by Aubrey Irons
"Oh, and smoking; nice. Good fucking job, Hudson; hell of a night you're having."
"Will you calm the fuck down!" I spit out, making a face. The cigarette tastes like a horse’s asshole; well, at least what I imagine the butt of a horse tastes like at least. “Of course I didn't, what’s wrong with you man? She’s not that kind-“
"That wasn't meant as a dis on her, idiot. That's 'cause I know you."
I suck at the horrible cigarette, feeling the bile rise in my burning throat. "The hell is that supposed to mea-"
"The guy who slept his way through half of Italy and Turkey? The guy that almost got us shipped over to the fucking U.S. State Department in Cairo because he couldn't keep his fucking dick in his goddamn pan-“
"That was a long time ago, bud.” My voice is beyond frosty. And it was. I’m a different guy now, and I’ve worked damn hard to get here.
Logan is quiet on the other end of the line for a moment, his breathing coming in regular, controlled measures. Finally, he sighs. "I know; I know man." His voice is calmer, and he’s back to speaking to me like a normal person. "Look, I'm sorry, brother."
"It's cool" I mutter out. That’s one thing about the three us; we might fight like the devil amongst ourselves sometime, but we’re always quick to tamp that fire out. I guess that’s what going through what we went through does to you.
"You can't date her; you know that, right?"
I stamp out the cigarette in my kitchen sink and turn on the viking range to clear the smell of smoke out of the place. "Yeah, I know that."
"We're supposed to watch them, Hudson; that was the promise. To protect and help them, and make sure they're safe." Logan pauses; “That's it, brother. There are other fish in-"
"Ok! I know! Fuck-“ I trail off as I walk back into the massive library off the kitchen where I’ve set up my boxing bag and stare out through the tinted floor-to-ceiling windows at the New York City skyline. The old me would have loved to show off this view to any and every girl I could charm up here, but I’ve stopped all that now; because of the promise.
Well, and of course, because of her.
Except I can’t let that happen; not what I want to let happen. I toss the phone onto the couch behind me after I hang up with Logan and turn to stare back out through the window at New York. All of this - the money, the penthouse with the view, the cars, the girls, the power - all of this means nothing, really. And I don’t need Logan telling me how I can’t bring her into all of my baggage; I already know that. I already know that I can’t let her in; it’s why I pushed her away before as much as it’s killed me for five fucking years thinking about it.
I’m broken, and a girl like Reagan Archer is the last person on earth I need to sift through the pieces.
5
Hudson
P A S T
“I can’t go back, man.” Bryce’s eyes have a wild look in them, and even though he’s technically looking at me, it’s more like he’s looking through me. He’s rocking on the balls of his feet; “Fuck, man; fuck.”
Logan looks up from where he’s pulling the bits of shrapnel fragments out of my arm and meets my eyes, quietly shaking his head; “It’s not like we haven’t discussed this before, Hud.”
I nod grimly, wincing as he squirts disinfectant over the gash in my bicep he’s just pulled the piece of Humvee fender out of.
Sure, we’d all thought it before, even talked about it when it was just the three of us. Any guy out here in this fucking hell on Earth is a liar if they tell you they’ve never even thought about the idea of just lighting out of there. Following orders and saying yes is the one thing they drill into your head more than anything else in training. Fuck; saying yes is the glue that hold the entire chain of command together. You say yes, you shut your damn mouth, and you follow your fucking orders; that’s the job. You don’t debate yourself, you don’t weigh anything against whatever moral compass you’ve got spinning inside, you just do it. If the call was bad, then it was bad, but you move on.
Except what if you can’t? What if you hit that one wall of your spirit inside they never got through; the wall to the part inside that keeps you being human when you’re faced with the horrifically inhumane every single day?
It’s just the three of us left now from the nine of us that found ourselves in the Taliban ambush. I swallow heavily and choke back the rage as I glance back at the first of the two Humvees we rolled in with; the one that hit the IED and lit up like the fucking Hindenburg before they even knew what happened.
