my life, but this was the most selfish thing I’d ever heard.
My mind raced; there had to be a way out of this. “Don’t the two of you have a custody agreement or something? Surely a cross-country move had to have been covered?”
He suddenly stopped and stared at me. “Yeah. For me. I can’t leave a sixty-mile radius. But her dad’s attorney drew up that paperwork a million years ago. It says dick all about her moving. She was all too ready to throw that shit in my face tonight too.”
Oh, fuck. Oh. Fuck. That was not good. The Raffertys were good people, but, it wouldn’t have surprised me in the least if her dad had made that agreement as favorable to Lauren, his twenty-two-year-old and unmarried daughter, as possible.
“There’s got to be a way to fight that, Hud.”
“Oh, there is, but we’re talking months before anything is done. And at what cost? Do I really want to be the man who keeps his son from his mother? I am beyond fucking livid with Lauren right now, but Jack didn’t sign up for this. I didn’t spend almost eight years shielding him from the same instability I’d had growing up just to dump it all in his lap now. But I’m not giving up my son. It’s too much, Lex.” He finally sat down beside me, and when his eyes met mine, the turmoil swirling in his baby blues cinched my chest.
I scooted closer and wrapped my arm around his back the same way he’d done with me hundreds of times over the years.
Then, lost and desperate, he asked, “What am I going to do?”
There was only one option. One I hated to give him.
He loved me and I belonged to him, but this was bigger than either one of us. It was going to destroy me, but without a shadow of a doubt, Hudson would have fixed the entire world for me, even at the cost of ripping out his own heart.
I slipped on my everything-is-okay face, beamed at the only man alive I’d ever put before myself, and then fell on my sword for him.
He searched my face, likely taken aback by my calmness, as I said, “You have to move to Portland, Hud.”
I blinked at her for several seconds. No fucking way I had heard her correctly.
Portland? Was she seriously telling me to move to fucking Portland?
Though moving did solve my problems. I’d been wanting to expand the company, and while I knew dick about Portland, construction wasn’t a regional career. I could do it anywhere. Plus, if it meant I got my son more than once every few months and two weeks during the summer without having to wage legal war with Lauren, I’d do any-fucking-thing.
Well, almost anything.
I stared at her, an eerie ease to her smile, and announced, “Then you’re moving to Portland with me.”
Her lips twisted to the side. “I can’t move to Portland.”
“Why not?”
“Uhhhh, because I have a house, and a business, and family, and quite honestly, it rains too much for me to ever live in Oregon with this hair.”
I shot her a scowl. “I’m not fucking around, Lex. Come with me. We can put both of our houses on the market, pool the money, and find a nice place together.”
“Oh, wow, how very economically romantic of you.”
“I’m not trying to be romantic. I’m trying to keep you!” I boomed, once again lurching to my feet.
She opened her mouth and shut it several times. It wasn’t often Lex was silent, so I took the moment to pounce.
“Look, I know you’re still working through some things, but no matter when or how it happens, you and Jack are my endgame.” I thrust a hand through my hair. So many different balls were in the air all at once that my mind was struggling to keep up. “I’ve had less than an hour to process all of this, and you’re right. Moving isn’t the worst idea. But if I’m gonna pick up my whole fucking life and move across the country, you better believe I’m taking my entire life with me. And, babe, you are at the very top of that list.”
Blankly, she peered up at me from the couch, so utterly unfazed while I was in the middle of a nervous breakdown that it was impossible to get a read on her.
“Say something,” I rasped.
“I don’t have any Brenden stuff to deal with anymore.”
I planted my hands on my hips and slanted my