Complete Fixed: The Complete Fixed Series: Books 1-5

by Laurelin Paige

  "What's wrong?"

  "You're not in bed," I said. “I woke up and didn’t know where you were.”

  His features relaxed instantly, lips turning up into a smile. "But you found me."

  "That I did."

  He tugged me gently into his lap, arranging me so that I wasn’t putting any weight on the side of me with the hurt rib, while being sure not to disturb the wound on my thigh.

  He nuzzled his face into my neck, simultaneously slipping his hand inside my robe to gently cup my breast, an intimate caress more than a sexually charged one. As he kissed along my collarbone, his thumb grazed along my nipple until it stood up, pert and proud.

  "What are you doing out here?" I asked, my voice vibrating on the edge of a moan.

  "Dreaming," he said, continuing his kisses up my nape and to my jaw.

  "This is not dreaming, Mr. Pierce. I assure you this is very real."

  His mouth moved up to hover above mine, then he lifted his eyes to meet my gaze. He studied me for a moment, then chuckled to himself before leaning back into the chair.

  "What?" I played my fingers through the back of his hair.

  "Do you remember the other day when Mina woke up crying? And I went in to comfort her?"

  I did. I'd been changing a diaper. Hudson and I hadn't even gone to bed for the night yet, and Mina had already padded out of her room with big crocodile tears running down her face. Her daddy went to her, picking her up and carrying her back to bed with soothing words.

  "Did she have a nightmare? I never asked." She wasn't usually one to have bad dreams, but everyone did now and then.

  "Actually, it was quite the opposite." He chuckled again, remembering. "She told me she'd been dreaming that she lived in a house made of candy—the floorboards were red licorice and she had a chocolate bar for door. There was more. She was very detailed in describing it to me. And she was devastated when she'd woken up and realized that the dream wasn't true."

  "Oh my God, she's adorable." Having children with the man I loved was one of my favorite parts of spending my life with Hudson. We had this special thing that was just ours, these little humans that we created. No one on Earth would ever find stories about their antics as charming or magnificent as he and I, but it was something we would always have together that belonged to no one else.

  "How did you get her to calm down? Promise to bribe her with candy the next day?"

  "Yes. I did do that. I told her we’d take a trip to the candy store." He sobered. "But then I remembered something Jack used to say when I was really little. I'd forgotten all about it. Then with Mina’s dream, it all of a sudden came rushing back to me, this memory of a very similar situation when I was about her age, and my dad putting me on his knee and saying that I didn't need to cry. Because dreams don't come true from dreaming them—they come true from holding them."

  In the distance a siren sounded, the regular whoosh of traffic passed by below, but for the most part, the night was silent around us. "Holding them? What does that mean?"

  "You keep it in your heart. Think about it often. Cherish it, I guess."

  Yep. That did sound like the romantic kind of nonsense Jack would spout. And it was sweet.

  Sweet...

  "Wait—you told our daughter to hold her dream so it would come true?" I looked at my husband incredulously. "You're encouraging Mina to cherish the goal of a house made out of candy?!"

  He shrugged innocently. "We don't know enough about her yet. She might grow up to be one of those eccentric types."

  "She might grow up to be one of those diabetic types."

  "Oh come on. She's four. Who knows how the dream will change? Maybe she'll end up running a chocolate factory one day. My dreams obviously changed. I didn't grow up to be a train."

  I giggled again. "A train? That's the dream you wanted to hold onto? Becoming a train?"

  He scowled at me. "I told you—people change." He pulled me closer to him. "Anyway, that's why I was out here. I'd had a dream that woke me up. A good dream, and I wanted to hold onto it."

  In all our time together, I couldn't remember a single time that Hudson had told me about his dreams—not his real literal dreams, the ones that occurred while he was sleeping.

  I cocked my head and stared at him. "Tell me about it?"

  He hesitated for a moment, his hand inside my robe, rubbing against the skin of my torso. "It wasn't really long. Just a brief snapshot of an afternoon. Sometime way in the future. We were at Stern and Brett was graduating with her MBA."

  Brett following in my footsteps at my alma mater—it made my chest warm to imagine it.

  "She looked just as beautiful as you did, the first night I saw you at that symposium. And she was just as smart and strong and fearless and enough."

  God. Our future. I'd never thought that far into it, what life would look like when they grew up. I tried imagining it now, with him.

  "How did you look?"

  "I still had my hair."

  I rolled my eyes. "Perfect, I bet. You probably aged better than me." He would always look perfect. I was sure of that.

  "I still thought you were pretty goddamned sexy. I had wanted to pull you into another dark hallway so I could mess you up before the ceremony, but Bennett was with us."

  I furrowed my brow. "Who's Bennett?"

