Found in You(68)

“Not that kind of escort. I never slept with him.”

A huge weight lifted off my chest at her admission. I knew Hudson had slept with other women. Of course he had, but I didn’t want to think about it. Because if I did, that’s all I’d think about—him and whomever, sharing the intimacies that he and I shared now. So knowing that Hudson and Stacy never had that—it was a relief.

With that worry abated, I could concentrate on the other thing niggling at the edge of my brain. If they hadn’t dated, if they hadn’t slept with each other, yet Stacy emanated such scorn—

Then I got it. “Oh. I think I understand.” She’d been one of his victims. One of the women whom he’d played—made her love him with whatever he said or did, then discarded her. It made me sick, and I hated that about me. I didn’t want to feel sick about the things Hudson had done. I wanted to love him enough to look past anything.

But I was human. And even though I did love him past anything, it wasn’t pleasant to focus on the things he’d done that had hurt people.

That thought was the one I clung to—if it made me feel this way to realize the brokenness of his past actions, then Hudson must ache inside, carrying the weight of these mistakes. I surely ached from the damage I’d inflicted on others—my strained relationship with my brother, how I’d hurt the men in my past. Paul…

I dismissed the name of my past lover and refocused on Stacy.

“Maybe you do understand,” she was saying. “And maybe Hudson’s changed. But I should warn you—”

“I don’t need to be warned.” It was absolutely schizo how I went back and forth from encouraging to defensive. I bit my lip and when I spoke again, I tried to assume the calm and inviting posture I had before. “I mean, he’s already told me everything.” I hope.

Giving voice to my fear, Stacy raised a brow and asked point blank, “Has he?” She let it sink in for a moment, letting me wonder.

She gathered the dress I’d been wearing off the floor. “Believe whatever. All I’m saying is he’s not what he says he is.” She hung it as she talked. “No matter what he tells you, it’s a lie.”

I’d been around this before: He tells me he won’t lie and if I believe that, then I can believe everything he says. But if that is in itself a lie… “But it’s not just what he said,” I thought out loud. “He’s shown me who he is. And Celia said—”

Stacy froze. “Celia Werner?”

I nodded.

Her face grew serious. “Don’t believe anything she says either. They’re together.”

“They’re friends.” I meant for my tone to be insistent, but it came out weak and, again, defensive.

“They’re together.” Her tone succeeded at insistent. “Or they were. I can prove it too, if—”

The door opened, cutting her off. Unlike Stacy, Hudson didn’t knock. He simply took his place in the world. I loved that about him.

“Gorgeous.” He wanted me and it showed in every part of him from his posture to the gleam in his eyes, to the thickness of his voice.

And everything Stacy and I had been talking about vanished from my mind. My knees went weak with desire, and whatever doubts I had disappeared. He was there fixed on me. How could I be anything but sure? Sure about him, about me. About us.

“Thank you.” I glowed; I could feel the warmth in every part of my body, reaching toward him. “It is gorgeous. You chose well.”

“I did. I chose you.”