All The Beautiful Things (Love & Lies Duet #2) - Stacey Lynn Page 0,2

also really pretty.”

A quick laugh burst from him, making me smile as he kissed my cheek. “Don’t get your hopes on that one, Melissa.”

My hopes were the only thing I had left. So that night, after Dad left, I prayed extra hard for that, too.

I had nothing to lose.

But Hudson—he had everything to gain. And maybe, just maybe, I could help him, too.

1

Hudson

My head throbbed a low, steady beat as I woke right before memories of last night hit me hard and fast.

I jolted in bed and scanned my room. Outside the crumpled sheets next to me and the indentation in the pillow she’d slept on, all evidence of Lilly being there was gone.

“Shit.” I scrubbed my face and threw off the covers. Last night was incredible. Her body. Her heart. Her trust. She gave me everything she had, and I was the asshole who took it when I’d been drinking enough to know better, drinking enough to think it was a good idea too.

And it’d been incredible.

The way she loved me with her hands and her eyes and her expressions… for a brief moment I felt a single sparkle of hope I could salvage everything we had together once she learned all the shit we’d been hiding.

I’d practically pleaded with Dad last night to tell her today before it went any further.

It would have been bad enough before last night. But today…

Things had changed.

We had to. I had to. Even if it risked ruining the fairy tale holiday images Dad wanted for her. After last night, there was absolutely no way I could continue with Lilly until she knew everything.

I used the restroom in my bathroom quickly, intent on finding her. She couldn’t have gone far. And it wasn’t like she could hide in my condo. There wasn’t anything except the living room—

“Oh fuck,” I rasped. My heart thumped a wild warning bell inside my chest.

She’d showed up out of the blue last night, taken me by such surprise, I hadn’t had time to do anything.

I raced out of the bedroom, the door slamming behind me.

No way was she finding out like this.

I pulled to an immediate stop as soon as I saw her.

Lilly. Face ravaged with pain and confusion, holding the photograph of Melissa and me.

She’d come to one of my last baseball games in college.

Icy guilt and fear twisted and coiled inside me, sending a ferocious chill down my spine as I took in Lilly’s pain-filled features.

“Who is this?” she asked, voice so scratchy like she’d been screaming for hours.

I didn’t need to look at the photo.

I needed her to give me a minute, a minute I absolutely didn’t deserve, and God, I could only imagine what she was thinking.

Especially after last night.

“Lilly,” I said her name, and it was all I could choke out.

There were no reasonable explanations for this. Scum. I was scum. I didn’t think it was possible for me to feel shittier about myself.

“You know her?!” she shrieked.

She might as well have slammed that glass into my face. It would hurt mildly less than seeing her like this.

I stepped toward her, palms out, trying to calm her even though it was futile. Nothing would calm the maelstrom of emotions whipping through the air, sucking us into its vortex right now.

Still. I tried. “Please. Let me explain.”

“Who is this!?” She screamed so loud I flinched. It was a wonder the glass didn’t shatter in her hand.

God. This was not at all… not at all what I wanted to happen. Yet, I’d predicted it.

I saw the end of us before we ever began. Now I was staring down that barrel without any decent way to explain myself.

Not after last night.

This never should have happened. In my darkest nightmares of having to explain to Lilly everything, I’d never anticipated this.

The frame fell from her hand and clattered to the table. It might as well have been a gong, signaling the end of a beginning I never should have allowed to have happen.

This was my fault.

I should have kept my distance.

“Lilly. Please. I know… I get what you’re thinking—”

“You don’t know shit, Hudson.” She spit it out with such venom.

Could she see how much this was killing me?

How much it hurt to know I’d caused the devastation testing her features?

No. She was lost in her own despair and fury, not that I could blame her.

“Or hell, you know everything, don’t you? Who is this girl to you!”

Her scream rattled the walls and sent a freezing ice to