by Lucy Rinaldi
Do I deserve the right to another chance?
Do I deserve to ask this woman to forgive me?
I’m not sure that I do.
“Why did you come back now, Hudson?” Good question.
“As much as I healed from my moms death, there was always something nagging at me. Something inside of me that pulled me in another direction. As much as I lay there night after night thinking about you with someone else, as much as it burned me up thinking, maybe she’s married now. Maybe she has kids now, someone’s mother, someone’s wife, I had to know once and for all if there was anything left inside of you that still loved me.
“Was that selfish of me to want to come here in hopes that you’d be mine, even though you could be married with kids? Incredibly. But you are all that makes sense to me, Callie.” I swallow back the sob stuck in my throat as tears prick my eyes. “Since the first day I saw you when we were four-years-old, I knew you would one day be my wife and the mother of my children.”
“But you left me, Hudson. Three weeks before our wedding day. You said the worst things imaginable to me.”
I did. I said disgusting things to her because of my grief. I have nothing else to blame it on. But the fact she refused to come with me, even though I didn’t really want her to because I wasn’t capable of giving a shit about myself let alone her, angered me like nothing else ever had.
So I told her that she was the bane of my life, that I didn’t love her anymore, and all I wanted was to get the fuck away from her. I knew the second the words had fallen from my mouth, I’d lost her. The look on her face and the fact her heartache hit me and cracked my own, showed me it was time to walk away.
And that’s what I did, I walked away from the only thing that has ever mattered to me beside my mother and brother.
Twelve
Callie
“Would it have been easier if I’d waited until after we were married?” Of course, it wouldn’t’ve made it easier. How in the hell could it have made anything easier?
I hadn’t expected this talk today, but after my mothers outburst and my freakout thinking someone was watching me, I came home and sat with my beloved Cooper. Roxy was too busy sleeping to care what I was doing. But my Cooper lay next to me with his head on my thigh as I stroked him and sang to him. I haven’t really sang since I was attacked. To be honest, I hadn’t sang much at all after Hudson left me. But today, I couldn’t stop myself.
I didn’t even realize Hudson was here until he sat next to me and took my hand in his. I was in a world of my own. He let me sing until I couldn’t anymore. That’s when I asked him to tell me what his life had been like without me.
He didn’t really tell me anything I hadn’t been expecting. But hearing about the women he’d dated while he’d been gone hurt a little. Not that I could really say much, it’s not like I haven’t dated once in a while. But, somehow, hearing about him being with someone else – and I know he kept quiet about his one night stand – it hurt so much more than I thought it would.
“No,” I tell him. “It would’ve hurt more.”
“No,” He repeats. And his words from the day he left me swim through my mind like toxic acid trying to kill me.
“Why are you doing this?” I ask him in a panic.
He’s standing in our living room with his arms around his big chest, telling me he’s leaving me. What did I do? I’ve been the dutiful fianceé. I’ve stood by his side all these years, loving him, supporting him. Yes, his mother just died weeks before our wedding. But he’s leaving me?
“I need to get away from here, Callie! I want you to come with me.”
“I’m not leaving the place I grew up and all my family because you’re having some life crisis!”
If I tell him I don’t want to go, then he’ll stay. He won’t really leave me, we’ve been together most of our lives. Every day since I was a little girl, I have loved him. Not a day has gone by where I didn’t. He built me my dream house, we live here together. We have a dog that’s like a child to us. We hardly ever argue. And that’s no exaggeration.
We don’t argue because we talk everything through. We’re totally committed to each other. We have a plan! Finalize my shop, buy his own architectural company – check on the shop, his dream is almost a reality. Get married, start a family. The wedding is in three weeks, the baby is on the way. Not that he knows that little secret yet, I was saving it for our wedding night.
His face falls in relief. “Thank god,”
I smile. I knew he’d see it my way. He’s just upset and grieving his mother. He doesn’t want to leave me, we’ll forget about this in a couple days.
“Everything’s going to be okay, Hudson.” I walk towards him, hand out to touch him. But I narrow my eyes as he holds his hand up to me, stopping me in my tracks. He doesn’t want me to touch him?
“I’m glad you said that because,” He sighs like he struggling to say what he’s about to say, or that he doesn’t want to say it. But I know Hudson, he’ll say it anyway. “I don’t want you to come with me”
I want to say something. I want to yell at him. I don’t understand what’s going on! But he’s talking too fast for me to stop him.
“The truth is, I just don’t love you anymore, Callie.”
“What?” My voice is barely audible, but that’s because I’m in utter shock at the words he’s just spoken to me.
“I’m sorry but this just isn’t working between us anymore.”
Why can’t I say anything?
Why I can’t I beg him to tell me this isn’t true?
“I can’t marry you, Callie, it would be a disaster.”
“You’re lying.” I tell him, tears streaming down my face. My heart is breaking and all I want to do is scream at him. I want to hit him and yell at him for doing this to me.
It’s the grief of losing his mother talking, I know it is. But I can do nothing but cry! This isn’t me, I don’t cry, I fight! But the fight has already left me. I’m drained from weeks of stress, his mother dying, the wedding, my secret pregnancy.
