by Fall, Carly
“Let me help you,” she said, grateful to have something else to concentrate on.
She lifted his head while holding the glass. He drank greedily.
She gently eased his head back on the pillow as he winced, and she pulled the sheet and comforter up to his chin. He glanced at her briefly, then closed his eyes.
They sat for a moment in silence, her taking the time to get a grip on her cravings. It had been sixty-two days since she had taken a pain pill, and it would never happen again. Finally, she asked, “What happened, Hudson?”
He didn’t say anything for a moment, but he opened his eyes. “I don’t want to talk about it,” he said in a quiet, low tone.
She nodded and patted his hand. He closed his eyes again, and she sat with him, studying his big hand. Or paw. His hands were huge, yet soft. His fingers reminded her of a piano player’s—long, elegant and graceful.
A few minutes later, there was a soft knock on the door, and it cracked open.
“Beverly?” the female voice whispered.
Beverly got up from the bed and went to the door just as Abby stepped in. “How is he?”
“He woke up a couple of minutes ago and asked for some pain medication, so I gave him some Vicodin. I think he may be sleeping again.”
Abby nodded, looking over at the bed. “Thank you,” she whispered. “Thank you for helping him. He’s…he’s very special to us. To me.”
Beverly studied Abby. Her face looked tired, and her body was almost curling in on itself as she held her arms across her chest. It was like they were the only things preventing her from doubling over.
“I think he’s going to be fine, Abby,” she said softly, placing her hand on the woman’s arm.
Tears sprung into Abby’s eyes, but they didn’t fall. Abby nodded and stared at Hudson for another moment, then inhaled deeply, wiping her eyes. She smiled at Beverly and asked, “Won’t you come up for dinner?”
Beverly was about to say yes, but then she looked over at Hudson. For some reason she had the distinct impression she should stay with him, that he shouldn’t be left alone.
“Is there a way for me to get a little food in here?” she asked. “I just think I should keep an eye on him.”
Abby nodded. “Of course. I’ll bring down a plate for you, or I’ll send Noah.”
Abby left and Beverly returned to the bed. Hudson opened his eyes and looked at her.
“How did you get caught up in this pile of horseshit, Bev?”
She smiled. No one had called her Bev in years, since college. She always went by the formality of Beverly. She liked the way Bev rolled off his tongue.
She thought about his question for a moment while studying the floor and said, “I guess you could say I sort of volunteered.”
There was silence in the room for a moment, and Beverly thought Hudson had gone back to sleep. She looked at him, only to find him fully awake, staring at her with one open eye and the other one halfway open because it was so swollen.
“How, exactly, did you volunteer for this?”
She stared at him for a moment, then patted his hand again, one of the few places that wasn’t cut up. “It’s not your concern, Hudson. You need to rest.”
She got up to leave, but he grabbed her wrist. “Tell me.”
Looking into his battered face, his dark eyes…she didn’t want to go into the details of how she needed to be needed. “I came when someone in need called,” she said softly.
He continued to stare at her, and she shifted on the bed, uncomfortable with his questioning.
She shrugged her shoulders, trying to maintain her unreadable doctor face. “Faith found me, you needed me. Rayner didn’t give me much of a choice. I have nowhere to be, no one to answer to, so I came.”
After a moment, she met his eyes again and realized she was in for more questioning.
“Why don’t you have anyone to answer to? Surely you have family. You’re obviously in the medical field. So why don’t you have anywhere to be?”
She stared at him, and then decided to study the carpet again where there weren’t any answers. “I guess I’m starting over,” she said quietly.
Chapter 13
Hudson simply couldn’t believe the woman who had held his thoughts hostage was actually sitting in his quarters.
On his bed.
She stared at him with bright, green eyes, a look he would call “doctor calm.” He had seen the same look on numerous TV shows, and he wondered if all doctors and those who pretended to be doctors were taught to give that look. It was a mask of detachment and professionalism.
