“They sound like beautiful people.” I didn’t recognize my own voice as the words slid out without thought.
“They are. Or were. Mom died seven years ago.”
“I’m sorry.” And I was. My tears burned, pricked at the back. His mom sounded like an angel and my own wasn’t horrible, just beaten down and weak.
“We miss her. All of us do.” He cleared his throat again. “After… well, after she died, Dad quit fostering kids. He didn’t feel it was right to do it alone, not at his age with his kids now grown. I might have said it wrong, but I wasn’t lying. He gets off on helping others. It’s his drug, gives him this high, and he’s been lost for a while, figuring out what to do, how to help.”
“So he chose me.”
“Yep.”
“Why?”
He turned to me, eyes so dark they were almost black glinting with emotion and sunshine and shrugged. “That’s his story to tell.”
Irritation was a pulsing, living thing beneath my skin. “That’s not a good enough answer. You’re asking me to take a chance and no offense, but I’ve already rolled the dice once or twice and it hasn’t ended up that well for me.”
“I know.”
He didn’t. There was no way he could.
But the way he looked at me. The intensity in those dark eyes along with the firm cut of his jaw. My gaze narrowed. There was another twitch in his cheek. Something icy bubbled in my stomach.
Unknown and heady, it stole my breath, and I couldn’t look away until he continued. “Dad has lots of connections. He knows where you’ve been. But he has a gift, and he’s never been wrong. He sees something in you he likes.”
He knows where you’ve been.
He didn’t mean school or the diner.
They knew.
I jumped from the bench. Conversation over. They’d looked into me? How fucking dare they.
“What’s he like so much? My prison tats?” It was a flippant joke said with all the venom of an inmate who’d had years to hone my self-protective skills.
Hudson, undeterred, spoke slowly. “No. He sees your heart. Who you could have been and should have been. He wants to help give that to you.” He stood then, swiped his hands down the front of his black dress pants. “Be stubborn. Be a fool and throw away the first pure hand that’s reached out to hold you in maybe forever, but that’d make you an idiot. And Dad didn’t think you were that, either.”
If he’d slapped me, it couldn’t have stung worse than the insult. “And he’s never wrong?”
“Not about this.” He shrugged, slipped his hand into his back pocket and held out their card. Their stupid freaking business card I already threw away twice.
This time, something propelled me. I blamed Angie. It’s Hudson. Said with all the awe of a little girl getting a pony for Christmas. I took the card gingerly from his fingers, careful not to touch him.
I felt something strange around him I wasn’t interested in exploring and it wasn’t fully hatred or doubt.
No. Somehow, I didn’t think they were out to screw me over. But it didn’t mean they didn’t have their own motives.
Nobody was one hundred percent good. People didn’t do something for nothing, even if that something was their own internal desire to feel good about themselves.
“I’ll think about it.”
“You’d make Dad real happy if you did more than that.”
I’d never made a dad happy and had no idea what it felt like, but a breeze brushed by and the hair on my arms raised.
“And you?” I asked before I could stop myself.
“I think you’re going to shake up shit that’s currently settled and it’s going to become the biggest mess I’ve ever cleaned up.”
“Well, again, your answers to my questions are about as clear as mud. But, thanks for your honesty?”
He grinned, shook his head. “At least talk to him about options. He’s had other people work part-time while being in school. Probably better pay than the diner, too.”
Options.
Hudson flung the word out like I was a woman who was used to having them.
I headed to the bus after Hudson had walked away, hell-bent on studying but knew it’d be futile.
Between their obvious wealth and Angie’s reaction… was he really the wealthiest guy in the state?… There was a shiny white card with midnight blue ink burning a hole in my pocket. I wanted to know. I needed to know. Since I’d been so used to David coming in, I’d made several assumptions about him. I was definitely right about him having money. His wife’s death explained the sad eyes I saw in both him and Hudson. But I hadn’t expected Hudson to practically bare his soul to me about how his family was raised, about his parents’ desires to take in kids who needed love and help.
Did it change my assumptions of them?
Yeah… admittedly, I was swayed to take them up on their offer for help knowing how good they truly seemed.
Yet now I had a new reason to resist.
Hudson.
With his dark eyes and well-shaved scruff that not only lined the hard cut of his jaw perfectly, but it also highlighted his full lips. Lips I’d stared at for way too long when he spoke about his family. Lips he’d licked once or twice that had sent a spark of interest to intimate parts of me.
I was walking up to the third floor of the ramshackle building I called a home and down the narrow hallway when a door opened at the other end.
Manny.
My spine straightened. I wasn’t close enough to my door to get in before I’d cross his path. I gripped my key tighter, sticking out between my fisted fingers. It wasn’t the best weapon, but it could be useful.
He leered at me in that slimy way of his and sauntered right up to me until I was forced to press my book bag hanging from my shoulders to the wall.
“Hey babe, plans for the night?”
“Yep.” I popped it from my lips, giving him my best bored expression.
“What? You think you’re too good for me?”
He was close. Too close to me.
If only I hadn’t skipped class after my conversation with Hudson. Stupid me for being so twisted up over this stranger, I walked home and daydreamed about his looks instead of remembering I had one goal in life: to take care of myself.
“No. I’m working.”
There was a time I vaguely remembered I would have smiled at attention, flipped my hair and probably giggled like an idiot. Not for this guy.
For this guy, I would have called Josh.
Josh wasn’t here anymore, though. A quick stab of pain speared my chest at the thought. Calling Josh was what had sent the downfall of my life in motion in the first place.
Manny had bad news written all over him. Pockmarks and yellowed teeth showed he probably wasn’t exactly sober. I’d seen women like this. Meth ate away at their brains and their skin. It made them itch and left them with scars, assuming they didn’t overdose. Which surprisingly, still happened when you were locked up.
“I’ll see you then, babe. You’ll come around, soon, won’t you?” He leaned in and I caught a whiff of his breath. Oniony. Like he’d just chomped on one like some people ate apples.
I hid my flinch and waited with my back to my door until he was down the stairs. I slid into my apartment, locked the door and threw a chair in front of it for extra protection. The locks were old and shitty, like everything else.