“Know that you were kicking me out of my home!” I shouted it, blood rushing through my veins and melting to the floor at my feet.
“Oh fuck.” Hudson crouched down and scooped up the envelope. “Lilly.”
His gaze came to me, tense and shocked. There was no way after all they already knew about me they didn’t know this.
“What is this damn game you’re playing? What? Find the lonely girl in an apartment that’s getting razed and treat her like one of your needy foster kids?”
“I didn’t know,” Hudson said. He held the envelope in his hand at his side and I glared at it, wishing I could time travel.
Yesterday there was hope inside of me.
Today, there was ground dust and ash. Is this what I got for trying to trust people?
“Bullshit.”
“I didn’t. I didn’t know you lived in those buildings.”
“You knew I was in prison, where I work, and where I go to school and you expect me to believe this?”
“Lilly. Wait.” David stepped forward, speaking gently. It grated in my ears. “Let’s talk about this. There are options. Better ones.”
“Safer ones,” Hudson cut in and that damn caring tone in his voice sounded so much like Josh’s I barely restrained myself from flinging my hand across his cheek.
“I want nothing from you,” I seethed, and turned to Mr. Valentine. “Or you. Stay out of my life and out of my business. Now. If I need to find a new place to live, I already have someone I can call.”
And in all the excitement of yesterday, I’d completely forgotten to call Ellen to ask her to find me a new place to live. So, I had options. I wasn’t going to end up homeless. But it could take weeks for Ellen to find something that would work for me, and based on the letter I scanned, I had days. Where the hell would I go? Back to the halfway house?
A sob ripped from my throat at the thought. The place had been horrible.
I spun, leaving them slack-jawed and with shock on their faces. Thank God the elevator door opened immediately. I stepped in and caught sight of them when I had to turn and hit the button to take me to the ground floor. Both of them had hands on their hips, looking so similar. If that door didn’t close in a half-second, I was certain at least one was preparing to yank me out of the elevator.
“I mean it. Stay away from me.”
Thankfully, the doors closed right as tears fell down my cheeks.
For once, I thought someone had a genuine interest in me.
So much for trusting people.
I walked home from Valor Holdings. I dodged Friday afternoon commuters walking to and from lunch on their breaks, blind students precariously making their way down the uneven sidewalks outside the School for The Blind and Visually Impaired, around 801 Grand. By the time I reached the gas station on the west side of downtown, my chest burned and my feet killed. My ribs were screaming in pain but the last thing I wanted to do was be trapped on a bus. I needed the time, the space, and the fresh air to think.
By the time I returned home, I needed a long soak in a bathtub I didn’t have and an assortment of pain meds and muscle relaxers.
After locking and securing my door, I stripped out of my clothes, kicked them toward my laundry basket set up in a corner with a wood top I also used as a side table, and climbed into the shower.
Cursing the Valentines the entire time.
Less than an hour later, I was still seething. A mixture of fury and heartache made my heart continue to flip-flop. Had I overreacted? They got what they deserved. Damn them. Was it a mistake? Were they truthful? Which time had they lied?
I couldn’t make sense of all the running thoughts in my head, and as I popped in a frozen meal for an early dinner, I almost wasn’t surprised at all there was a knock on my door and Hudson’s voice calling out my name from the other side.
Given all of our other interactions, I almost expected him earlier.
Because I wasn’t entirely stupid, I checked the peephole first.
My breath caught when I took in his profile, hard jaw, eyes narrowed, obvious even with the curved view of his face in a direction I never wanted to look again.
Manny’s apartment.
Hudson said something to someone I couldn’t see but whatever it was looked scary, and then banged on my door again.
Leaving on the security chain, I glared at him through the small opening. “I told you to leave me alone.”
“Be pissed at me all you want but if you didn’t have to leave here before now, after I just talked to that fucking jackass, you’d be leaving anyway so you might as well let me in so I can explain.”
He knew. Blood rushed from my face, chilling me to my core.
Hudson, astute asshole he was, noticed. His arm came up and propped up next to my door and every muscle I could see on him tightened. “Tell me that dick that just called you a cunt isn’t the guy who did that to you. Better yet, tell me it was him so I have an even better reason to go rip off his dick.”
All of my encounters with Hudson suddenly exhausted me. The man could be bold and arrogant, soft-hearted and kind. He could laugh as easily as he scowled, and after the last two days, I didn’t have the energy for any of it. I blew out a breath. “None of this concerns you.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“Because it’s none of your damn business!” God! Why couldn’t they just leave me alone!
No one in my entire life had ever made me lose control of my temper so quickly. In my home, we couldn’t show any emotion lest Dad would hear of it, and in prison, being emotional was even worse. It’d get you sent to solitary or it’d get your ass kicked.
Either way, around Hudson I felt and I felt too much and it was equally dangerous.
I took in his heaving chest, his jutted jaw, and the way his dark eyes held a brewing storm without blinking and caved.
Damn him.
“You’re not leaving until I open this door, are you?”
“At least not until that jackhole leaves. No.”
“Fine.” Without energy to deal with this, I definitely didn’t have the energy to fight this stubborn man. “Hold on.”
There was minimum satisfaction to my soul as I watched his features soften right before I slammed the door shut on his face. After shoving the chair out of the way fully, I gave my dump of a home a quick scan.
Why was I so damn mad about the chance to get out of this dump in the first place?
The lies… right.
I quickly threw my dirty clothes into the hamper, slapped down the lid, and tossed my comforter over the small, twin bed. No amount of cleaning would make it look respectable, but Hudson didn’t need to see my threadbare sheets and dirty underwear. The rest of the apartment was equally useless, but at least tidy. I didn’t have enough to clutter to make a mess of things anyway.
Figuring I’d left Hudson to stew long enough, I went back to the door and opened it.
“No judging,” I declared, stepping out of the way.
“Wouldn’t think of it.” He stepped over the threshold and my home shrunk in size with his presence. Like his masculinity had the ability to suck the oxygen out of the room and shrink the size simply due to all that was him.
“I didn’t know you lived here.”
He hadn’t so much as scanned my living space. No eye twitch. No frown at my humble abode. He held a manila envelope in his hand I suspected was the same as the one I threw at his feet and maintained an unnerving amount of eye contact.