Page 59 of All the Beautiful Things
I scrambled off the bed. This was…. It’d been so long. Would I want to reach out now?
I laughed coldly at the thought. I had a box of returned letters, letters I wrote long after I knew they’d be returned. But so much had changed now. Like Hudson said Brandon had to do once, I was learning how to let them go. To not let my dad’s hatred of me hold me back. He’d made me believe I wasn’t worthy of anything, and for the last few months, so many people in my life told me I was.
“I don’t. You shouldn’t have done that. Not without asking me.”
“Why?” He curled off the bed and came around it until he was standing in front of me. No longer was I distracted by his muscles and body. My brain was too fogged to think of anything else.
“Why wouldn’t you want to know?”
“Because… because they still have the power to hurt me,” I blurted, without thought, without realizing how much I still wanted their approval and love and craved their acceptance. Why could I not let them go when they’d so easily turned their backs on me?
His shoulders fell with a heavy breath. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry if this hurts you, if I hurt you. I thought that having the information would give you some power over the situation. You can reach out to them. Or not. Depending on what you want to do. Not waiting to see if they ever reach out to you.”
“You should have asked. And Shawn…”
“He will think nothing differently than he did at the wedding yesterday and that’s that he thought you were beautiful and wanted you for himself.”
Please.I rolled my eyes. “He didn’t.”
“He did. Why else do you think I gave that speech when I did? So he had to stop flirting with you.”
“You’re crazy. He wasn’t flirting with me.” He might have tried before I paled at the mention of him being an officer. Probably not a response he was used to seeing from women.
“I know my cousin. He was. But he’s a good man and he said he’d look into it. When he gets that information, I don’t have to give it to you though, if you don’t want it.”
Did I want to know? This was the last thing I expected to hear tonight, but I took in Hudson’s words. This gave me power. Knowledge. The only issue was once I had it, then I had to make more choices about what to do with it… reach out or let them go. The weight of it was a heavy pressure on my chest and it took me a while before I finally tried to shake it all off.
“I think knowing you have it and not giving it to me would drive me crazy.”
“Then it’s your call. You want me to call him and tell him to forget it, I’ll do that too.”
I didn’t want to give another single thought to this. I yawned then unable to hold it back and suddenly, I was so damn tired. Emotionally. Physically. Mentally. Why was it when life seemed to afinally turn my way, a jagged curve came around the next bend?
“I’ll think about it.”
“Good.” He brought me gently into his arms, wrapping them around me until I was warm from the inside out and relaxed. “Come on. Let’s sleep.”
We crawled into bed, wrapped up in each other. While my mind raced, my eyelids grew heavy.
As darkness pulled me under, I swore Hudson leaned into my ear and whispered, “When it gets hard, don’t let me push you away.”
But I was too close to sleep to respond or to know if I was only beginning to dream my own fears.
* * *
A hot pinkand black backpack slammed to my lunch table, sloshing my Dr. Pepper over the rim of my cup and onto my lunch table.
“What the hell?” I wiped up the mess from my pop and glared at Angie. “Did you have to do that?”
She pressed the palms of her hands to the table, leaned over it, and playfully glared at me. “You have explaining to do.”
Our accounting final was in two hours. I had two more on Thursday but once this class was done, the rest would be a piece of cake. I really should have spent more time studying with Angie on Sunday rather than studying Hudson’s physique.
Luckily, her surprise arrival at one of the tables in the college’s student union cafeteria didn’t land on my computer or ruin the worksheet I’d been doing for my office admin class.
One more semester to go unless I took advantage of the tuition reimbursement from Valor Holdings and continued with a four-year degree. The very thought of it had stress tightening my shoulders, so I tried not to think about it. Could I keep doing this? School? There were still too many unknowns.
“You are on my shit list,” Angie pouted and collapsed into her chair.
