“I’m sure he’ll have lots for you to do tomorrow. I think he just wanted a guys’ night tonight.”
“All right.” She pushed her lips to one side, pouting.
Unable to help myself, I bent down and kissed it away.
Once we reached the building, she grinned as Samaya was also ushering her kids inside.
“Hey girls!” Lilly exclaimed, peeling off her scarf and gloves. “Are you on break this week?”
“We get a whole week off!” one of them cried out.
“I miss school,” the other one pouted.
“Oh. That’s okay. You’ll be back soon enough. Have any fun plans for the weekend?” Lilly asked them.
Samaya replied, “We have family in Omaha. We’ll be leaving first thing in the morning.”
“I hate car rides,” the girl who was still pouting said.
Samaya settled her hand on her daughter’s shoulder. “It will be fine. And you love Nana and Papa, right?”
The little girl’s pout vanished and she all but shouted at both Lilly and me. “They have horses!”
“That’s lovely,” Lilly said. Her grin stretched the span of the Mississippi River, it was so wide.
The elevator stopped at their floor and Samaya shuffled her girls off, wishing us a Happy Thanksgiving.
“You too,” Lilly and I both said at the same time.
“Those girls are a riot,” I told her once the doors closed and we were alone again.
“A handful for sure. I don’t know them really well, but it’s not hard to figure out they’re complete opposites in everything.”
“What are their names again?”
“Yasmine is the one who hates school. Amala the one who hates car rides.”
The elevator stopped on Lilly’s floor, doors opening as she stepped out. “You don’t have to walk me to my door if you need to get going.”
“I have a few minutes.” Dad wasn’t expecting me until after dinner anyway. Another white lie I told Lilly. She thought I was rushing right over. Mostly, I just needed that time to myself, to think of Melissa before I had to face Dad.
I walked her to her door where she was digging keys out of her purse that seemed to swallow the keys every time she dropped them in.
“Thanks for walking home with me. I know how much you like the warmth of your truck cab.”
“Spending time with you isn’t a sacrifice.”
“Then maybe when you get home later, we can hang out? You know, since we don’t have work tomorrow.”
“Maybe.” I doubted I’d be in any sort of mood for company. “It’ll be late though.”
“I don’t mind.” Her hand pressed to my cheek. Her palm was cold but her smile soft and warm. “You sure you’re okay?”
I’d be better once this day was behind us. “Yeah.” Although it came out sounding unsure.
“All right.” I hated the lingering disappointment in her tone. “Tell David I said hello. Call me later if you’d like.”
“I will.” She rolled to her toes and kissed me.
As soon as her lips touched mine, that unraveling thread on my self-control frayed more. Every damn time we touched I wanted more. Wanted to take more and wanted to give her all of me. Today, more than any other, I wanted to bury myself in her and forget everything except how good she felt. How kind and good she was despite the walls she still held up.
Which was why I stepped back, ending the kiss and pressed my lips to her nose, leaving her smiling and her eyes hazy.
“Goodnight, Lilly.”
“Later, Hudson.”
She unlocked and opened her door and I waited until she closed it, fingers giving me a playful wave through the small opening as she closed the door.
Once the locks were engaged, I went to my apartment.
Grabbing a bottle of bourbon from above the fridge, I set it on the kitchen counter with a highball glass. Then I went to my dresser and pulled out a picture I’d started keeping hidden beneath my boxer shorts and socks.
Melissa would give me so much shit for having her face smooshed against my underwear, but it was the safest place for it.
I took them both to the living room and took my first drink.
I wouldn’t have much before I went to Dad’s house, but I needed something to smooth all the edges and hide all the darkness.
The picture was of Melissa and me. Brandon and I were still in college and had won a home baseball game where Melissa had come to cheer us on. Her arms were wrapped around my neck, and she’d yanked our cheeks together. But it was her smile, and the brightness in her eyes I loved the most.
It was exactly how she always was.
Everything I missed.
I poured a glass of bourbon, held it out to the photo and smirked at the picture of my sister.
“Have I ever told you you’re a total pain in my ass?”
I took the shot, sucked it down with a slight hiss as it burned my throat and recapped the bottle.
Later. There’d be more waiting for me later when I returned, when I could get drunk as a skunk and forget everything for a few hours.
32
Lilly
I had one foot propped up on the coffee table, bottle of nail polish balanced in my hand, and my phone tucked between my shoulder and ear.
Angie was on the other end of the phone. Trying to calm my quaking nerves about tomorrow.
“I don’t know what you’re so nervous about,” she said. “It’s just a meal.”
“It’s Thanksgiving. A holiday meal. That makes it more, I don’t know, important?”
“Psssh. That’s ridiculous. Maybe if you haven’t already met them, but you work for Brandon and see them all the time, right?”
“Yeah, but it’s Thanksgiving.”
It would be my first Thanksgiving with a family since I’d had time to be with mine—seven years. And even when we had family Thanksgiving dinners, it was proper and morose. My father’s parents as equally stern as my own dad and my mother’s family who rarely came at all—probably for their severe dislike of my dad and what he’d done to their daughter and sister over the years. And for seven years, I ate on plastic trays with plastic silverware. Where I scarfed down soggy dressing and bland turkey. Gravy from a can and burned rolls.
I already knew dinner tomorrow, the entire day, would be drastically different than anything I’d experienced. It was equal parts excitement and nerves swirling like a wildfire in my stomach.
It was the way he behaved earlier that gave me pause.
“I think… I think something’s going on with Hudson,” I admitted, despite my fears and promise to keep it to myself. I had to be reading into things. Wasn’t I?
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know, exactly.” I finished painting my little toe and recapped the nail polish. After setting it on the coffee table, I fell against the back of the couch. “He’s been distant lately. Or quiet, I don’t know how to explain it but he’s not himself.”
Especially with wanting to spend time with me. Maybe we’d spent too much time together? Maybe he needed the break? After he texted me to come spend the night with him last week and gave me that toe-tingling orgasm, I was certain we’d broken through whatever was holding him back. Since then, it seemed he’d reinforced whatever wall was keeping him from taking things further, at least physically.