  "Our son. He's an oopsie."

  I almost lost it at Hudson's use of the word oopsie, such an informal word from such a formal man.

  And then I started to process what he'd said. Another kid. "I'm guessing this means you aren't getting that vasectomy."

  "Bennett is your favorite child! I can't bear to go out of business now that I know about him."

  Whether it was his way of saying he wasn't quite ready to close up shop—or that he'd prefer not to be the one to go under the knife—I wasn't sure. Either way, I could handle that revelation. That we weren't necessarily done. As long as it wasn't happening right away. "How much later does it—he—happen?"

  Hudson squinted his eyes. "I guess he was ten years younger than the twins. Maybe more." Jesus, I’d be in my forties. He was definitely getting fixed after that one.

  But maybe that would be the perfect time for an oopsie.

  I nestled into him. "Who else was there? Tell me what else we’re like in the future."

  "Like I said, it was only a snapshot of this moment. But I did gather a lot. Holden was there—he was already married. And his wife seemed really pregnant. About to burst pregnant. Mina got there late because she was running from work—she was managing The Sky Launch now, and there'd been some sort of crisis. Jack was there. Sophia… wasn't."

  I was quiet, not sure what to say about a future without the woman who had made my husband's life hell, but had also still been his mother.

  "That's okay," he said when I didn't say anything. "I don't know how to feel about that myself."

  "I'm sure it was sad."

  "It was sad." He let another beat go by before continuing. "Mirabelle and Adam were there. Oh, and Brett's boyfriend. She was dating one of the Bruzzos. It was pretty serious. He hinted he had a ring."

  I sat up excitedly, ignoring the protest of my side. If Brett really married one of Gwen's kids, it would tie our families together in even more ways than we already were. I loved the idea.

  "Which one was it?"

  "Is there a difference? I don't know. One of them."

  I shook my head. "You are terrible."

  "I should've known his name. He was working at Pierce Industries. He kept trying to pitch me new ideas during the boring parts of the ceremony. Some of them were actually good."

  "Man, wouldn’t that be amazing? Brett marrying Gwen’s son, and the two of them taking over your business when you retire. All of it, really. Sounds like an amazeballs future."

  "I hope it’s our future. But whatever future I have with you will be perfect. The only required ingredient is that you’re in it with me.”

  I tucked my head under his chin,
and thought about what he’d said, holding his dream with him. His dream hadn’t included anything like, “And you didn’t have a breakdown after your next baby.” He didn’t even say, “Yeah, you went a little crazy again, but we all survived.” And it struck me that those things didn’t matter to him. That his vision didn’t have to include “fixing” me to be perfect. He accepted the two Alaynas, accepted that they both made me me.

  And why shouldn’t he? Hudson still maneuvered and schemed and controlled. It was why he was so good at ruling his empire. Sometimes he crossed the line and tried to manipulate me and sent me into a fuss, but I didn’t want him any other way.

  So maybe our whole relationship, when I’d thought we worked because we fixed each other’s broken parts, was wrong. Maybe we hadn’t fixed each other at all—because we didn’t need fixing. We needed healing and understanding. We needed patience and optimism. We needed dreams instead of nightmares and light instead of darkness. We needed trust.

  And we’d given each other all of that.

  We’d both just needed to be loved. For who we were and despite what we’d done. For our strengths and our weaknesses too. We’d needed someone to belong to, someone who filled our dark spaces, someone who moved heaven and Earth to make sure we’d always be together.

  We’d needed love.

  And we had enough of that to last us a lifetime and beyond.

  Epilogue 2

  Hudson

  I took the rest of the week off to be with my family. To be there for Alayna when she woke from the nightmares, her heart racing, sweat pouring from her body. To make sure everyone felt safe and secure and whole before returning to work.

  On my first day back, Patricia greeted me with a packed schedule and a handful of mail and interoffice items that only I could attend to. Slipped between a stack of standard contracts sent over from Accelecom, I found a single sealed white business sized envelope, my name scrawled in a masculine script on the front.

  Inside was a page of hotel stationery, folded in thirds with a note handwritten in the same cursive.

  I’m grateful to hear your wife is back in your arms.

  You and I have unfinished business.

  Edward Fasbender

  Meet the man who slayed the dragon.

  Slay One: Rivalry

  (Book 1 of the Slay Saga)

  Three years after Hudson officially quit playing games with her, Celia Werner is summoned to the office of Edward Fasbender, the most wealthy media mogul on the European continent. She meets with him, assuming he wants to hire her to decorate his offices.

  Instead, he has an intriguing proposition for her.

  Get Slay: Rivalry now!

