by Stacey Lynn
And I could do that, despite the circumstances.
“They’re the best men I know, and I know their hearts. If they’re giving you a hand, it only makes sense to join them.” He shrugged and closed the file before finally focusing on me again.
“So,” he said with a glint in his eye and a smile on his lips. “Back to my original question. Tell me about yourself.”
I was arrested before I left the hospital the day after Josh died. Dislocated shoulder and a severe concussion kept me admitted for a couple days, but the pain was nothing compared to learning my brother was gone.
All. My. Fault. Regardless of who was driving, my dad’s words still rang in my head late at night when sleep didn’t come.
At the age of eighteen, a few months before my high school graduation, I spent weeks in county jail after my bail was denied.
My dad came to visit me once. The purpose was to introduce me to my attorney who immediately suggested a guilty plea under the glaring eyes of my father.
My mother? After the hospital, I only saw her at the sentencing and even then she could barely look at me but when she did, I’d never forget those tears of hers. It was the only time I could ever remember she showed me she cared.
Before all of that, from the outside looking in, I had everything I wanted at my fingertips. Expensive presents in lieu of attention and affection. A car for my sixteenth birthday instead of a cake and a hug. I lost my virginity to Carl Hammerly in the back seat of said car which led to cramped calves and a very, unforgettable experience in the quickest, lousiest way possible.
And only a few months after that lackluster evening, I was in the back of a nondescript white van, making the trek to Iowa where I was to serve ten years in prison for a crime I didn’t commit… unless you count the fact that I was the one who called Josh.
All of this meant my dating life had been essentially non-existent.
It’s not a date.
Right. It was friends. Hudson clarified that all too well after my ridiculous rambling fest last night. It was ridiculous to think a guy like him could want anything more to do with a girl like me. The way he turned me down kindly was a burn to my ego. I was still trying to place salve on to cool it down.
None of this changed the fact Hudson was going to be at my apartment in less than thirty minutes to take me out for dinner to celebrate both my high-scoring B in accounting and the job Brandon offered. Which came after possibly the quickest interview in the history of interviews. Pretty sure Judith asked me more in-depth questions than my new boss Brandon had.
I fumbled through them, sitting across the table from him while Hudson paced like a tiger outside, trying to stay calm and trying to stay in the moment. After six years in a medium-security prison, staying in the moment was the only way I survived.
“It’s freaking dinner with a friend,” I mumbled, tossing another secondhand and faded black shirt toward my bed.
My closet was enormous. My clothes were less than… well, they were shit. There was no pleasing way to say it.
I paced my spacious new bedroom, complete with a queen-sized bed and a mattress sent straight from heaven. For six years I hadn’t slept through a night without waking. Now?
Holy freaking cow… I was rested in the morning. Amazing what a non-lumpy or bug ridden mattress could do for your energy levels.
Not that any of it was helping me now.
He’d told me to dress casual. That was it. And since I didn’t have his phone number, I had no way to ask him where we were going.
Casual.
Pffft
I grabbed my phone and typed out a text.
Out of curiosity, what does one wear on a non-date dinner thing with a friend who says to Be Casual?
I hit Send before I talked myself out of texting Angie. She wasn’t a friend, but the only person under the age of thirty-five I knew. And oh.
I slapped my forehead. Oh shit. She was on her own date.
Never mind! Abort! You’re on a date. Don’t answer this. No biggie. I swear.
But as I was typing, three more gray dots popped up, disappeared and reappeared.
Is this a “be casual non-date dinner” with Hudson?
Ugh. She needed to let the Hudson thing go.
Sure, he was attractive. Hot, some would say.
Me? I knew better.
He was a do-gooder helping his dad with being an even better do-gooder and I was the recipient. This dinner was like the welcoming committee. Only it was a committee of one. And that one was a man who was fine.
A friend.
Hudson being the friend?
Ugh. Yes. Hudson. Dinner. Nothing to get excited about. Just DINNER. Casual. What do I wear?
Not that orange top thing you wore last week. It was hideous.
Hmmm. Maybe Angie wasn’t great.
It was salmon.
It was F-Ugly. Curl your hair, put on more makeup than you wear at school, pale pink lips he’ll wonder if it’s your real color and anything tight fitting so he spends more time looking at your ass and tits. Jeans. Short sleeves. Grab a cardigan. It’ll be chilly.
Doubt arose. Are you saying I’m ugly so wear something so he doesn’t look at my face?!
Bitch, please. You’re fine. You’re sexy as hell. All the guys stare at your ass before wondering if you’re going to shank them. Wear the tight shit so you can figure out if he’s really only your friend. No male friend will stare at your tits or ass.
Boys on campus stare at my ASS? They’re like, seven years younger than me!
It’s a fine ass. Go. Dinner. Non-friend or friend when the date is done, I need DEETS, girl.
Which reminded me why I didn’t want to text her in the first place.
Aren’t you on a date?
A movie. And he hasn’t made a move. Lame-O. Better get you some so we both don’t go home empty tonight. KWIM?
Oh. I knew what she meant.
I glanced up and froze.
