Accidental Abduction (Masked Men of Sage Springs #1)

Chapter Twenty-Two

Charley

The back door to the bar slammed closed behind me, the emergency bar digging into my back as I rested my head against the cold metal. The rational part of my brain knew I’d see him in a few hours, and that this wasn’t the end of the world, but the irrational part of my brain had my breath catching because my chest felt too tight. Before I knew it tears were rolling down my cheeks as I tried to hold back a sob.

There was no way that the last three days were real. There was no way that I was now actually in love with my best friend’s brother, much less that he seemed to feel just as deeply for me.

It’d felt so natural that the panic building inside me didn’t make sense, but I couldn’t stop it from building.

Thankfully, the first shift for the bar wouldn’t come in until eleven, so I was alone downstairs while I tried to keep myself from falling apart.

I knew we couldn’t stay in the cabin forever, but when he told me the road was clear this morning, I’d been gutted, even though I was the one trying to comfort his dampened mood. We hadn’t fucked this morning. Not that what we’d done together since Friday had been purely fucking, but when he took me to his bed one last time, breathing in my scent, committing my curves to memory with his large hands, his tongue reverent on my clit until it pulsed against his tongue instead of frantic with need, I knew that he was making love to me.

No one had ever made love to me before. I’d never wanted someone to either. But now I wanted it again. To feel him pinning me to the bed as his body and mine were indistinguishable, moving together until we both couldn’t hold back.

The sound of a thump and a high-pitched squeak from upstairs confirmed my suspicions that Hazel was upstairs waiting for me. I knew Hudson had texted her this morning, but I’d been afraid to reach out to her.

She seemed okay when I left with him after the party, but a lot had changed over the weekend.

Taking a deep breath, I wiped my cheeks as I exhaled slowly, trying to calm myself down. She’d know something was up if she saw evidence of me crying. And I wasn’t even sure why I was crying at this point.

Maybe I was just scared because this was the first time real feelings had been involved when it came to a man. I never expected that man to be Hudson, despite my long-term crush. He’d always seemed unattainable, and now that I had him, I was afraid to lose him so soon.

Once I’d double checked my face in the mirror in the ladies’ bathroom, I slowly trudged up the stairs, the third stair from the top creaking. The door flew open before I could even put my hand on the knob, Hazel’s somber face narrowing as she studied my face.

“You look disgustingly relaxed for someone who just spent the last three days stuck in a cabin in the middle of nowhere with my annoying older brother.”

Exhaling, I grinned, stepping inside as she moved back, using my snow boot to push it closed.

“You told me you didn’t want details.” And even though I’d shared details of previous conquests with her before, I wanted to keep what happened with Hudson private.

“I still don’t, but I guess the fact you practically floated in here means that things went well?” She looked like she knew something I didn’t, her expression hopeful. It helped relax some of my earlier nerves. Maybe they had talked about me this morning.

“Very well,” I grinned .

Hazel gagged, faking a dry heave. “Ew, but also aww...”

An uncharacteristic blush rose high on my cheeks, and she squealed, patting the cushion next to her on the couch. She had art supplies spread across the coffee table, sketch books with pencil drawings and her tablet was open to her illustration software. A stack of papers was lying underneath it. I tilted my head, trying to figure out what body part she was trying to draw.

“Do you have a stack of penis pictures under your iPad?” Then it was her turn to blush, throwing a pillow at the table to cover her stack of apparently naughty source material.

“No. Of course not.”

Trying to hold in a laugh, I sputtered. “Of course not. Clearly, your commissions are only of the G and PG variety.”

Her face turned an impressive shade of red and I couldn’t hold it in any longer, clutching my stomach as I laughed loudly.

“It’s not funny,” she hissed, kicking my leg with her bare foot. “The only penis I’ve seen in real life was covered in a condom and not even hard anymore.”

Wait, what?

“Did I just hear that right? Reid’s penis is the only one you’ve seen up close?”

“Well, it wasn’t that close, and it was dark, and I was bleeding profusely...but yes?”

“Wow.”

“Shut up. This isn’t about me and my lack of firsthand penis knowledge. This is about whatever is going on with Hudson. Where is he? I thought you two would be attached at the cro...”

“Hazel,” I scolded. “No crotch talk if you don’t want details.”

She giggled, but raised an eyebrow, not letting me off the hook. And she deserved to know what was going on. Hazel had more at stake than either Hudson or me. She could potentially lose a friend or a brother if things went wrong between us. But I’d never make her choose .

“He’s coming in later to catch up with the staff who’s on tonight to make sure they’re ready to open.” At least that’s what I hoped he still planned on doing.

“Then I’m sure Mikey will fill him in on how the shit hit the fan right after you guys left.” Hazel scowled, her hands clenching at her sides, and I had a feeling that psycho Harley had made a reappearance after Hudson drove away with me tied up in his back seat.

“What happened? Did someone get into a fight?”

