Page 214 of Bridesmaid By Chance
I might like her, I might be falling for her, I might need her more than I ever thought I would need another human being in order to breathe easier, but do I deserve her? That’s the question.
“This is how this is going to fucking play out,” Jude continues as a numbness takes over my body. “You come home with my sister. You end this marriage and offer her a severance package to fucking leave with a solid recommendation so she can find another job, then we’ll have a conversation about where and how the business is going to move forward from here. If that means you buy me out, we’ll figure it out, but moving forward, you are my wife’s brother, and that’s it. Nothing more.”
End it with her?
Bile rises up my throat from the mere thought of that.
“Did you hear me?” Jude shouts.
“Yes,” I say, my voice cracking and my mind whirling with what it would be like to stop talking to her. To give her up. To let her walk away.
“You will stay away from her, understood? You stay fucking far away from her. I don’t want to see you near her, talking to her, even looking at her. She’s not yours. Get that through your fucking head: she’s not yours. Do you fucking understand?”
I wet my lips and squeeze my eyes shut.
I don’t want to agree.
I don’t want to say goodbye.
But…he’s right. She deserves so much more.
So is there really any other option than for me to let go? For me to suffer?Even if it will rip my heart out of my chest.
“Do you fucking understand, Hudson?”
“Yes,” I answer, the one word feeling like razor blades falling out of my mouth.
“Good.” And then he hangs up.
I lean back in the chair and stare up at the sky, my nerves twisting in knots, my breath shortened in my lungs.
How the fuck am I supposed to just walk away? After what we shared tonight? After the feelings we have? I’m just supposed to take her back to the States and be done with her?
I think back to earlier tonight, how she wanted to leave me. How she desperately wanted to shake me away.
How she repeated over and over again how much she hates me.
I’m…I’m not being fair to her. I’m playing with her emotions for my benefit.
Once again…something my father would do.
But I will not be him. I will not fucking act like him.
She will dictate how this relationship goes, and if that means I say goodbye to her tomorrow, then so be it. But at least I have tonight. One more night with her.
I stand from the chair and head back into the hotel room. I shut the terrace door behind me and make my way into the bedroom, where I find her curled up on her side of the bed. I plug my phone back in and slip under the covers, moving over to her side. I bring her warm body in close to mine, wrap my arm around her waist, and bury my head into her hair.
Mine.
She’s fucking mine.
Not for long.
But she’s mine for now.
Chapter Thirty-Two
SLOANE