He guessed she hadn’t come willingly. Or maybe she had with some serious persuasion. Any questions on how she got here disappeared as he wrapped his mind around what she had said.
Starting over?
Starting over as what? What did a beautiful woman like her with a career and what he would guess to be a very full life have to start over from?
A headache slammed into his left frontal lobe, making him close his eyes. Shit, he hoped he didn’t have a concussion.
He had come to after the Colonist hit him, but how much time had passed, he didn’t know. Waking when he heard the door close, he hadn’t been able to open his eyes. He hovered in that place between consciousness and having the shit beat out of him, and he heard voices. Recognizing Rayner’s voice right away, he blocked it out. He was here to die, and the asshole simply couldn’t be here to rescue him. It had to be a hallucination.
Then he had heard Faith’s voice, and he realized it wasn’t a dream. He silently cursed, pissed beyond measure that his plans had been screwed up. However, a small part of him felt just a twinge of relief that he had been found, and that twinge blossomed into a small kernel that had, “Hey, fucker, let’s rethink this suicide plan,” stamped all over it.
There had been a female voice he didn’t recognize, but he felt the presence next to him, and it felt familiar, but he couldn’t place it. Not that he could recognize much at that point. Hell, he wasn’t even quite sure where he was. The female gently dabbed his wounds with a soothing touch.
He had blacked out and came to consciousness again, realizing he was in a car. Whoever had been driving wasn’t sparing any speed, and Hudson was certain the vehicle was in desperate need of some new shocks. Just when he was about to scream, he felt calm hands on him, and sounds that soothed him, like shushing sounds one would say to a baby, from that same female voice he recognized—but couldn’t quite place—from before.
When the vehicle came to a halt and the door opened, he recognized the hot air of the desert and he knew he was home, the place he had been so desperate to escape.
He heard Rayner and Noah arguing outside the car.
“What the fuck?” Noah had asked, and Hudson had passed out again, only to awaken when they carried him from the car to the silo.
“We need to change the fact that we don’t have a back-up plan for when Cohen’s gone,” Noah said. “Make a memo.”
“I’ll pencil you in on my Blackberry,” Rayner had retorted.
Hudson felt the urge to laugh at the joke that went completely over Noah’s head.
Pencil him on his Blackberry.
Funny shit.
The pain as those two had carried him from the car to the silo had been almost unbearable. He felt the cool air of the inside of the silo, and he was pretty certain that two angry black bears carrying him would have been gentler than Noah and Rayner.
“Relax, man. We’ve got you. You’re solid,” Rayner had said.
Hudson remembered thinking, “No, no, I’m not,” but whether he spoke it out loud, he didn’t know.
The pain in his head eased, and he thanked the Vicodin gods that were inducing him with their numbness. He opened his eyes and met Beverly’s. Holy Heaven, she was pretty.
“You need to rest, Hudson,” she said.
She got up went to sit on the big, overstuffed chair in the corner. As he watched her walk away, he couldn’t
help but admire the sway of her thin hips, the grace of a ballerina in her step. When she got to the chair, he shut his eyes so he wouldn’t get busted staring. One thing he was absolutely certain about: he would get all the particulars of the why’s, where’s, and when’s of Bev starting-over routine.
As for him, well, hadn’t he just fucked up everything. Goddammit, he couldn’t even commit suicide right. And now he was way too weak to even try again, and he still had that little kernel within telling him it was okay to want to live. He cursed himself some more.
A few minutes later, just as the Vicodin was taking full effect and the outside pain began to disappear, there was a loud knock on the door. He knew it wasn’t Abby, as she would have had more tact. No, one of his fellow Warriors was on the other side of that door. He thought that if he ignored it long enough, they would go away, but the knock sounded again, this time louder. With tenacity like that, he could narrow it down to Noah. He was as pigheaded and stubborn as a winter cloud was white.
He heard light footsteps across the rug as Bev made her way over to the door. She opened it quietly and spoke in hushed tones.