Oh god, the baby!
I can’t let him walk away from me like this. I have to fight harder, I need him, the baby needs him. I wrap my arms around his waist. His arms drop to his sides like a statue, no attempt is made to hold me. This isn’t like him, he always holds me. We’re Hudson and Callie, soul mates, partners in crime. He can’t have stopped loving me like this.
“Don’t do this, Hudson, I know you’re hurting over your mother, but please don’t push me away. I love you so much, and I’ll do anything to make this better for you.”
“Make this better?” He scrunches his face up while forcefully pushing me away from him like I mean nothing to him. That hurts badly.
“Please,” I beg while sobbing.
“I don’t want you anymore. I don’t love you and I haven’t for a long time!” He yells. And his words are like bullets hitting my heart. “Keep the fuckin’ house, kill the damn dog for all I care, but you and me?” he motions between us with his finger, “We’re done! Get on with your life, Callie, the right man is out there somewhere.” With that, he walks away from me, and I crumble to the floor sobbing and holding my stomach.
My life will never be the same after this. I should have fought harder. I should’ve locked him in the house and made him stay till he changed his mind. But how can you force someone to love you? But how can a man who swore to love you forever suddenly not love you anymore?
“You have no idea what it did to me when you walk away that day, Hudson. No idea at all.”
“Then tell me, baby. Tell me what it did to you. I need to know, Callie. Don’t spare me. Give me your pain. Let me help you move on from it.”
Give him my pain. How am I meant to do that when there’s so much? So much that I’ve been holding onto these past years that I’m scared of what will happen when I do let it out. The only person I ever told everything to was my shrink.
But Hudson is right, I need to lean on h
im now. Yes, he left me. Yes, he almost killed me in doing so. Yes, I lost something I will never ever be able to get back because of it. But I can’t hold onto all of that while I’m trying to heal from everything Dr psycho did to me.
“The day you left me,” I begin while bringing his hand against my chest and kissing his knuckles. “I lay on the floor where you left me, crying and wondering why you’d do such a thing to me. Two days I lay there before Lora found me. She couldn’t get any sense out of me. I don’t remember much of that first week, but I think Enzo filled them in on what happened.
“Eventually, my mom forced me out of bed. She made me do something other than wallow. But I couldn’t snap out of it. I was so lost without you.” My voice breaks but I cough it back. “You left me before I even got to tell you about our baby.”
“Callie, what the hell!?” I sob as he grabs my face in his hands and forces me for the first time since he arrive to look at him. His eyes search mine, so confused. “You were pregnant?”
I nod my head.
“I lost her, Hudson. I lost her!” He says nothing just pulls me into his arms and lets me cry for the little girl I will never know. The little girl he will never know. I never really grieved for her because I was too lost within myself when it happened. But I feel her loss every time I look at a little girl on the street, at the little girls my best friends are the mother of.
I would never begrudge anyone their happiness at the birth of their child, and I keep my sadness to myself each and every time. But holding baby Harper the other day, I felt so crushed inside. I was never given the chance to hold my daughter, and I will never get the chance to feel my child inside of me, in my arms. Both chances were taken from me permanently when Dr psycho did what he did.
“I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry.” Hudson cries as he holds me. He needs to cry too. But I also need to get this all off my chest before I chicken out completely.
I keep my head on his shoulder as he holds me. I feel stronger when he holds me, but then, it was always that way. “When I lost her, I lost more of myself. I was eighteen weeks when it happened. And it was my fault because I wasn’t taking care of myself.”
I know he’s about to tell me that it wasn’t more my fault, but I’m not ready to hear that. So I stroke his chest and carry on.
“I realized you weren’t coming back to me when Enzo came by and told me he couldn’t get in contact with you to let you know what had happened.”
“Callie,” My name on his lips is a devastated whisper.
“I was so lost, Hudson. I tried to kill myself.” I whisper the words, the words I haven’t said out loud to anyone before. I didn’t think I could handle hearing it, it would’ve made it all real. It happened to me. I lost my man and my baby and I couldn’t go on living without them. Me, Callie Harper, strong woman, the woman everyone comes to when they need a friend, couldn’t cope with life and I did the only thing I could think would make it all better at the time.
“Oh god, no,” His arms tighten around me, mine around his waist as he kisses my head and I breathe him in. The scent of his aftershave always calmed me.
I can feel his sobs through his chest as he holds me. I didn’t tell him what I’d done so he’d feel sorry for me, to pity me. I told him because he needs to know in order for us to move forward. We can’t begin this relationship with all these secrets.
“I spent some time in a psychiatric hospital.” I tell him. “My mother signed me in. She said it was for the best. She was right, being there helped me move forward enough to put my life back together. And I did. I learned to smile again, to laugh, to be the sister, daughter, friend I used to be.
“I dated now and again. It was hard at first, because even though you’d been gone two years, I still felt like I was cheating on you. But even though I didn’t date much, life moved on, and I could go with it or drowned. I went with it.” I shrug.
