for the wedding program I hadn’t thought to grab.
“Thank you. It’s lovely.”
“It’s yours.”
It was a handkerchief. That was all. And yet I tucked it into my hands and held it close because it might have also been the loveliest gift anyone had ever given to me.
The ceremony was as beautiful as Jenna and Brandon were together. I managed to hold my emotions in check, almost not needing the handkerchief at all, until the moment Brandon became teary-eyed while he spoke his vows to Jenna. That, coupled with the way Hudson had turned, and caught my gaze while Brandon said they had thrown a zap of electricity through me.
Hudson held my gaze, knowing what he was doing to me. He gave me those moments to see all the emotion he felt for me, so plainly clear on his face it was a wonder I didn’t storm the altar and throw myself at him right there.
Fortunately, I managed to hold myself in check through the rest of the ceremony, through the happy tears that fell when Brandon and Jenna kissed and practically danced down the aisle.
Afterward, I waited at the back of the church while the family and bridal party took more pictures and when they were done, David drove me to the reception hall at a hotel in downtown Des Moines while Hudson took the limo with the rest of the bridal party.
Soon, the reception was underway Hudson sitting at the front table, right next to Brandon and the hundreds of guests were sitting at round tables, draped with white tablecloths, crystal plates and glasses and centerpieces of tea lights and simple rose centerpieces floating in vases in the center.
The lights were dim, the dance floor set in front of the bridal table for later, and next to me, David kept the conversation flowing with the rest of the family we were seated with. He introduced me to his brother-in-law and sister, in town from Kansas. Their son, Shawn Blakely, was seated next to me. With sandy brown hair and the body of a linebacker, his frame alone told me he worked hard for a living.
While I had stayed mostly quiet after introductions, more content to listen to David talk with his family than I was to inject myself in conversation, we were halfway through dinner when Shawn turned to me.
“So, you’re a friend of Hudson’s?”
Friend. I fought against curling my lip and spitting at the description. We were equally more than that and currently less than. And I wasn’t going to explain it to a stranger, even if he was their family. “I am.”
“Did you meet him at Valor?”
David had already told them I worked with them and for Brandon. “No. We met before I began working there.”
I thought back to that first night when Hudson had sauntered into the diner, told me his dad liked the pie and then basically called me an idiot. It felt like a lifetime ago. It had only been a couple of months, and yet so much had changed. For me. For all of us. And the man responsible for so much of it, sat next to me. David turned his head toward me, catching my gaze. He hadn’t said anything to his family since we’d been seated about his cancer, and the quick shake of his head told me he had no plans to.
“What do you do?” I asked. I’d ask anything to get attention off me.
“I’m a police officer.”
As soon as the word police rolled off his tongue, my spine went straight. He noticed, because of course he did, and he leaned back to his other side, putting space between us, eyes narrowing and chin dipping down.
“Not a fan of law enforcement?”
He said it as a joke. The narrowing of his eyes suggested he didn’t think it was funny.
My grip on my fork tightened and my gaze flicked to Hudson at the head table, but he was talking to the groomsman next to him.
“I don’t have anything against cops,” I said, and that was true. In the general sense, anyway. My personal experience made me wary. “And you’re in Kansas?”
This conversation was hitting a dead end, and quickly. Soon we’d be reduced to the weather.
“I am.” He took a drink from his glass, beer it looked like, all while keeping that same intense, inspecting expression on me. “For now. I’ve been offered a new opportunity out east, I’m considering.”
“East? Like New York?”
“No. North Carolina. You ever been?”
He must have seen my eyes