no secret of his feelings for you. What did you think he’d do?”

He was right on many counts. I’d known it was dangerous, felt the wrongness of the embrace from the minute David put his arms around me.

But
my
intentions had not been to lead him on. It was a goodbye dance. My thoughts had been focused on Hudson the whole time. “It was innocent,” I insisted. “I needed someone. He was here. And you weren’t.”

The memory of the anxiousness that had driven me to David’s arms in the first place turned my tears bitter. “Where were you today, anyway? When I needed you?”

He matched my bitterness plus some. “What was it you needed, Alayna? Someone to keep you warm?”

I pressed my lips together, hoping to squelch the sob threatening to escape. “That hurts.”

“What I just witnessed hurts.”

That wasn’t news, but hearing him say it twisted my heart all the same. I’d experienced that same hurt—when I’d seen him kissing Celia on the video, then again earlier today, when she’d suggested they’d had an affair. Perhaps it wasn’t fair to compare her probable lies with what he’d witnessed in person, but he had to see where I was coming from. “Yeah, I know how it feels.”

“Do you?” Even that tiny phrase was filled with enough venom to smart.

It triggered more of my own snark. “Yeah, I do. Let me see if I can explain it. It feels like your gut has been wrenched out of your body. At least that’s what it felt like when Celia told me that you’d been
fucking her
for most of the time we’ve been together.”

“What?” He seemed truly surprised, and not in the
I’ve-been-caught
way, but in the
what-the-eff-is-she-talking-about
way. It was the same expression he’d had when I’d mentioned him having more of an involvement with Stacy. “When did she say that?”

“Today,” I grumbled, already regretting bringing Celia up this way.

“You saw her today?” His eyes narrowed. “Does this have something to do with the phone message she left me?”

“I
knew
she’d call you!” And if she had, why hadn’t he called me? “What did she say?”

He shook his head dismissively. “She was raving nonsense. Something about you and her lawyer. I figured it was more of her shit from before so I deleted it.”

Hudson took a step toward me, and I noticed his eyes had softened, that instead of pain the predominant feature was now worry. “What happened with her? Was she following you again? What did she do? And why didn’t Reynold call me?”

I leaned on the desk behind me. “He didn’t know.” Guilt pressed on my chest, not only for ditching my bodyguard, but for Hudson’s willingness to set aside his ache out of concern for me.

The expression on his face magnified my shame. “Please don’t look at me like that. I’m sorry. I was stir-crazy so I grabbed my computer and went for coffee. I thought when I set the alarm to
away
that Reynold might notice, but I guess it didn’t inform him.”

Hudson’s mouth tightened. “It only texts when you set it for
home
.”

I was a little surprised that he hadn’t set the system to monitor all my comings and goings. It wasn’t like him. At a more appropriate time, I’d try to remember to be impressed. “Anyway, I just went to the bakery down the street. And Celia showed up. And I was sick of it. So I approached her.”

“
You
approached
her
?” Not only was his eye twitching and his jaw tense, but his hand was shaking as well. I hadn’t seen that from him before. Was he that angry?

“I did. It was stupid. I know it was stupid. But Stacy had sent me one of the emails that you had supposedly sent her, and I was reading it, and I could tell it wasn’t from you. I recognized one of the quotes used from one of the books Celia highlighted, and I knew the email was from her. So I confronted her about it. About writing the email.” The story spilled out in babble that I wasn’t even sure he could comprehend.

Apparently he did. “And she told you then that I was with her? Just out of the blue?”

I cringed. He wouldn’t like what I had to say next, but it was best to get it all out. “First, I showed her Stacy’s video.” After checking for his reaction, which I couldn’t read, I went on. “Then she said that you were together. That you were a couple. That you fucked her that night and it wasn’t the first time and it wasn’t the last.”

If Hudson’s face grew any redder, steam would come out of his ears. “And you believed her?”

I squared my shoulders. “It pissed me off enough that I punched her.” Yeah, I admit it, I sounded proud.

“You
punched
her?” There went the steam.

That hadn’t been the reaction I’d wanted. “You know what? Keep acting like this is an interrogation and I’m out of here.”

Hudson paced the room, pushing his hands through his hair. When he stopped to focus on me again, he’d regained some composure, though his shoulders were still tight and his voice strained. “I’m sorry if I sound a bit tense, Alayna. I assure you it’s only out of concern for you.”

I studied him for several seconds. It was out of concern—I saw it now. His eyes were pinned on me, his shaking wasn’t out of anger; it was fear. Fear for me. The extent that he cared for me was limitless. It was as obvious as the color of his eyes.

The realization calmed me. I pulled back every ounce of snark and venom and gave him raw honesty in its place. “Yes, I punched her. I think I broke her nose. So I’m probably going to get some sort of assault charge for that.
That’s
why I needed you.”

“Alayna.” His eyes radiated with love. “Why didn’t you call me?”

“I did! Your phone was off. I could have left a message, but I didn’t want to say all that over voicemail, and I didn’t want to interrupt your meeting because I knew it was important.”

“Not as important as you.” He wanted to come to me—the urge was palpable. But there was still that other thing hanging in between us—the moment he’d walked in on—and so he sat on the arm of the couch instead, his hands playing with the bunched fabric of his slacks. “Have the police contacted you?”

I shook my head. “I was afraid to go back to the house so I came here to wait for your call.”

His eyes settled on his shoes. “I got your text when I was already in flight. I didn’t call because I knew I’d end up telling you I was on my way home, and I wanted it to be a surprise.” He laughed gruffly. “I took a nap instead. I should have called.”

