Page 27 of All the Beautiful Things
I’d let her believe that. For as long as she needed time. My excitement must have shown too brightly, but even her reprimand couldn’t douse the light.
“What do you need to know?”
I would be an open book from here until eternity.
For Lilly, I’d give her anything she wanted. She only had to ask.
9
Lilly
What did I want to know?
I wanted to know everything about Hudson. I wanted to dive into his deepest, most hidden places and scrape it all out, leaving him as vulnerable as he’d made me feel. He’d pushed, and questioned, and in return, he’d kept the most important parts of himself back.
That might have been what hurt the most—that he didn’t give me what he asked of me. And maybe I didn’t need to give him everything, but I’d wanted to.
Hadn’t he wanted that from me?
I shook the thought out of my head. I would honor David’s request. Regardless of my pain, I loved the man sitting so close to me but so far away there might as well have been a sea of shark-infested waters between us.
To go back to the illusion of what we’d been building? I couldn’t do that.
I couldn’t promise it.
Not yet.
All the questions I wanted to ask raced through me, making my head spin.
Was it real? Do you love me? Tell me about her. Tell me all about you!
“My parole,” I settled on, and found no joy in the way he flinched. I picked at the fraying cuff of my sweatshirt sleeve. “Did you have anything to do with that?”
As I’d considered everything they knew, why they knew, over the weekend, it was the only thing that made sense. When I first heard I was up for parole, I wondered how it could have happened without character references or victim’s statements.
“Dad did. Yes, in a small way.” He spoke slowly and softly, with only a hint of pain in his voice. Like he was scared of saying something that would make me shut down this conversation and kick him out.
I wouldn’t do that. He owed me this conversation. All the ugly, twisted parts of it.
Still, his admission stung, and I closed my eyes to let the reality of that wash over me. How much of a fool I’d been to even consider my parents would have had a change of heart. Or that my mom would have grown brave. Worthless, hopeful emotions I could never eviscerate. The proof of it in returned and unopened letters shoved in a box.
“How?”
Hudson shoved his hands through his hair with a heavy exhale before returning to his perch at the edge of the couch, elbows to his knees, hands clasped together.
“Melissa,” he started and squeezed his eyes closed before turning to face me again, “she was this incredible, sweet breath of fresh air. She had the largest heart of anyone I’ve ever met. The kind of woman, who even as a little girl, never met a stranger. When her church started this prison ministry she was so excited, so filled with hope she could go there and love everyone there. Part of her, she admitted to me once, wanted to go to see if she could meet Brandon’s mom. To see her. To tell her about the boy she’d abused and mistreated and how he incredible he was. But then she saw you.”
His right foot bounced frantically as he spoke. “The very first night she saw you, even before she spoke to you, she called me and cried over the phone. It hurt her that much to see someone so young in there, she couldn’t handle it. Once she learned your name, she searched you up.”
I tried to comprehend what I was hearing, how long she’d known. And still… still she’d come to me even when her mom was killed that same night. My pulse spun out of control and my mind whirled with confusion. How could she… how could she want to help me?
“She knew before I told her,” I choked out what I’d just realized.
The accident and my subsequent arrest had been plastered all over the news stations for weeks afterward, courtesy of my father’s position in the judicial system. Fanatics and keyboard warriors railed against him and rallied behind him in equal measure. The privileged, rich girl who killed her brother. Would she get off with a slap to the wrist?
He nodded, slow and steady, the intensity in his gaze unwavering. “Some of it, not all obviously.”
Like the part where I’d admitted to her I wasn’t driving and gave her all of my family’s sordid and well-hidden past.