“Thank you, Noah. This looks wonderful.” Hudson smelled garlic and tomatoes, so he was guessing Italian. “I love lasagna.”
Hudson kept his eyes shut, wondering who had taken over his duties in the kitchen.
“I brought some down for Hudson as well,” Noah said. “Are you awake, Hudson?” he asked quietly.
Hudson thought about ignoring him and feigning sleep, but he knew this talk would come sooner or later. Might as well just get it over with.
He opened his eyes and met Noah’s. He glanced over at the clock. There were some things that Hudson was still very old school about, and the clock was one of them. No blaring red digital numbers for him. His clock was one that he had wind up each day, and didn’t give any indication of morning or night. The hands read close to six, and Hudson’s internal clock, as well as the days events he remembered, told him he was in the p.m. zone of the day. In another two hours, his eyes would be glowing, as would all the other Warriors, and he was glad he still had in his contacts that dimmed the color of his eyes when the sun went down.
They needed to be careful around Beverly. She couldn’t see that. It would open up a whole can of worms that no one would want to deal with. In fact, they just needed her to get out of here A.S.A.P.
“What’s up, Noah?”
“How you feeling, my man?”
Hudson sighed. “Like I’ve been tied to a chair and sliced up.”
Noah chuckled.
“Help me sit up, Noah.” The pain wasn’t quite as bad as it had been.
God bless Vicodin.
Once Hudson was in an upright position, Noah asked, “What happened?”
Hudson glanced over at Beverly, who was seated in the overstuffed chair across the room and seemed to be engrossed in the lasagna.
“What can I tell you,” he said in a low tone, “the fucker got the best of me. Tasered me when I opened the door. The rest is history.”
Hudson watched Noah’s face, hoping he had sold him on the story. He felt like he had told a partial truth, leaving out the minor detail of how he had become so fucked up that he was going to kill himself, as well as the part about hoping the Colonist would kill him. Living a lie for as long as he had, he thought this would be easy. But he didn’t outwardly lie to others. He was truthful to his rotten, broken core. That Colonist might as well have carved LIAR across his forehead.
It was especially hard lying to Noah, because he considered him more of a brother than Stretch ever was. Flashes of his brother’s swirling brown form came to him, and memories of a time when they were innocent children dislodged themselves from his brain. There was nothing innocent about Noah, or Hudson for that matter, but Hudson often thought of Noah as his brother, and he didn’t lie to him. He might have withheld information in the past, but he had never outright lied. There was a difference, as far as Hudson was concerned.
Noah’s eyes narrowed, as if he were judging Hudson for truthfulness. “Must have been quite a surprise. I’ve never seen a Colonist, or anyone for that matter, get the best of you.”
Hudson just shrugged his shoulders and met Noah’s eyes. After a moment, he quipped, “First time for everything, man.”
Noah studied him a moment longer, then nodded. He looked around the room again and spoke in low tones. “Cohen won’t be back for two days. He can’t get on a commercial flight because of the time zones and doesn’t want to light up. No contacts,” he said quietly, referring to the uncomfortable contact lenses that the Warriors wore at night to hide their glowing eyes. “There aren’t any private planes available until then. Something about a celebrity event in the French Riviera.”
Hudson nodded, understanding. He would be in a Vicodin fog for another couple of days. The way he felt right now, he would be cool with it.
“Bunch of hypocrites those bastards are. Always preaching green this, green that.
Then booking up all the private planes…hypocritical, man.”
“Who found me?” Hudson asked.
“When we hadn’t heard from you, I called Rayner. They were on their way back from Flagstaff. Talin tracked the GPS in your phone, and he guided them to where you were. Faith went to find a doctor, ran into Beverly, and the rest is history.”
It all matched with what he had thought had happened. Shit. He’d forgotten about the GPS in the phone. If he had remembered, he would have disabled it and maybe he’d be dead by now. They wouldn’t have been able to find him.
And maybe them finding you wasn’t such a bad thing, asshole.
