Page 51 of The Sweetest Cruelty: Hudson (A Sawyer Brothers Story #1)

“Scouts honour,” Hudson replied, holding both hands up and crossing his fingers. Yeah right. I couldn’t imagine this man ever being a Boy Scout.

With the wash cloth in my hand, I lowered my body as his hooded gaze ran over my bare legs .

The desire I saw in his eyes gave me courage and confidence. “You’re one to talk. See something you like?”

“Fuck yeah,” he whispered and shifted on the mattress. I almost rolled onto him from my seated position, but jammed my hand against the duvet to steady myself.

“Move back and hold out your arms,” I commanded.

“Fuck me, English. When did you get so bossy?”

He complied without more fuss, sitting up slightly. Now this was a Hudson I could work with.

The atmosphere between us was heavy but natural and unforced.

He flinched as I wrapped the flannel around my fingers and started to dab at his cuts.

“That’s not the only place that hurts?” he husked with a lopsided smile, motioning to the bulge between his legs. Why the heck was he hard? We hadn’t even done anything.

Because he’s lying on your bed and you can almost see your nipples beneath your top!

Ignoring his comment, engorged member, and leery look, I continued to wipe the blood from his arms. “What were you thinking? Coming to my room in the middle of the night?”

“I didn’t think. I just did it. I’m a man of action, you know that.”

“You could have fallen and broken your neck,” I scolded, mouthing sorry as I caught a sore spot again. “Are you going to tell me why you came to me , instead of Tate?”

“Are you going to tell me if you’re wearing anything else under the dog paws?”

“Hudson,” I warned.

“What? A man can ask, can’t he? I hoped to see you in that lacey bit you wore that day in the guy’s locker room. Fuck, I jerked off so hard thinking about your tits in that bra that I saw stars.”

“I don’t think this is a fitting conversation for my bedroom.”

“English. This is the only conversation we should be having in your bedroom.”

Excitement mixed with adrenaline surged through me. Although slight, there was a chance my dad could hear and come into my room. I feared being caught, but I loved the way that made me feel. I fed off that element of bad girl danger.

“Why do you keep looking back at the window. My brothers aren’t with me.

If that’s what’s worrying you?” I hadn’t realised I had been.

Habit probably. I’d caught Mrs Robillard, the nosy old bat from next door, peering into my window from her house, which was opposite.

I imagined she was in bed, but if she saw Hudson in my bedroom, she’d probably rat me out to my dad.

I craned my neck for a better look.

When Hudson touched my arm, I jumped.

“Fuck you’re skittish. What are you doing now?”

“I’m checking that my neighbour isn’t gawking into my room like usual. She’d probably have a stroke if she saw you in here.”

After finishing cleaning the last graze, I placed the cloth next to the glass of water as Hudson said. “Why don’t you close the drapes?”

“No, it’s fine. She’ll probably be in bed drooling into her pillow by now.”

Hudson moved to take my hand, and I drew back.

“You’re acting like you’ve never had a guy in your room before,” he said with a stretch. I tried not to drool at the way this flexed the muscles of his shoulders.

“Maybe I haven’t.”

Hudson grinned. “Well, I’m honoured to be the first. Do you want to fuck?”

“Hudson. Stop, please.”

“Stop what? It’s just a question. Don’t say you haven’t thought about it.”

“You’re in no fit state for anything like that.”

He looked like a moody teenager suddenly, and I chuckled. This brought his head up. “You’re laugh is so cute. They should bottle that shit. Anyways, I didn’t come here for that. To fuck I mean.”

“Why did you come to me, Hudson?”

The look he gave me probably forced girls to drop their knickers in a nanosecond, but I had to be strong.

He’s complicated and has no good for you written all over him.

“I don’t know. It seemed like a good idea at the time. I find your company soothing,” he explained, closing his eyes briefly.

“What about Tate?”

He pulled a face. “Tate who?”

“OK.” I didn’t know how to respond. I could see he had something on his mind.

“Why don’t you just tell me everything on your mind, Hudson. Let loose, it would do you good,” I coaxed softly, placing my fingers on his arm. His eyes found me, and I knew that look; he was hurting .

After a moment of silence, Hudson’s fingers laced through mine. His mouth shifted into something not quite a smile.

