Promise Me (Asher Family #1)

Chapter 18

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

HUDSON

I want what you just said, to move forward and be happy again.

I was hoping you’d do it with me.

Sadie’s words have played over and over in my head like a broken record since she said them last night. Obviously, I’ve been living, but since the day she showed up and decided she was going to crash in my bedroom, things have been different. I’m not going to get all cliché and say that I wasn’t living before her, but damn, I sure as shit didn’t look forward to each morning the way I do now.

And that says more than I’m ready to admit.

“You should put me on the schedule.”

I slowly raise my gaze from one of the sinks I’m filling before I open the bar to meet Sadie’s eyes. She’s rising from her window chair and walking toward me. The morning sun is at her back, giving her a glow that hits me right in the chest. This is becoming my favorite view of her.

She’s beautiful.

“Schedule for what?” I ask, pulling my attention away from the way her entire face lights up as she smiles at me .

“To bartend.”

I chuckle. “I know we missed a lot of years, but I’m pretty sure you’ve never been a bartender.”

“No, not that I recall either, but you know, it’s a little fuzzy in a few areas.”

I cast a look her way. Her comment isn’t funny, not to me anyway, but the way she’s grinning at me makes it hard not to reciprocate the emotion.

“If you want to work, you can always go back to the bakery,” I tell her. I don’t really want her to go. I like looking up during the lunch shift to see her reading. I like having her close. Which is exactly why I won’t argue with her if she chooses to go back to work.

“I don’t want to go the bakery. I want to be here.” She opens her arms wide. “There is just something about this space.”

I’ll admit, when I set out to open this place, I wanted it to be refreshing and bright and give people a sense of relaxation. The windows really help, and I can see why she wanted this place the way I did.

But it still stands that it might be time for Sadie and me to get a little space during the day.

I can’t do anything with the attraction I feel toward her, so yeah, space is smart.

Instead of waiting for me to reply, she walks to the other side of the bar, hovers her hand over the bar top, and lets her fingers glide against it until she reaches the entrance. She steps through and grins at me.

I toss my towel over my shoulder, cross my arms, and lean my hip against the lower counter. Her hair is braided to the side, and she’s wearing a white and purple sundress that’s tied on the top of each shoulder. You’d think she’d pair it with some strappy sandals, but not Sadie—she’s all about the white sneakers .

“What are you doing?” I ask when she gets so close that I swear she can hear the way my heart is pounding.

“Waiting for you to teach me how to bartend.”

I glance at my watch. We don’t open for another half hour. Everything is basically ready, and the things that aren’t don't need to be prepared until right before the door is unlocked. I let out a sigh as she claps.

“I knew you’d cave for me.”

I hitch a brow at her, and she rolls her eyes.

“Oh, stop, you knew it too.”

Yeah, I fucking knew it, too, but I don’t need her to know it. It’s best if the two of us just keep on pretending that we don’t feel a pull toward the other.

Denial.

It’s been working this far. I need her to keep going along with it.

Especially after the ice rink.

Fuck. I don’t know what it is about that night, but I cannot get her out of my mind. Having her there with me for a big moment like that felt right.

Too right.

She opens one of the glass coolers between us and pulls out a frosted pint glass. “Let’s start here. I can pour a beer just fine from a can to a glass for anyone who loves extra foam.”

I let out a howl of laughter. “So, what you’re saying is, start from the very beginning?”

“Precisely.”

I grab a glass just like hers and walk to the tap.

“Okay, so first, you’ll start by pulling the tap back just slightly and keeping the glass a little sideways, like this,” I say as I show her. “Let it pour into the glass slowly, and as you near the top, you’ll steadily straighten the glass. ”

As soon as I’m finished, I hold a perfectly poured beer between us.

“Oh, that can’t be too hard.”

She steps in front of me to take her turn.

I know I should move back.

At least take one step.

Instead, I close my eyes and inhale the smell of her hair. It’s lavender, a scent that should soothe me, but all it does it make my heart race even more and my blood turn hot.

I swallow, set the glass in my hand down, and clench my fists.

Don’t touch her.

Don’t do it.

A vision of me caging her between my arms and then pressing my lips to hers plays in my mind. What I wouldn’t give to finally taste her. To hear the noises she makes when our bodies connect. To feel how soft her skin is against my fingers. God, going there with Sadie would be?—

“Am I doing it right?” she asks, her sweet tone pulling me out of the tortuous daydream and into a reality that’s equally teasing.