I was in my bathroom, my makeup and hair already done to Angie’s suggestion but that wasn’t what caught my attention.
It was my smile. Wide.
Almost happy.
Because of her.
“Damn,” I whispered and spun so I couldn’t see myself. Tears beckoned but I pushed them back as I headed to my closet.
Hudson would be here in fifteen minutes or fewer and he didn’t need to see me falling apart.
All because someone had been genuinely nice to me.
Me.
The ex-con.
Was it really possible that not only did I have a friend in Hudson… but I had one in Angie, too? A real-life, honest to goodness, girlfriend?
“Don’t let me screw this up,” I muttered as I pulled down a skin-tight, simple gray V-neck T-shirt.
Only I didn’t know if I was talking about my friendship with Angie, or my non-date with my friend, Hudson.
Either way, I was gaining friends. And it terrified the crap out of me.
20
Lilly
Exactly fifteen minutes later, I’d paced a worn path in my new apartment, a rap echoed through my door.
Right on time. I shouldn’t have been surprised he would be. Plus, it’s not like he had far to travel.
I snorted at the thought and on shaking ankles due to nerves and the height of heels I rarely wore but couldn’t pass up when I saw them at Target last week, made my way to the door.
I opened the door with a deep breath and realized my error.
I’d seen Hudson in all manner of dress in the last several weeks. From a full suit at work, to athletic pants and a T-shirt at the diner, to slacks and polo when he was hunched over the church steps, and yet nothing prepared me for the sight in front of me.
Hudson, hair styled and swept to the side, recently shaven based on the quick whiff of cologne or aftershave that sent certain parts of me tingling.
His head dipped down, eyes widening as he took in my skinny jeans and fitted top and bright red heels.
He wore jeans curved around his thighs and fell straight down, tight enough there wasn’t a whole lot left to the imagination.
I yanked my eyes up to his cream sweater, the blue dress collar peeking out above the sweater’s hem and picked my jaw up off the floor.
“Hey,” I said, lamely. Perhaps I should have smacked myself in the face for the stupid comment. Hey?
Hudson grinned. “Hey yourself. You look beautiful.”
A shiver of warmth flickered through my fingertips straight to my stomach. Beautiful? Perhaps years ago. Now I felt worn and old and aged in not such a great way.
If there was a mirror close by I’d check it, try to figure out exactly what he saw in me I didn’t.
“Thank you.” I stepped back so he could enter. “I forgot my sweater and then I’ll be ready.”
“No hurry.”
My sweater was draped over my couch in the living room. The little white lie was necessary for me to have a moment or two to gain my composure. Good grief. I’d practically jumped him in my doorway, and how embarrassing would that have been?
Yet… hadn’t his eyes lingered a little too long on me as well?
Enough. That assumption didn’t need to be watered.
Hurrying to my closet, I flipped through hangers, trying to find something else and came out with a dark red, crocheted sweater. Not as pretty as the one I’d first chosen, but it worked so I didn’t look like a fool.
“Just a friend,” I reminded myself, slipping my arms into the sleeves. “He’s just a friend.”
Pep talk done and nerves calmed, I headed back to the living area where I found Hudson resting against the door to my apartment, casually leaning, one hand in a pocket of his jeans, ankles crossed at the floor.
Looking so much like a model from a teenage department store, my heart flipped a few beats before resettling.
“Ready?”
“Yes. Where are we going?”
“Somewhere close.” He stepped aside and opened my apartment door while I grabbed my keys and purse, now filled with pepper spray.
He waited until I locked my door and guided me toward the elevator where the doors opened almost as quick as he pressed the button. We stepped inside and I was immediately overwhelmed with the closeness of him next to me. The scent of that fresh cologne, smelling like fresh laundry and clean air.
“It’s just dinner,” he said, and from the reflection in the mirrored doors, he held that same amused look.
“I know.”
“You look ready to bolt. If you’re not comfortable…”
“I am.” I was also being an idiot. I knew that, but I was strung tighter than piano wire.
The elevator came to a stop and I burst out of it, Hudson laughing behind me. “Yes, you seem calm.”
He was going to think I was crazy anyway, and heck, he’d already had several fine doses of seeing my strange behavior. I might as well tell him.
I slowed my steps and waited for him to catch up. Wrapping my arms around my stomach, I did my best to protect myself while admitting, “I know this isn’t a date, but well… it kind of is for me, you know? Dinner with a guy I don’t really know that well? And, well, I haven’t had that…”
Emotion bloomed at the backs of my eyes as Hudson’s amused expression morphed to something else, sadder with a hint of pity.
It was the pity I hated the most.
“I don’t do well with people. Loud places. Restaurants or crowds where there are eyes on me.”
“Come on,” he said, and placed his hand at my back. I jolted from his touch. Even through my sweater, it burned my skin, shocking me. Heat traveled from my back to my front and then lower. I fought the urge to shiver beneath him so I didn’t give away the effect his hand had on me. “Where we’re going, it will be okay and if you’re uncomfortable, you can leave at any moment. No harm no foul, okay?”
“All right.”
