Page 14 of The Mountain Echoes

For the love of God!Celine has turned this house into a French brothel instead of what it used to be, a fucking ranch house.

He steps toward me and sits, or rather flops onto an armchair next to me, sprawled out. His eyes are red-rimmed and not because of grief. He’s been drinking.

There was a time when he was everything I wanted. But now, he’s balding like his daddy. He has a beer belly. Sure, he’s dressed like a catalog cowboy, freshly trimmed beard, boots polished to a high shine—but it looks fake and misplaced on him.

California boy is not cowboy material.

He leans close. I can smell the bourbon on his breath. I don’t recoil. I don’t soften either. I look at him like he’s a stranger—because he is.

“How are you, darling girl?”

In my imagination, when I’d hear him use that endearment again, it would tear open something inside me. But the truth is that I feel nothing. I wonder if my psyche is pretending not to be affected, or if I really am free of him.

“Hudson, if you’re here to make small talk, I’m not in the mood. I was going to take a power nap. It’s been a long day.” My tone is clipped.

He studies me with shifting eyes for a long moment. “I miss you.”

How long had I waited for these exact words? For too long. Stupidly.

But now, as I see him here, he looks pathetic, and I feel pathetic for having ever thought I loved this man while he was married to my sister. Perhaps, like Celine chased him because he was mine, I wanted him because she had stolenhim from me.

Well, she can keep him.

I stand. “Get out.”

Hudson stares at me like I sprouted horns.

I walk to the door and open it wide. “Get out,” I say again.

“Darling Girl, I made a?—”

“Out.” I raise my voice.

He looks frazzled. This isn’t what he expected. I was always the quiet one. In fact, I still am. I’m the introvert. The one whose social battery drains quickly, leaving me needing to step away and take a break from humanity.

Like his limbs weigh a zillion pounds, he slowly gets up and makes his way to me.

His eyes hold remorse.

I feel nothing.

The years I have wasted on this man!

Years, I lost living in Wildflower Canyon, being with my father because of what he did, how he cheated on me with my sister, how he got her pregnant when he was engaged to me.

There was only one reason. My sheer, criminal stupidity.

I see him now for what he is—a weak, insipid asshole.

“Aria,” he tries again as he stands outside my room now, “I?—”

“You know the difference between a bad man and a weak man?” I ask, cutting him off.

He shakes his head.

“A bad man, I can respect. A weak man? That’s you by the way, is absolutely abhorrent.”

On that note, I shut the door in his face and lock it from the inside for good measure.