you paroled just to talk to her. He checked in those first few months when you were still in the shelter, getting settled, that was how he learned you’d gotten a new job at Judith’s.” He blinked and tilted his head. “If it helps, Ellen didn’t quite like knowing he was looking into you. He said once she seemed protective of you.”
“Did he tell her the truth? What Melissa told him?”
“That you’d have to ask him. Or Ellen. I’m honestly not sure.”
I nibbled at the bottom corner of my lip. “Did you know where I lived?”
He’d told me once he didn’t, but he knew too much to not know that.
Hudson sighed. “I knew, but I didn’t put two and two together when we were doing the project. When we were finalizing plans for it, something kept making me thinking of you, but when I went over it with Brandon, I thought it was because the new buildings were going to have a restaurant, a diner, on the ground level. I thought that’s what made me think of you.”
He shifted again so he was closer to me. He reached out, like he wanted to hold on to me, but I flinched back from him.
He pulled his hand back, apologized for attempting to touch me before he continued. This time, he was earnest. “We didn’t stalk you. We just wanted to help, or at least Dad did, and then… then we met.”
“And I was a complete bitch to you.”
“I didn’t blame you for that. Not once. I know how it seemed, or must have, to you, to have us suddenly in your business and everything, but Dad especially in the last few months, suddenly became obsessed. Felt he wasn’t doing enough, needed to do more than just ensuring you were surviving. Told me many times that survival in the worst conditions wasn’t why we’d helped you get out and wasn’t what Melissa wanted for you.”
I hid my reaction to his words. I knew why David became obsessed. I was the only who did. And like so much of my anger for having had the truth kept from me, sludge settled in my stomach knowing I was now doing the same thing.
And exactly like Hudson had done, I’d promised David, too. His health was most definitely not my story to share, but the irony wasn’t lost on me, either.
“What did she want?” I finally choked out.
His smile was sad. Tears had dried on his cheeks but there was no detracting from his attractiveness or the way my body still warmed in response to that smile. “She wanted you to have everything that had been stolen from you. She wanted you to have a life. A good one. Not scraping by.”
Pieces I’d questioned fell into place, painting a fuller picture than I’d imagined. They’d been helping me for over a year. And with my meeting with David on Sunday, I now knew why he hadn’t allowed Hudson to say anything. Why the sudden need to do more, like Hudson claimed.
Hudson cleared his throat. “I never intended, never wanted, and certainly never expected to care about you so much.” His voice was hoarse, wrecked from tears and emotions. He pleaded with his onyx eyes, framed with his jet-black lashes. His unshaven scruff longer than usual, like he couldn’t muster the energy to shave. “And I’m so sorry. So sorry for hurting you and keeping how much we knew a secret from you. I never wanted to hurt you, and I wanted to tell you so many times. I’m so very sorry, Lilly.”
But he didn’t, because he wouldn’t go against his dad who had set this whole mess in motion.
Somehow, understanding all of it… his promise to a dad and a sister he loved so much. There was loyalty there, and it was beautiful, despite the shattered mess it’d also created. And yet, knowing all of it, having the fuller picture… my anger dissipated, felt more like a morning mist than the suffocating cloud it’d been.
“I don’t know what to say,” I admitted. It was all so much. The last week, Sunday, today.
“I want you to know that everything that happened between us was real. I fought it. I tried to anyway, at first. But I swear to you, nothing, nothing… that happened between us was not one hundred percent real. At least not on my end.”
He gave me a pleading look, like he needed me to admit the same.
I nodded once but couldn’t answer. There