Page 92 of When the Time Is Right
Before I could get a single word out, he said, “She can’t do this. I won’t let her.”
I wasn’t the she he was referring to, and that only left one other person. “What did Lauren do?”
“Lex, I didn’t know where else to go. I know things are weird with us right now, but I need a friend. You’ve gotta help me figure this out.” He shook my hands away and balled his fists at his sides.
“Hey, calm down. Whatever it is, we’ll figure it out. Tell me what’s going on.”
Hudson was tough and broody, but the times when I’d seen him genuinely furious, seething angry, had been few and far between. But knowing he was so upset, I sat on the couch to give him space.
“She’s taking my son.” He threw his arms over his head and turned on his heel to face me. “To Portland. Oregon. It might as well be another fucking country.”
“What? For, like, a vacation?”
“To live!” he roared.
My stomach sank, but it still didn’t make sense. “She can’t do that.”
“That’s what I said. But she sure as hell thinks she can. She and Mark are moving. Mark is already out there house hunting. Something about he got a big job offer and blah blah fucking blah. I couldn’t hear the rest. The only thing I give a shit about is the fact that my kid, my only flesh and blood, is leaving.”
He was spiraling. Losing his mind. And I couldn’t fucking blame him. The thought that I wouldn’t get to see Jack on a regular basis broke my heart, but it would all-out kill Hudson. That boy was his world. Furthermore, Jack thought his father had hung the moon. And trust me, if Jack asked him to do just that, Hudson would find a way to make it happen.
How could she do this to them? I’d known her nearly all my life, but this was the most selfish thing I’d ever heard.
My mind raced; there had to be a way out of this. “Don’t the two of you have a custody agreement or something? Surely a cross-country move had to have been covered?”
He suddenly stopped and stared at me. “Yeah. For me. I can’t leave a sixty-mile radius. But her dad’s attorney drew up that paperwork a million years ago. It says dick all about her moving. She was all too ready to throw that shit in my face tonight too.”
Oh, fuck. Oh. Fuck. That was not good. The Raffertys were good people, but, it wouldn’t have surprised me in the least if her dad had made that agreement as favorable to Lauren, his twenty-two-year-old and unmarried daughter, as possible.
“There’s got to be a way to fight that, Hud.”
“Oh, there is, but we’re talking months before anything is done. And at what cost? Do I really want to be the man who keeps his son from his mother? I am beyond fucking livid with Lauren right now, but Jack didn’t sign up for this. I didn’t spend almost eight years shielding him from the same instability I’d had growing up just to dump it all in his lap now. But I’m not giving up my son. It’s too much, Lex.” He finally sat down beside me, and when his eyes met mine, the turmoil swirling in his baby blues cinched my chest.
I scooted closer and wrapped my arm around his back the same way he’d done with me hundreds of times over the years.
Then, lost and desperate, he asked, “What am I going to do?”
There was only one option. One I hated to give him.
He loved me and I belonged to him, but this was bigger than either one of us. It was going to destroy me, but without a shadow of a doubt, Hudson would have fixed the entire world for me, even at the cost of ripping out his own heart.
I slipped on my everything-is-okay face, beamed at the only man alive I’d ever put before myself, and then fell on my sword for him.
He searched my face, likely taken aback by my calmness, as I said, “You have to move to Portland, Hud.”I blinked at her for several seconds. No fucking way I had heard her correctly.
Portland? Was she seriously telling me to move to fucking Portland?
Though moving did solve my problems. I’d been wanting to expand the company, and while I knew dick about Portland, construction wasn’t a regional career. I could do it anywhere. Plus, if it meant I got my son more than once every few months and two weeks during the summer without having to wage legal war with Lauren, I’d do any-fucking-thing.
Well, almost anything.
I stared at her, an eerie ease to her smile, and announced, “Then you’re moving to Portland with me.”
Her lips twisted to the side. “I can’t move to Portland.”