“I know you hate me, but you can talk to me.”

His expression twisted, almost like my words had caused him pain. “I don’t hate you, Molly. Far from it. I hate me .”

His dark gaze was so intent and certain that it almost took my breath away.

And. Something. Shifted.

I could see temper and pain and something far darker in his gaze. There was a harsh light in his eyes.

I squeezed his hand so tightly, searching his face. And then he spoke. It was so quiet I hardly heard it.

“I found out my father died. He just died in prison, and I should be happy about that. But I’m not. I feel like I failed again.”

There was no disguising the bitterness in his voice.

“Why should you be happy he died?”

“He wasn’t a good man.”

As Hudson said those terrible words, his head dropped, and he pulled his hand away, using it to itch his face.

I remained silent. I intended to listen. He shifted into a better position, stroking Roger, who had come to lie beside him.

Hudson was sitting on my bed with his back against the headboard, his knees up.

I touched his leg lightly and moved closer towards him. I knew he was struggling, but didn’t know what to say. The urge to wrap my arms around him ran deep.

“I’m so sorry. I lost my mother, too.”

This brought Hudson’s head up, his brow furrowed as his eyes latched onto mine. At that moment, he looked at me like he could see into my soul.

“I know, I heard.”

In that split second, I knew I wasn’t ready to talk about my mother. I had been blinded with grief ever since that night, and to open up at that moment felt wrong, so I added, “Yeah. It isn’t easy, no matter how they go.”

A thousand thoughts flashed across his face as his features twisted before he closed his eyes. He leaned his head back against the headboard. “But have you ever been thankful that they are gone?”

“No. ”

“Then you could never understand how wrong and decaying that feels,” he rasped, clearly exhausted.

“So why don’t you tell me how that feels. Help me to understand your story.”

“But that’s the point, right there. You’re the princess of it, Molly—and me,” he faded out that sentence, almost like he didn’t know what he wanted to say.

“Yes?” I said, nudging him with my elbow and swinging my body beside him.

We were now side by side on my bed. Our legs stretched out next to each other. I wore my PJs and Hudson, just his jogging bottoms.

I placed a hand on his leg in a gesture of reassurance.

“Hudson? And you?” I prompted as he threaded his fingers through mine again. Holding me fast. He placed his head on my shoulder, and I inhaled the scent of his musky shampoo.

I didn’t try to pull away as he lifted our hands and inspected my narrow wrist. “Well—I’m the monster on the hill,” he said, lifting his head to look at me.

My brow scrunched. “You’re wrong.”

“You think so?” he said, moving my hand towards his face. The kiss he planted on my pulse point sent a thrill through my arm.

“Yes,” I replied breathlessly, my stomach swimming with desire.

As he lowered his hand, his thumb played havoc with my heart rate as he continued to touch that pressure point. “You’re like a fucking drug to me, Molly but you’re too sweet. I’m not a nice guy. I’m the villain of the piece.”

“It must be exhausting always trying to be the bad guy,” I whispered, enjoying being alone together in my room.

“Not so much.”

Turning on the bed to face him, I pulled my hand from his and did something I had wanted to do for ages. I lifted my fingers and ran them through his hair. Taking in the full extent of his bruised face for the first time. The lamp continued to cast shadows over his torso.

I then placed my hand against his chest, feeling the pulse of his heart against my palm as I said.

“So, what now? What’s next? Will there be a funeral?”

“No. Not after what he did to my mother.”

I swallowed. I knew I needed to tread carefully.

“Your mother? ”

He nodded, and sadness was wrapped around every word. “She died too.”

I mushed my lips together, wondering whether to push him. Hudson could be a live wire. I didn’t want to ruin the moment. “Do you want to talk about it? About how she died?”

Beads of sweat ran down his chest. “In the worst way you can imagine.” I felt the shudder run through his body. In a split second, I noted that I was about to find out what Hudson deemed as the worst way you can imagine , and I had a feeling it would be far worse than what happened to my mom.

“Would telling me about it help, do you think? Maybe it’s better to get it off your chest?”

“It’s not that easy, Molly,” he husked, banging his head against the headboard. I twisted so I was kneeling next to his legs, leaving my hand against his heart.