I look around us at the burning wreckage of the village. In war, bullets don’t discriminate between Taliban psychos trying to murder you and innocent villagers just trying to get the fuck out of the way, as much as you try to do so. I look at the bodies strewn across charred and cratered streets and in the smoldering ruins of what were homes, businesses…
…Or a school, like the one that burns quietly like a funeral pyre behind us.
Logan catches my glance and shakes his head fiercely; “That isn’t what we signed up for, man.” He follows my eyes to the burning school; neither of knowing but both of us hoping to God it was empty; “I’m here to fight for my country, not watch bombs drop out of the sky onto fucking schools.” He spits, his face shaking.
“Drop out of the sky; right out of the sky.” Bryce is staring at the dirt in front of him and just rocking back and forth.
“So, what, we just walk away? Here in the middle of the fucking desert?”
Logan catches my eye and nods quietly; “The radio went out with that second IED hit; as far as they know back at base, the whole damn convoy got taken out.” He gives me a hard look; “This isn’t going to stop, Hudson. Every mission is going to be like this; every mission is going to be bad guys hiding behind kids and the guys back home hammering them with bombs anyways.”
“You’re talking about desertion of duties during wartime, Logan.” I say my words slowly; “They shoot you for that.”
“I’m going to shoot myself if I have to be part of something like that!“ Logan jabs his finger at the burning school across the shelled street at us, the flames still licking the burning Afghan air.
“And it’s only desertion if they think you deserted. If you’re dead, well…” He trails of and looks up at the mountains on the horizon.
“Where the fuck would we go, man? What do we do, fucking walk back to the States?”
“I don’t think we do go back, Hud; ever.”
I swallow heavily as I let his words sink in; we’d never go home.
I mean it’s not like there’s anything left for me back there anyways. It’s not like my job at the garage before I enlisted was my dream career, and the only family that still even remembers who I am is my drunk asshole Dad, and if he remembers who I am between sips from that bottle, I’d be fucking shocked. Really, at this point the only family I’ve got are these two guys right here; my de facto brothers. I don’t know much about either of their lives before the Marines either, but I’ve heard enough to know they’re not much different than me.
“So, where?”
Logan’s face is grim; “Haul ass to the Chinese border, skip across and try and hook up with some of the Blackriver guys there.” He shrugs; “We’re not the first guys to do this, Hud, and the mercenary groups are always picking up guys with skills and a spotty background checks.”
I grimace; “You want to be mercenaries? Out of the frying pan into the fire?”
Logan’s laugh is hollow, and it ricochets sharply off the empty streets of the village; “Look around you, man; we’re already in the fucking fire!”
Bryce looks up at Logan’s outburst, his eyes looking more focused for a moment as he nods; “We can’t go back, Hudson.”
Yeah yeah, you can never go back, as they say. Except this time, I know they’re right. I’m already a completely different man than I was before, but I’ll be damned if I let them take the rest of me; “So, that’s our only option?”
“We’re in h
ostile territory in an active war-zone, surrounded by countries that hate the United States and people that would kill each other to be the first to string us up or cut our fucking heads off,” Logan looks at me and his eyes soften for a second; “I don’t really see what other option we’ve got, man.”
Fuck it; he’s right and we all know it. It’s go forward or go back, and we all know we can’t go back. I turn to Bryce and nod at his twisted ankle; “You ok to walk?”
He shrugs, yanks the morphine pen out of his med-pack and stabs himself in the thigh with it; “Now I am.” He grins.
Logan nods towards the pickup parked next to burning sheep hut that looks relatively untouched; I’ll drive if you can navigate, Hud.”
Fuck, we’re really doing this. “Any fucking idea where China is?”
“East?” He chuckles, winking at me; “Out of the frying pan, Hud, and out of the fire.”
Months later though, it still feels like we’re very much in the fire.
