The Fixed Trilogy: Fixed on You(84)

I closed my eyes, hoping to stop a fresh stream of tears. He had opened up, but only enough for me to slip the tip of my toes past the threshold of the door he kept so tightly closed. It was a big step for him. But it wasn’t really letting me in. Everything he shared with me I had to pry from his lips. He hadn’t given me his trust. It wasn’t enough to build upon and if that was as far as the door was opening, we had no hope for a future.

I swallowed hard and opened my eyes, letting one teardrop escape. Wiping it away, I rolled out from underneath him and pulled my panties up as I stood.

Hudson sighed. Then I heard the sound of his zipper and, to my ears, it was a metaphor—putting himself away, shutting himself off. Again.

But when he stood, he wrapped his arms around me from behind. His voice rasped in my ear. “Why do you act like I’m running?”

“Because you shut me out. Isn’t that the same as running?”

“What about you? What about how you showed up in our bedroom crying and couldn’t even tell me why?”

“That was different.” But maybe it wasn’t. I hadn’t told him what his mother said because it hurt too much. Because I was embarrassed.

He spun me around to look at him. “What did she say to you, Alayna?”

He’d thrown down the gauntlet. If I wanted him to be open, I’d have to be too. “That I was insignificant. She called me a whore.” I looked at a chip of paint on the wall, not able to meet his eyes.

He cursed under his breath. “My mother’s heartless and cruel.” Putting two fingers under my chin, he turned my face to him. “You’re not a whore, Alayna. Not even close. And the magnitude of your importance in my life can’t be put into words.”

“She also said that you can’t ever love me.”

He froze. Then his hand dropped from my face. “I’ve told you that before.”

The pain of his statement hit me hard in the gut. I pulled out of his arms. “Well, she told me again.” I swung back toward him. “So there, I opened up. Are you happy?”

“Alayna…”

I ached in the center of my being. This was why I hadn’t told him—because despite what he and Sophia had said, I’d believed that he could love. That he could love me.

Tears flooded my eyes and splashed down my face. “How could you not think I’d fall in love with you, Hudson? Even if you didn’t mean for it to happen, how could I not?” I wiped at my damp cheek with the back of my hand. “Does that mean anything to you at all?”

He drew back as if I’d slapped him. “How can you ask that? Of course, it does. But, Alayna, you don’t know that you’d still say that if you knew me.”

“I do know you.”

“Not everything.”

“Only because you haven’t let me in!” We were spinning in circles, getting nowhere.

He spread his arms out to the sides. “What is it you want to know? About what I did to other women? About Celia? I’m the reason she got pregnant, Alayna. Because I spent an entire summer making her fall in love with me when I felt nothing for her. For fun. For something to do. And then, when I’d completely broken her, she became destructive—sleeping around, partying, drugs. You name it, she did it. She didn’t even know who the father was.”

I heaved a breath, wiping the lingering tears from my face. “So you claimed it was yours.”

“Yes.”

“Because you felt responsible.”

“Yes. She lost the baby at three months. Likely from the drinking and drugs she’d consumed early on. She was devastated.”

“That’s awful.” I could sense he felt as responsible for the death of Celia’s unborn baby as for its conception in the first place. It was a lot of weight to carry, a lot of blame.

But even though I could concede Hudson had a role in the situation, it didn’t scare me away. “It’s awful,” I repeated, “but I don’t understand. You thought this would make me not love you…why?”

He perched on the arm of the sofa and pierced me with an incredulous stare. “Because it changes everything. I did that. That’s who I am. It’s my past and it’s very ugly.”

A sob threatened, but I choked it back with a hard swallow. The ugly things—there were so many ugly things about myself that always lay beneath the surface of every conversation, every moment. They poisoned and destroyed. I was well versed in the ugly.

It broke my heart that the same darkness haunted Hudson. That he believed his history to be so horrible that it could change things between us. It couldn’t. It didn’t.

I moved in front of him and rested my hands on his shoulders. “Do you think your ugly is any different than mine?”

“This isn’t like following someone around or calling too many times, Alayna.”

“It was an unforeseen tragedy, Hudson. A game that got out of hand. You didn’t set out for Celia to get pregnant and have a miscarriage. And you can’t diminish the things I’ve done to a simple statement like that either. I hurt people. Deeply. But that was before. Less than ideal pasts, remember? It doesn’t mean it defines our future. Or even our now.”

He blew out a warm breath as his thumb brushed at a lingering tear in the corner of my eye. “When I’m with you, I almost believe that.”