Hudson nodded, hoping to stop the conversation. He really didn’t want to think about anything. He just wanted to enjoy the Vicodin high and think about a lot of nothing.
Noah met his eyes again. “You look tired.”
Hudson nodded.
“Okay. I’ll let you rest. But Talin is going to have to get a description from you on what the guy looked like.” He stood up, looked at Beverly, and spoke a little louder so she could hear what he was saying. “Doc, I got a room for you one floor down. I can take your stuff down there if you want.”
Hudson watched as she contemplated Noah’s offer. He wanted her to leave so he could just be alone, but at the same time, he liked having her around. Somehow, she brought him a little bit of peace. It was a slight feeling, but it was there. Maybe it was her classic beauty and the way she carried herself like royalty, or her little smile that made the sides of her eyes slightly crinkle. Maybe it was the intimacy of knowing her hands were all over his skin as she stitched him up. Maybe it was because she just smelled good, and he loved the color of her eyes that seemed to glow with heat and questioned at him all at the same time.
Or maybe it was the Vicodin.
“Thanks, Noah. I think I’ll stay here and make sure Hudson’s okay. Just one floor down?”
Noah handed her a set of keys and then headed for the door. “The bar is stocked, and someone will be down in the morning around eight to see if you’re ready to come up and eat.”
Beverly got up and walked him to the door. “Thanks for everything, Noah.”
As he opened the door, Abby was on the other side ready to knock and gain entrance. “Oh!” she exclaimed, surprised. “Hi!”
Hudson watched Noah’s face go soft as he drew Abby into his arms. It hurt to see such love, but it warmed his heart. His daughter was well cared for, well loved.
Hell, she was worshipped, just as any female should be.
“Hi,” Noah said, nuzzling her neck.
Abby laughed and pushed him away. Hudson was happy to see her with such a beautiful aura around her. He had watched Abby her whole life, yet he had never seen such happiness radiate from her until she met Noah. It warmed his heart knowing that she was finally in a place of love, safety, and affection.
Her eyes swung around to him—his soul cringed and his heart melted at the same time, but in a good way. A
bby had the same warm brown eyes as her mother, yet they held love for him. The last time he had seen her mother’s eyes, he remembered the irritability and discontent that had glowered from them as he fought to be a part of her life, and Abby’s. And that was also the day the fissure in his soul began to open, leading now to the chasm he couldn’t deal with any longer.
It was difficult to think about the woman who had ate his soul, chewed it up, spit it out, then stomped on the remains every time he looked at Abby. Yet, Abby’s gaze traveled through him and went beyond that point of agony to hit bulls-eye on the sweet spot filled with nothing but love and admiration.
She came toward him, the spitting image of the woman he had loved so long ago.
As he watched her approach, he temporarily forgot about Bev.
“My doah,” he whispered due to the dryness of his throat, using his native language and taking her hand in his as she sat down.
He noticed the worry in her eyes, the dark circles under them from lack of sleep. “Are you okay, Hudson?” she asked him quietly.
Once again, he found himself lying. He thought of his mother’s words: The road to happiness is peace in your soul. He had none of it. Hell, at this time he felt like he had been chewed up from the inside out, so he wasn’t even sure if he had a soul.
If Abby were talking about the physical sense, then yes, he would live. However, nothing had really changed since he decided to punch his own ticket and check out. Well, the Vicodin helped a little bit, and that little kernel of “you want to live, fucker,” was definitely there. How that had sprouted, he didn’t know. But back to that Vicodin—maybe he should become a drug addict. He glanced briefly over at Bev, who was eyeing him warily. Maybe if he hit it off with the doctor, he could score regular prescriptions.
But how long would that last? He had been through fighting, sex, cooking, and strenuous workouts. They all helped for a short amount of time, but none really soothed. How much Vicodin would he have to consume before it didn’t help anymore? Five pills a day? Ten? Twenty-three? And then he would have to deal with being a drug addict on top of all the other shit he was trying to cope with.