When we’re scraping by, making a living selling ourselves and our services and parts of our souls to whatever awful piece of shit will pay us the most, I know we all still feel the burn. When Logan goes a little crazy, and Bryce goes to the needle, and I decide to be just like my father and find peace in the bottom of a bottle, it sure as shit still feels like we’re in the fire.
Maybe we can never go back, but we’ve also got no place left to go.
We feel those flames for more than a year like that; the hurt and the pain searing itself into us every single day. That is, until the day we meet William Archer, and everything changes.
REAGAN
P R E S E N T
I wake up to the sound of my apartment door slamming shut, and sit bolt upright.
I live alone.
I’m out of bed before my head is even fully awake, and I grab the first deadly weapon I can find, which happens to be one of the heels I wore last night. With the fiercest face I can muster with my heart hammering in my chest, I fling open my bedroom door and scream bloody murder as I brandish the stiletto at the figure standing in my hallway shrugging of a winter jacket.
He turns and grins that cocky, arrogant smirk of his at me; “And a good morning to you too, Princess.”
Hudson?!
I freeze with the stiletto still brandished above my head, blinking as I stare at him trying to figure out just what the hell he's doing standing in my apartment and leering at me like that at 6:30 in the morning.
"What- I mean, how-" I start to sputter, my mind still trying to piece together the reality him being here right now when I see his eyes dip for a moment, and his grin only gets bigger as his eyebrow arches along with his smirk.
I am suddenly keenly aware of the fact that I'm standing in the hallway with him in nothing but a thin t-shirt and panties, and with a gasp, I'm dashing back into my room and slamming the door to the sound of his laughter. "What the fuck are you doing here?!" I shriek through the door as I press my forehead against the wood and groan to myself as my face burns bright with embarrassment. "How did you even get in?"
Hudson is still laughing, and I can hear him jangling something against the other side of the door that sounds like keys; “Donald gave me a set," He chuckles, pointedly ignoring the first part of my questions. I yank on some pajama pants and fling the door open again just as he marches past my door into the kitchen. My eyes narrow at his back, trying to will my cheeks to stop being so damned red.
"Aw, no battle-cry this time?" He turns and grins at me, his eyes twinkling. "I'm hurt."
"Yeah well, break into my place again and you will be hurt." I mutter, feeling my ears burn as he only chuckles at my empty threat and breezes past me into the kitchen.
I'm momentarily thrown off by suddenly realizing what he's wearing. He's not in a tux this time, and is instead curiously in running shorts and a black undershirt, despite the fact that it's freezing outside. I stare at him as he pokes his nose into my refrigerator, totally forgetting my train of thought as my eyes rove over the sleeves of tattoos running up his muscled and defined arms and across his chest and collarbone. I’ve seen them partially before I guess, but it’s only now seeing them in the daylight that I realize how beautiful they are. I recognize one image as the same Marine corp emblem that my father had inked onto his arm as well, but on Hudson the design is set into a twisting and complex background of other images and inked names.
I’m once again drawn to his shorts and I wrinkle my brow; ”Wait, what are you wearing?"
He frowns. "What do you wear to the gym?"
"We're not at the gym, though."
He grins. "Yeah, but we will be after we eat."
"Excuse me?"
He sighs heavily and rolls his eyes as he pulls away from the fridge with a carton of Almond milk in his hands. My jaw drops as I watch him open it before he brings it to his lips and takes a swig.
"What are you doing?”
"Oh relax, cupcake, I don't have cooties," He makes a face and stares at the carton in his hand before turning to me and shaking his head. "Almond milk? What the hell kind of-"
"What, I'm lactose intolerant,” I grumble, brusquely pushing past him and trying to shove the fact that his arm just brushed against my side out of my head. I push the button on the espresso machine and turn back to him.
Hudson snorts. "Of course you are."