“Yeah,” she laughed. “I guess you could say that. Viv cornered me and started yelling about someone stealing Hudson’s car. I guess she saw it leaving the lot when she came back after getting escorted out the first time, and she wanted to know where he went. I knew it was Hudson leaving with you since I’d just read your last text message and refused to tell her. She lost it when I told her that Hudson didn’t leave alone, and Reid came over to rescue me. When she tried to pull my off my halo with a chunk of my hair, I grabbed the bat you left behind on the table and shoved it into her twat.”

I choked out a laugh at her usage of the word twat, but I was proud of my friend for sticking up for herself.

“Mikey had to drag her out to the parking lot to cool off. And then sent her home with her friends when Reid threatened to call the cops. She saw me watching the whole thing and warned me she’d be back for answers later.”

“Fuck,” I sighed, knowing that it was inevitable Viv would show up at some point. She’d basically told Hudson that she wanted him to wait around while she hooked up with other guys to make sure she actually wanted him. Which I told him was bullshit, because he was a catch and if she didn’t realize that she was stupider than I thought she was, but he wasn’t hers anymore.

“You don’t think he’d go back to her, do you?”

“Fuck no,” I hissed. But I wasn’t entirely sure. My heart said he wouldn’t, but she’d manipulated him for years. Other than our brief conversations about how she’d mistreated him, he hadn’t brought her up again. We’d been too busy doing other things with our mouths to waste words on her.

“Are you two dating?”

Pausing, I tried to figure out how to answer her. We’d spent the entire drive back this morning holding hands, but he’d never actually said where he wanted things to go from where we’d left them. He’d implied that things would continue once we were back home, but I’d been disappointed by promises made in the heat of the moment before. It was why I’d never committed to a relationship after undergrad.

Was I just a fling? Did the forced proximity of the storm heighten things unrealistically between us?

“Shit. You’re gonna freak out now, aren’t you? Do I need to go beat some sense into him?”

That was the last thing I needed. Hazel could be fierce when she was pissed off, and I didn’t want this to drive a wedge between them. Hudson hadn’t defined things between us, but the kiss he’d laid on me once we’d parked behind the bar had to mean he didn’t want this to be over.

“No. No...” My knee shook as I tried not to let the panic overtake me.

“I’ll fucking kill him,” she growled, pushing up from the couch.

I grabbed her arm, pulling her back down beside me. “No, you’re not going to kill him. I just need to talk to him.”

“He should have fucking told you what he wanted before you two came back here. You two have to be the shittiest communicators on the planet. Spend 72 hours snowed into a remote cabin and neither one of you thought to come up for air and talk about this?”

“The whole thing was an accident. You think we were concerned with reality when this all started?”

“La la la la...” she hummed, covering her ears. I smacked her in the arm, and she cracked up laughing, sticking her tongue out at me.

“You’re the one who wants to talk about this. It’s not like I told you how big his di...” her palm smacked against my mouth, cutting off my words. I licked her palm, and she narrowed her eyes at me in warning.

“Okay, okay, no talk about the size of...” I trailed off laughing at the look on her face. “I’m done. But anyway, we talked, about more than...stuff, but I was too afraid to ask him about what happened when we were forced back into reality.”

“Do you want me to text Reid?” Hazel looked just as eager for answers as I was.

“You mean the guy you can’t formulate complete sentences around and run the opposite way from whenever he looks in your direction?” Clearly a lot of things had changed at that party.

“He was actually surprisingly sweet after Mikey dragged Viv out of the bar. He made sure I was okay, and several times for the rest of the night I saw him watching me from across the room.”

Oh, my poor, sweet oblivious friend. She spent too much time with the imaginary—apparently horny—characters in her tablet.

“Um...do you not see him watching you every night you’re on shift?”

Her eyes widened, her mouth almost comically dropping open into the perfect o shape. “What? No, he doesn’t.”

“And I’m the one who needs to pay attention to their surroundings,” I muttered, remembering Hudson’s first words to me on the dance floor.

“He doesn’t really do that, does he? I look like shit half the time after a shift when it gets crazy down there. What if he caught me picking my nose? Oh my God.”

“I mean, not all the time, but I’ve definitely caught him watching you lately. I think he’s trying to figure out why you won’t talk to him... And why you run away whenever he enters the room.”

“You know why I’m hiding,” she hissed, covering her face with her hands. Her voice dropped to a scandalized whisper. “I’ve seen his penis.”

“I think a lot of people have seen Reid’s penis,” I giggled.

“You’re not helping,” she pouted. “You think I like having a crush on my brother’s philandering best friend? ”

“He hasn’t been that bad lately.”

Reid had spent just as much time as he ever had in the bar, but most nights he was here helping until closing time, not over in his shop banging random women.

“He’s had more sex in the last month than I’ve had like ever.”

“That just means you know he’d show you a good time if you’d stop running from him.”

“Yeah right,” she scoffed. “Or he’d laugh in my face if he knew I liked him. I’m not exactly his type.”

“Well, I didn’t think I was Hudson’s. But that didn’t stop him from fuc…”

“I hate you,” she laughed, slapping her hand across my mouth.

“No, you don’t. You love me.”

She grinned before she reached over to open her cell phone, thrusting it in my face with the text conversation from this morning up on the screen. “And so does my brother.”