and I’m amazed by the woman I’ve become and everything I have now: Hudson, getting married, building a house, and looking forward to starting family. I never thought I’d have any of that.”
She offers up a small smile. “You sure have grown up. Too bad that had very little to do with me. I swear, Deven, I will be a better grandma to your children than I was a mom to you. I failed you. I failed you and Brad and now look. You two are taking care of me.” She lets out a sound that sounds like a sob and a laugh at the same time.
I rub her back. “It’ll be okay. Everything will work out.”
“How do you know?” she asks, wiping away her tears.
I shrug. “It always does, doesn’t it?”
She laughs. “I guess so.”
I help Mama clean up the kitchen, and soon after, Hudson and I are leaving to go back to our room. I sit in the passenger side of his truck, staring off into the night. He places his hand on mine, and his thumb rubs back and forth.
“Are you alright?”
I nod. “Yeah, I’m just…I don’t know what I am. Happy. Unbelievably happy. I talked with my mom, and I think we’ve put everything that happened between us in the past. We’re starting fresh. It just feels like after my life having been shit for so long, everything is starting to fall into place. Like I’m going to get my happy ending after all.”
He picks up my hand and presses a kiss to the top. “That’s because you are. We are. As long as we’re together, we have the world in the palms of our hands.”
I smile over at him in the darkness, and my chest swells with so much love, my heart races. I don’t know how I got so lucky. I don’t know how such a bad decision like sleeping with a stranger in a bar parking lot has led me here, but I’m glad it did. I couldn’t have asked for anything better. I guess no matter how fucked up your life is, there’s always time to turn things around, to find the sun on a cloudy day, to have one more wish granted: just one more night with him.
15
Hudson
7 months later…
My phone rings early in the morning, and I roll to my side to answer it. “Hello?”
“It’s done,” Drake says.
“What? What’s done? What are you talking about, man?”
“He took the money and ran,” he says, and I can hear the hurt and the pain in his voice.
“Oh, I’m sorry. I know how badly you were looking forward to getting to know him.” I sit up, looking over at Deven, who is sound asleep beside me, her stomach swollen with our soon-to-be children.
It’s been months of negotiating the terms for this agreement. He was dead set on getting his hands on a piece of the brewery, and none of us were willing to let it go. Celeste sent over our first offer and it was denied immediately. Month after month, our offer was denied. The guy never had any contact with Celeste or Drake. He didn’t want anything but the money he felt he was owed. His lawyer dealt on his behalf. Finally, about a week ago, we made our final offer and told them such. If he didn’t accept it, we were done, and he’d have to sue to get anything. Celeste also reminded him that if that was the case, he’d more than likely get nothing at all considering he had no legal claim to anything. With that, the offer was snatched up, along with a handwritten note from Drake.
Before he walked away with the offer, Drake called us all into his barn bar one night and we all read over the letter. It basically said that he has more than just money here. He has a family that would love to meet him. It also mentioned that he could still get a piece of the brewery if he was willing to move here to be a part of our family and gain our trust. But nothing was ever sent back, and based on this call, nothing will ever be sent back. He took what he wanted and ran.
“We had an idea that this was how it was going to go, you know?” I remind him.
“I know. I was just hoping. I figured that if there was even a little Slade blood in him, that he would do what’s right. It’s