"Remind me why you're here again?" I say, feeling the temper rising in my voice. I'm taking the damn campaign money, and I'm even taking it knowing that I'm going to have to deal with Hudson as a direct consequence of that. But what I am not signing up for is him barging into my home and seeing me in my underwear at a 6:30 in the morning.
"I told you last night, to protect our investment." He swigs from the carton of almond milk again before I rip it out of his hands and throw it away. Hudson grins at me, as if laughing at my admittedly childish behavior.
"But why you," I say, venom dripping from my words.
"You mean, besides having been a soldier?"
"How could I forget" I snap.
Actually, I don't know why I say that. I mean I vaguely know he served just from hearing my father mention it once or twice, but it’s not like I’ve ever heard Hudson say anything about it. For a moment, my eyes are drawn back to the marine emblem on his bicep, and as my gaze looks higher, for the first time I notice a shiny looking scar the size of a quarter on his upper shoulder.
"Thanks, yeah I've been hitting the gym a lot recently."
I shake my head and frown at him. "What?"
Hudson is smirking at me, and he leans forward towards me, one arm reaching past my side to hold himself up against the countertop. He's suddenly very close to me - closer than I want him to be - and in spite of every part of me trying to stop it, I'm suddenly remembering the last time he had me pressed against something.
"It's just that I saw you checking out my arms," He shrugs, looking so fucking arrogant and so fucking hot at the same time that it's make the gears in my head grind against each other.
Even though I can feel the heat from his body he's so close to me, and my gut instinct wants to grab him and pull him crushing against my body, instead, I narrow my eyes at him. "Do shit lines like that ever work?"
The smug look on his face drops for just a second; just long enough for me to know I've scored a hit against great unflappable, unshakable Hudson Banks.
His smirk is back in a second though, and he's grinning as he pulls back from me and turns back to the fridge; “Oh you have no idea, Red.”
I roll my eyes. "There's no reason for you to be here, you know." It's weird, wanting him to get the hell out of here but at the same time wanting him to stay so badly it hurts.
"This isn't some sort of spy movie you know," I snap; “There isn't a terrorist outside about to crash through the window and murder or kidnap a State Senate candidate. The world is not all a terrible, dangerous place, Hudson.”
He turns to me, slowly munching on what may or may not be Chinese
food from a week ago. "Do you really think of the world like that?" He shakes his head. "That's adorable."
"Damnit, Huds-"
"The world is full of bad people, Reagan." He says quietly. For the first time since he's let himself into my apartment - or my life, for that matter - he doesn't have that obnoxiously smug grin on his face and it's like I'm actually seeing the real him, with clarity and without armor, for the first time.
"Anyways," he says, breaking the moment and grinning as his armor goes right back up. "Go put some gym stuff on, let’s go."
I frown, finally reaching for the much needed espresso that’s finally stopped dripping from the machine. "Why? And where are we going?"
Hudson rolls his eyes. "To the gym, dummy. Unless you wanna work out in those cute panties you had on earlier, in which case I'm all for it."
Yeah, moment of clarity shattered.
I stare at Hudson like he's nuts before gesturing towards the icy-looking window with the wind whipping against it. "Are you kidding me? I'm not going to the gym, it's freezing outside!"
"Seems like it's a little cold in here too, toots." He smirks and nods at my chest, and I look down to realize my nipples are poking out through my thin t-shirt. I hastily cross my arms over my chest.
"What are you, ten? Seriously thought, I'm not going to-"
He cuts me off by tapping a piece of paper printed with what looks suspiciously like a time-table and shaking his has as he grins at me. "Donald's schedule, Princess; not to be ignored."
Something tells me arrogant, filthy rich, obnoxious and tattooed Hudson Conners doesn't give a flying shit about keeping schedules, and I know he's just doing this to get to me, which I am determined to not let happen.
"Fine, let’s go." I turn and start to march down the hall back to my room.
"Oh, panties it is then?" He calls after me, and I swear it’s almost as if I can feel his eyes on my butt, looking right through my pajamas.
I slam the door to my room, shutting him off again.