“I mean it, Hudson. I’m here for you.” My hair fell forward, almost curtaining my face. “We can just relax and be in each other’s company. We don’t have to talk about it if you don’t feel ready.”

His eyes roamed over my hair and face. “You’re so fucking beautiful, Molly. You’re too perfect, I don’t want to taint your mind with images of what I’ve seen. The things I’ve done.”

“I’m not a piece of glass. I may look perfect, but I’m just as busted up as the next person. I have demons, too, things I regret. Shit I’ve done. You’re not alone.” I hoped that reassured him, as I meant what I said.

We were in my bedroom with the faint ticking of my mother’s old clock. And then, Hudson’s mask slipped . And I saw beneath it. The tough guy who walked around school like a king was gone. And there was the boy I knew.

My heart thudded in my chest. And after a deep-seated growl, he told me everything , and Hudson Gage’s backstory was much worse than I could ever have imagined.

The tension in the room amplified.

I saw the terror of the past in his eyes.

During parts of his story, I pulled him into my arms and held him close. Hudson became choked up when he explained how he watched his mother being beaten to death in front of him.

All the emotions I had felt on the night my mother was taken from me came rushing back. But this time, the despair I felt wasn’t for me. It was for that fourteen-year-old boy who had seen his mother murdered and then been led away in handcuffs as if he were responsible somehow.

I felt sick. Hudson’s Dad had been putting his hands on his son in anger for years. Both he and his mother had been victims of domestic abuse.

Hudson only gave me several scenarios of how he was beaten as a child.

The shit he suffered at the hands of a man who called himself a father was shocking and messed with my ability to breathe easily.

He showed me some of the scars on his arms and back, partly hidden by the detail of his tattoos.

They, in turn, told their own heart-wrenching story.

Once he was spent, we sat quietly, sharing each other’s company. Even Roger had moved closer to Hudson. It was like we were frozen together in that horrid moment of truth. There was now no escaping it.

The world then suddenly rushed back in. “I think you need to come to terms with the fact that what happened wasn’t your fault.

Your father was the monster. What he did is on his hands and certainly not a fourteen-year-old boy's burden. I’m so sorry you went through that.

I can’t even begin to imagine the pain it must still cause you. ”

I bit down hard on my lower lip as I stared into his fathomless eyes. “Bad things happen, but you don’t have to allow them to define who you are moving forward. You are in control of your destiny, and it is up to you what you want to do with it. You are not unworthy of the world, Hudson.”

A muscle in his jaw clenched. “But I am my father’s son.”

“Yes. But you are not the monster of his making.”

And Hudson, being that man of action, tugged me against his chest and kissed the top of my head with such tenderness.

“You need closure,” I stated, one hand on his pectoral muscle. I felt like such a fraud, feeding Hudson advice about how to deal with his past, and yet I hadn’t come to terms with my own. I hadn’t even explained about my mother, but the timing felt off. Tonight was about Hudson, not me.

“How? How do I get that when the bastard is gone?”

“You go to the prison. You collect what’s left of his things.”

“And then what? I don’t want it, not really,” he said on an exhale.

“I think you’ll know what you want to do when you get that box.”

We lay together in bed with the cat, and I felt a sense of contentment I hadn’t had in a long time. Even before my mother passed .

My eyes fluttered closed as Hudson continued to stroke my hair. His skin was so soft against my cheek. His scent wrapped around me, like a cocoon of safety.

I couldn’t be certain whether it was a dream or reality as I heard, “I don’t know what it is about you, Just Molly, but you fill the cracks in my chest.”

That phrase I kept hearing echoed in my mind time is a healer . I knew then that they were wrong. Time didn’t heal; it allowed you to keep things hidden and out of sight, unfinished business.

I knew grief. And I, too, had kept mine hidden, but scratch beneath the surface, like Hudson had that night, and there it was. Exposed, raw and real, like a recurring physical pain.

“You fill the cracks in my chest.”

Hudson’s softly spoken words resonated, as without even trying, one broken boy had started to heal that hole in my own heart.

I wondered how much of our conversation Hudson would remember the following day. My head then swam into nothingness.

When I woke up the next morning, any physical proof that Hudson had been there was gone.

But the imprint he had made on my heart was deeper than ever.