Sometimes the build-up to an uncomfortable situation was worse than the situation itself. At least, that’s what Nancy tried to teach me. I willed my heart to slow, blew in through my nose and out through my lips as we headed outside and turned left at the corner of our apartment building.
Outside, the sun was beginning to set in the distance, casting the lightest hues of orange and purple across the city’s sky. The air was crisp, the stray red and gold leaves peppered our path along the sidewalk.
“So where are we going to eat?”
“Somewhere quiet. Little company. To be honest, I noticed your discomfort when we were at Crème, so I took that into consideration for tonight.”
I thought I’d hidden my tenseness quite well that night. The fact he still noticed said a lot. A lot about him as a man, a friend…
“That’s sweet.” We turned another corner of the apartment building and I glanced back to where we’d come from and then up at Hudson. We’d effectively made a U-shape in our directions and I glanced up at him. “Did we go the wrong way?”
“Nope.” His hands were loose at his sides and a hint of amusement twinkled on his cheeks. “We’re right where we’re supposed to be.”
“But—”
“Trust me.”
And for some stupid reason, I was starting to think I did. “Okay, but…”
We reached the corner, and Hudson turned another left, taking us right back to the entrance to our building and this time, I was more than curious.
“Did you forget something?”
“No.”
That amusement shone brighter as he walked us straight to the elevators. My heeled foot tapped on the tile, echoing the light sound in the elevator bank area. “But—”
“You said you’d trust me.”
“But—”
The doors opened and he escorted us inside. Had I not promised to trust him, had it not been for his mischievous smile reflecting against the mirrored doors, I would have thought he was already tired of me. That my baggage was too heavy for him to carry.
Instead, the doors opened and he swiped a black card in front of a scanner I’d never had to use and the letter “P” at the top lit up.
“The penthouse,” I said, things slowly clicking into place. “You live on the top floor.”
“I did say I lived here.”
As the elevator rose, the tension in my shoulders fell with matching degrees until I was a loose as a wet noodle. “You could have just told me to come up here.”
“I could have.” He shrugged, slid his hands into his pockets. “But if someone’s taking you on a date, you deserve to have them pick you up at your door, and when I saw how tense you were when I got here, I thought a walk outside and fresh air might help. But if you don’t…”
“I do.”
The doors opened again with only one door to the left. He headed that way, dropping his hand at my lower back to lead me in the direction of his apartment.
I waited until he opened the door and stepped in when he held it open for me.
My jaw almost hit the tip of my heeled shoes, it unhinged so quickly.
“Hudson.” I spun to face him, and for the first time since I’d met him, caught a flicker of nerves before he swiped it away with one of his charming smiles.
“Again. Anyone who takes you out on a date should make the effort.”
Oh boy, had he. I practically drifted on air toward the table that was already set. Gold-colored chargers sat on a white tablecloth beneath white and gold-lined fine china plates. Pale peach rose petals graced the white linens with a large bouquet in the middle, surrounded with tapered and lit candles in holders that matched the fine china and charger plates.
“This was unnecessary.” My fingertip ran along the edge of his table. I glanced at him to see him at the kitchen counter, pulling a champagne bottle out of a bucket and ice.
“It’s non-alcoholic,” he said, as if he could sense my unease.
“Why?”
He unpeeled the gold paper around the neck of the bottle. “Because you said you can
’t have alcohol.”
“No. I mean, why all this? For a dinner to celebrate a part-time job and a B on an accounting test?”
“Maybe because when I do something, I want to do everything to the best of my ability.” He popped the cork, making me jump at the unexpected sound and filled two champagne flutes.
As he carried them to me, I wobbled on my heels.
“But—”
His head fell forward so he looked at me through his thick lashes, a pale pink hue blooming on those perfectly carved and clean-shaven cheekbones. “I suspect you’re a person who doesn’t think you’re worthy of much, maybe you’ve never been shown you are, maybe the last six years twisted that, but I think you are. And I wanted to show that to you.”
Emotion threatened to overwhelm me. I was so shocked by all he’d done, I could have been knocked to the floor with a feather. How… how did this kind of guy waltz right into my life?
“If you know what I’ve done…”
“I know enough, Lilly. Which is why I’ve done this.”
He held out a glass and my hand shook as I reached for it. This was too much for someone like me.
My fingers grasped the thin, crystal flute and Hudson clinked them together. “To new beginnings,” he said.
“To new beginnings.” My tone was wistful, bubbling with the faux champagne and that hope rising inside of me, even as I tried to blink back tears.
If Hudson could look at me and see the girl I should have been and not the girl I was… was it truly possible others could as well?
21
Lilly
He’d ordered food from the local seafood restaurant, Splash! After we toasted, he guided me to my seat at the kitchen table which not only backed me up to the kitchen, but gave me a view of the city. His penthouse apartment was lavish and modernly decorated. The furniture wasn’t the inexpensive sets as in my apartment, probably purchased at low-end stores for temporary use, but was high quality. Dark woods and tan leather couches highlighted the brick walls. The navy blue accents gave everything a masculine vibe. While his apartment was sparsely decorated, the built-in bookshelves next to the gas fireplace holding no personal photographs, it was still warm and welcoming.