She spins quickly to show me, but I’m right in her space. I hadn’t noticed how much I gravitated toward her while she was pouring something as mundane as a fucking beer.

My sudden movement to back up shocks her, so she backs up, too, but then hits her hip on the counter, and the glass in her hand slips to the floor and shatters next to her shoes.

“Oh shit. I’m sorry, Hudson,” she says, bending quickly to clean it up.

My hand jerks between us quickly, my palm covering the corner before she hits her head on it.

She pauses, her forehead barely hitting my knuckles as her eyes focus on my hand .

My breathing increases. In a matter of seconds, she could have hit her head again, and it terrifies me. How quickly whatever this is between us could have just vanished.

Hell, I’ve smacked my head dozens of times, but Sadie can’t risk that.

I won't risk it.

Sadie stands slowly, the broken glass forgotten.

I should say something, anything, but words can’t express how I feel at this moment.

Electric and ready to combust.

My hand drops to her hip as I back her up to the bar top.

She gasps, her bottom lip dropping open as she sucks in her next breath.

I reach up, my thumb brushing her plump pink lips.

“These lips have been torturing me,” I whisper.

Her eyes close, and her chest rises and lowers in quick pulses.

There is a list of reasons why I shouldn't kiss Sadie, and although they have been playing on repeat in my mind all morning long, right now, I don’t give a damn about a single one of them.

Instead, I dip my head and press my lips to hers.

It’s soft at first. As if this kiss is a question. Do we do this? Does this feel right?

She kisses me back, once, twice, and then she groans her answer.

I reach low, my palms gripping her butt as I lift her onto the counter and spread her legs to settle between them. On her next moan, I slide my tongue into her mouth and steal every ounce of air she might have.

The hands that lifted her up now thread through her hair, holding her in place as if she’ll disappear if I let go .

Kissing Sadie is hypnotic. It’s wild, it’s passionate, it’s as if I’ve finally figured out how to breathe life back into myself.

To be honest, I’ve felt myself living again the moment she showed up on my doorstep asking for a place to sleep, but this, this is on a whole new level.

Sadie Collins has changed my life in just a matter of weeks, and this kiss, this one kiss, is proof that life without her will never be the same.

And that thought terrifies me.

I break the kiss and take a step back, my hand covering my mouth as I control my breathing.

“I’m … I’m sorry,” spills from my lips.

Whatever this is, it won’t last once her memory comes back.

It’s better that we just ... not.

“You’re sorry?” she asks, and just when I think she’s about to lay into me and give me a good tongue lashing like the old days, she smiles. “Fine. Be sorry. Just know that I’m not.”

She jumps off the counter and readjusts her dress, now wrinkled at the sides. I must have bunched it up and not noticed because she had me so spellbound.

“Sadie, we both know that whatever that was isn’t a good idea.”

She finishes smoothing out her dress and lifts her head.

“Says who?”

“Me.”

“Why?”

“Because.”

She crosses her arms and cocks a hip, waiting for me to elaborate.

“Your brother would kill me,” I tell her.

She nods slowly. “And your next excuse?”

I open my mouth, but nothing comes out.

She’s right. Anything else that comes out will be an excuse .

I toss my hands up and let them drop my sides.

“Okay, then,” she says and turns for the back room, looking over her shoulder. “When the checklist of why you think we can’t do this runs out, come find me.”

“Sadie …”

She stops and turns abruptly. “Don’t Sadie me, Hudson. I’ve spent the last three years living a life I can’t remember anymore. Maybe it wasn’t one worth remembering. Maybe that’s why I’m where I am now. I told you I’m done worrying about the choices I made before. I want to live in the present and move forward. Kissing you just now wasn’t wrong. Nothing about it was wrong, and I plan to do it again, so I’m going upstairs now so that you can take whatever time you need to process the fact that no matter the obstacle life has thrown at you, you do actually deserve to take a risk again and you do deserve to be happy.”

She doesn’t even wait for me to reply. Not that I even know what I was going to say.

Is she right?

Is that what I’m doing, telling myself I can’t have this because one part of my life was cut short? Do I think I’m not allowed to be happy again?

The door in the back slams, and I wince.

I turn back to the bar and spot the broken glass on the floor.

A month ago, I would have known what to do next. I’d have taken the safe route. The one in which I knew the results before it started. But right now, for the first time in a long time, I want to take the route that requires work.

I just … what if I put in the work and her memory comes back?

What happens then?