Found in You(31)

I rolled my eyes. “No, it’s not. Go on.”

“I set her up with Owen. Not just on a date, more. I played silent matchmaker. Got them together. I convinced Owen he was doing me a favor by taking her out a few times. Meanwhile, I’d fill him with all these stories of how amazing Andrea was, how her true beauty was inside. And it happened—they fell for each other. Completely. Sincerely.”

I blinked. Twice. “That’s a beautiful story.”

“Then I f*cked her and showed Owen the pictures.”

“Oh, my god.” My hand flew instinctively to my mouth. I hadn’t been prepared for that and immediately felt ashamed. I’d been trying to be supportive. He’d tried to shock me. He won.

Hudson carried on as if I hadn’t reacted. “Andrea tried to tell Owen it was a mistake, that I’d tricked her, which I had. I didn’t rape her—I never raped anyone. But he wouldn’t listen to her. They were both…broken, is the best way to describe it. Andrea left school in the middle of the semester. I never heard anything about her again.”

“And Owen?” My voice sounded much feebler than I would have liked.

“He went back to sleeping with anyone with two legs. Last I heard he’d gotten HIV. I don’t know. I lost track of him.”

He studied me, the same way I’d studied him a moment before, and I knew he read me. Saw what I was feeling. I couldn’t be stoic as he’d been. I couldn’t hide my emotions.

His features grew dark. “I told you, you didn’t want to hear it. I told you—”

“Just give me a second to process,” I stuttered, ashamed that I needed the delay. I’d said his past wouldn’t change how I felt about him. Did it? I pushed past the horror of the story and focused on Hudson, the man who had committed the horror. Did knowing these things change how I felt for him?

My pause was too long for him. “See, Alayna? See why your past means nothing to me? Compared to me, you were an angel. You hurt people because you loved too much. I hurt people because I could.”

I jerked my eyes to his. No, my feelings for him hadn’t changed. If anything, they’d grown deeper. How lonely, how sad, how broken did a man have to be to feel compelled to destroy the people around him? And how strong and worthy was that same man to attempt to be someone different in the aftermath?

I was in his lap before a second had passed by, straddling him, my hands resting on the sides of his neck. “No.” I aligned my eyes with his and said it again. “No. You hurt people because you didn’t have any idea what love really was. You were trying to understand it in the only way you knew how. It’s horrible, yes. But it’s forgivable. I forgive you. I forgive a thousand worse things you may have done. I can forgive anything.”

I caressed his cheek with my palm. “Because I love you. I love you too much, like I always do, but this time I don’t regret it and I don’t wish I could take it back because you need it. So take it from me, H. Take it all from me.”


He buried his head into my neck and sighed, a deep sigh that sounded both haunting and freeing. Wrapping my arms around him, I stroked his hair, whispering his name at his ear.

Soon he found my lips, and we disappeared into the sweetest, most languid kiss that lasted on and on, neither losing momentum nor turning frenzied.

It was a long time later before our clothes were discarded and Hudson slid us to a lying position, stretching me out over the length of his body. And just like the kiss had lasted on and on, we made love slow and leisurely, giving and taking from each other until the wee hours of the night when we were certain that the memory of our bodies together burned stronger and brighter than the horrid memories we’d shared from our past.