Now it was my eyes that studied the floor. “I should have kept my cool.”

“I’ll take care of everything. Don’t worry about it in the least. She’s not going to bother you again.”

He said it with such conviction that I had no choice but to believe him. He’d find a way to protect me from Celia. I simply had to comply with the parameters he set to keep me safe. If I’d done that to begin with, she wouldn’t have had the opportunity to push me, and Hudson wouldn’t have to bail me out of my mess.

Gratitude and relief swept through me, along with a twinge of regret. “Thank you.”

And then a whole bunch more regret followed. If I hadn’t punched Celia, would I have ended up in David’s arms? Something told me probably not. Either way, the weight of what Hudson had witnessed was immensely heavy. “Hudson,” my voice trembled. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. Good for you, actually. She deserves worse.” He even managed to smile as he said the last part.

I wanted to smile with him. But I couldn’t. Not yet. “I mean, I’m sorry about David.”

“Oh.” His face grew grim and the pain from earlier resurfaced. His next words were careful and precise and burdened. “Tell me one thing—do you still feel anything for him?”

“No. No, I don’t. Nothing. I’ve told you that before, and I meant it, though I’m sure it doesn’t seem like it seeing me tonight. But the whole time he was holding me, it felt wrong. All I could think about was you. I was missing you, H. Needing you. So much. And I didn’t think about what I was doing. I’m so, so, sor—”

He flew to me before I could finish, wrapping his arms around me.

Yes
, that was how it was supposed to feel, that was what I’d been longing for.

He buried his face in my hair. “I missed you too, precious. Needed you. I was trying to get back here—”

“And I ruined your surprise.” I nuzzled further into his chest. “I’m so sorry.”

“I don’t care. It hurts, but I’ve hurt you. And as long as you swear that he means nothing—”

“Nothing. I swear with every fiber of my body, it’s only you.” I tilted my head up to kiss along his jaw. “How about you—” The question threatened to stick in my throat, but I forced it out. “Do you still feel anything for Celia?”

His body stiffened. Leaning back to meet my eyes, he said softly, “Alayna…I’ve never felt anything for Celia.”

“You mean, it was just sex?” They were things I had to ask, even if the answers were already clear.

He shook his head slowly. “I’ve never been with her at all.”

“She was lying.” It wasn’t a question. I’d already suspected she’d made it up.

He confirmed anyway. “She was lying.”

“That’s what I thought.” It should have been a relief. Why did my acceptance of this only bring a pit of dread?

Because if that wasn’t what he had to confess to me about the video, then there was still a truth I had to learn. Something told me I already knew. The alternative explanation that I’d managed to tuck away earlier returned to niggle at me. And this time it wouldn’t let go until I explored it fully.

Gently—reluctantly—I pushed my way out of his arms. “But here’s the thing—I sort of wish it were true.”

He raised a questioning brow.

“Not that you were sleeping with her while we were together—not that part. But the rest of it—that you were really with her when Stacy saw you. If that was the truth, I could accept it. Don’t get me wrong—the idea of you with her, fucking her—it torments me. It really does.” Like, actually produced bile in my mouth. “But I think I always knew you were never with her. It’s in your eyes—both now and in that video.”

Hudson’s Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed. “I wasn’t. I was never with her.”

I continued to stare at his neck. It was easier than looking at his eyes where dark storms were beginning to gather. “And that means that the thing with Stacy was a scam. Of course it was. I wanted to think it was just Celia in on it, and you were protecting her. But you said you weren’t and you did go along enough to stage that kiss. You were part of it.”

I paused, letting what I’d said sink into my consciousness, tasting the truth of the words that still lingered in my mouth. “I thought for a minute that might be your secret. Except it’s not it. I mean, yeah, that’s shitty that you did that to her, but I knew you had those things in your past. And
you
knew that I knew those things. If that were all there was to learn from that video, you would have told me. There had to be more you were hiding.”

Finally, with great effort, I raised my eyes to his. “It’s because of what night it was, the night of the symposium, isn’t it? I considered that you didn’t want me to know that you were still manipulating people for fun that recently, but now I don’t think that’s all of it either.”

“Alayna…” Even though only a whisper, there was weight to his single word. It was cautionary, it was pleading. It said,
don’t go here
, even though we were always headed there, from the second he first laid eyes on me. It was fated that we’d arrive at this moment, and whether we wanted to face it or not, here it was.

“It’s not the video itself. It’s what happened after.” I spoke as if I was just figuring it out, but really, it had always been there, buried in my subconscious where I didn’t have to deal with it. I knew. I’d always known what I was only now able to admit.

Hudson repeated my name, calling for my attention, but I was no longer focused on him.

“If Celia was there with you outside the symposium…then doesn’t it make sense that she went in with you? And if she went in with you, she was there when you first saw me. And if you were still playing people together…”

My skin broke out in goose bumps as a chill ran down my spine and a wave of nausea wracked through my body. A ringing began in my ears, and somewhere behind that I could hear Hudson still speaking.

“I was going to tell you,” he seemed to be saying. “I came back to tell you.”

I searched his face, barely registering his fragmented explanation as the truth settled over me.

“It’s my worst mistake, Alayna.” He stepped toward me, his face twisted in anguish, his voice desperate. “The most horrible of all the things I’ve done. My biggest regret, although it’s what gave me you and for that I’m forever grateful. But I never knew what I’d feel for you. I never knew that I could hurt you that much, and that I would care that I did. Please, Alayna, you have to understand.”