  Author’s Note: Slay begins before Fixed Forever but by the end of the series, it will pick up right where Fixed Forever left off.

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  Afterword

  Hudson and Alayna’s story is officially over, but there is more happening in his world. Edward and Hudson have unfinished business, and what has Celia been up to over the last several years?

  All that is answered in the Slay series.

  For those who are asking, why the heck would Laurelin write a series about the villain? Well, let me explain.

  You aren’t the first person to ask that question. When I first started talking about writing the Slay books, people told me I was crazy.

  Not just one or two people, mind you. More than a dozen comments, emails, private messages. My agent questioned whether it was a good idea. One of my closest beta readers said she’d read anything I wrote, but did it have to be her?

  I was pretty sure, based on feedback, that if it had been a man I wanted to redeem, I would have had much less backlash. A good deal of romance is based on a not-so-good hero becoming a better man. There are far fewer stories where a not-so-good heroine is redeemed.

  I put off the idea for several years because of the blatant display of disinterest, but all the while the story brewed in my head. Partly because I’m that type of person that when you tell me I’m crazy to do something, I just want to do it more. I’m a challenge-authority kind of gal. The writer who likes to flip tropes on their head. The woman who consistently responds with, “Let’s just see about that.”

  If it had just been my stubborn streak, though, I would have abandoned the project. I’m the sole provider for my family, and I’m smart enough to realize that writing a story that my readers don’t want is not the wisest business decision.

  But it was more than being stubborn that brought me back time and time again to Celia Werner’s story. She fascinated me as a character. She’d done mean things to good people, things that I see play out in less dramatic ways in the real world, and I couldn’t stop wondering why she would do that. What compelled her? What drives people—what drives women—to hurt others?

  Lots of reasons came up as I continued to mull over it, but one answer spoke loudest from the crowd—she was broken. People hurt others because they are broken. Women hurt others because they’ve been broken.

  So very often, those women have been broken by men.

  In today’s culture, that felt like a very important topic for me to explore. Especially when I tend to write alpha men with qualities that are often associated with toxic masculinity in the real world. It seemed relevant to differentiate masculine from machismo. In other words, differentiate men who are strong, courageous, and assertive from men who use their strength, courage and assertiveness to hold power over women.

  Besides the aptness, Celia’s story was completely on brand. Because broken people finding love—specifically dangerously broken people finding love—is exactly what Laurelin Paige books are all about.

  And so I got brave.

  I focused in on what it would take to tell such a complicated story. I decided to make it possible to read this series and enjoy it without ever reading any of my other books. I freaked out a little when I realized it would need to be four books (oh-my-goodness-four-books-is-a-ton-of-books!), but when I talked myself off that ledge, I carved out time in my schedule, and put book one up for preorder.

  Then I took a deep breath and dove in.

  It wasn’t easy. The writing itself flowed well enough, but facing the terrible and dark places that Celia has been was much harder. I spent significant time researching and talking to a couple of close friends who were sensitive to the subject matter. I put my blinders on to the many readers who said they would never read this book (which is a decision I support completely—not every book is for every reader). I reminded myself this was a story I believed in, a story I needed to tell. I focused. I meditated.

  And when I was done with book one, no matter what the critical response was, I decided I’d be proud of it. And I am.

  Now, several books into the series, I’m over-the-moon grateful for the support readers have given me. It’s beyond what I expected, and I’m very lucky for that. But even if I hadn’t received such great reviews and comments, I would still believe in this story. I wouldn’t want to write romance books that didn’t include some aspect of redemption in them. To me, that’s the truest form of love.

  The idea that people can recover, that we can heal, that we can atone, that we can change and become someone better than what we once were, that no matter what we’ve done we are still worthy of being loved—that notion is essential to the progress of humanity. I can’t imagine living in a world where we didn’t believe growth was possible. I certainly wouldn’t want to.

  Get Slay One: Rivalry

  (Book 1 of the Slay Series)

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  Also by Laurelin Paige

  Visit my website for a more detailed reading order.

  The Dirty Universe

  Dirty Filthy Rich Boys - READ FREE

  Dirty Duet: Dirty Filthy Rich Men | Dirty Filthy Rich Love

  Dirty Sexy Bastard - READ FREE

  Dirty Games Duet: Dirty Sexy Player | Dirty Sexy Games

  Dirty Sweet Duet: Sweet Liar | Sweet Fate

  Dirty Filthy Fix (a spinoff novella)

  Dirty Wild Trilogy: Coming 2021

  The Fixed Universe

  Fixed Series: Fixed on You | Found in You | Forever with You | Hudson | Fixed Forever

  Found Duet: Free Me | Find Me

  Chandler (a spinoff novel)

  Falling Under You (a spinoff novella)