I went with it because I was stronger than my fears. I knew that. I’d been through the hardest time of my life at that point and I was done with it. Hudson had left me and no amount of moping around would bring him back. He’d severed all ties with me and even his brother. He was done with me, so I was done with him.
I began to have fun again. I began to live again. Okay, exist, but I was no longer dwelling. I found Emilie and she became my best friend. My messed up, scared friend, running from a monster. And I know it sounds weird, but helping her made me stronger. Being her friend helped me turn my own pain into something positive.
Did I ever imagine helping her would mean me saving her from that monster when he kept her hostage in her own apartment and raped her in front of her newborn son? No. But I didn’t expect good things.
Did I imagine he’d break out of prison and come looking for Emile? Of course not. But somehow, she had it in her head that he would. That her baby boy would never e safe from that man. She was right.
When Emilee came here she was lost and alone having left her now husband, telling me at first that he was already her husband. She’d thought giving her baby to a respectable family, the sister of a doctor would be best for her child because she didn’t think being a single mother in her very early twenties would be easy.
Emilee, like a lot of women, changed her mind and kept her little boy. What Dr. Dalton Avery did in revenge will stay with me for the rest of my life.
But I need a life. I can’t keep living in this limbo I’ve been living in since Hudson left. He’s back now and I know he’s trying to make things right. I understand him better than anyone, and he understands me. We’ve both been through a lot, but we found our way back to each other. It’s time to let go.
I lift my head from his shoulder and look at him. I touch his face, wiping his tears from his cheeks. “Don’t cry for me, Hudson.” I tell him softly.
He cups my face gently, “I’m not trying to make you think I feel pity for you. It’s not that,” He shifts on his hip to better face me. “I just can’t bear what happened to you because of me.”
“What? Hudson, how could you think it was your fault?”
“I left you behind because I was too damn selfish to think of anyone but myself.”
I turn on my hip and take his hands in mine with a smile on my face. “Baby, what’s done is done. The past is gone. We both came through it. Didn’t we?” He nods slightly. “I know you didn’t handle your mothers death well, and I know you didn’t get the chance to grieve our little girl,” A tear falls from his eyes and it cuts me deep. “But we can grieve her together. I’ll take you to her resting place.”
“What was her name?” He asks quietly.
“Jemma.”
“Jemma.” He parrots back, a whisper on his lips.
“She would’ve looked just like you.” I smile. “She would’ve been sassy like me, smart like you,” I sigh and look down at our entwined hands. “I’m not ready to talk about what happened with the man who did this to me” I point to my face, “But I will tell you that he left me unable to have children. I can no longer give you that, Hudson.”
It breaks my heart that I can’t have a child. And it kills me that my only chance was lost because I couldn’t pull myself out of my own misery.
“I don’t care about that, Callie. There are plenty of ways for us to become parents if we want that in the future. But I want us to have a future. Please tell me we can fix this.”
My heart breaks as he lays his head on my lap and sobs. Sobbing for everything we’ve both lost. I stroke his dark hair softly as he begs me to let him make this right. Why does he think he needs to fix everything?
“Don’t cry, baby, everything is going to be just fine. We can fix this, I promise. I promise.”
He lifts and I pull him against me, both of us holding each other tightly. We can make this work. It’s all I’ve wanted since the day he left me.
Am I mentally strong enough for this after everything? I believe I am. I believe I’m strong enough for anything. And now that Hudson knows what I went thr
ough when he left me, we can work through it until I’m ready to tell him about Dr. psycho.
Thirteen
Callie
Best friend time, just what the Dr ordered. Emilee called me this morning and asked if I’d meet her for lunch. Of course I said yes. After my heart to heart with Hudson last night, I woke up feeling like a new person. I literally felt like so much weight had been lifted off my shoulders. I could breathe easy, and I even caught myself smiling while making breakfast for Hudson and me.
While I made eggs and toast he crept behind me, wrapping his arms around me and kissed my neck, making me laugh from the tickle of his morning stubble. “Good morning, beautiful.” He’d said.
“Morning, handsome.” I smiled and turned in his arms, wrapping mine around his neck and kissing him softly. “How are you feeling this morning?”
“Better. Seeing the look in your eyes this morning, the carefree look, makes all this worthwhile. We’re going to be okay, aren’t we, baby?”
“We’re going to be more than okay. And do you know why?”
He smiled and asked me, “Why?”
“Because,” I kissed him, “You are everything to me. You always have been, and I know we can have the life we once dreamed off. I mean,” I swallowed hard. I didn’t want to assume we were going to be something he didn’t want us to be. “If you…”
He grabbed my face in his hands and kissed me. I chuckled against his lips. That was his answer. He wanted it all with me, just as he always had.
After our steamy make-out session, where I stopped it before it lead to him fucking me against the kitchen counter. Not that I didn’t want to have sex with him, it’s been five damn years without his touch, but I freaked. It has nothing to do with him and everything to do with the fact I’m too scared to show him my mangled body. I showered and made my way over to Emilee’s with a spring in my step.
That’s why best friend time is the best. Or at least it feels that way today. Everything seems better to day. The sun seems to be shining brighter, the birds are singing louder, air seems fresher. And I know I’ve had the biggest smile on my face all morning.