She did. She really, really did.
She practically inhaled the alcohol. It burned a path straight to her gut, but no amount of warmth could thaw the block of ice that she’d become.
“So… his sister?” Tamara asked cheerfully.
“Twin,” she whispered.
The woman nodded.
Hudson gulped some more whiskey. “Why haven’t you told anyone?”
“Because I’m a good businesswoman, and I understand that everything holds value. You want to know what holds the most value? Secrets.”
That smug tone was irritating as hell. “What do you want from me?”
“At the moment? Nothing. That’s another reason I’m so good at what I do – I look at the big picture, play the long game. Short-term gains mean nothing, not in this world.”
Hudson was officially sick to her stomach, and not because she’d downed a full glass of whiskey in ten seconds flat. The thought that Tamara might hold this over her head – indefinitely – sent a wave of nausea spiraling up to her throat.
“Don’t worry,” Tamara assured her. “I’ll give you fair notice before I come collecting. And you know what? Just because I feel terrible for upsetting you, I’ll get your meds for free – how about that? No repayment necessary.”
“Oh, gee,” Hudson said sarcastically. “Thank you.”
“Don’t look at me like that. I promise you, I can be a very good ally to you if you let me.” She smiled broadly. “I’ve got your back, Hudson.”
She had her back? Yeah, right. She had a gun to Hudson’s head was more like it, and she could pull the trigger whenever it suited her.
The queasiness got worse, churning and twisting her insides until Hudson was afraid she might actually throw up. She breathed deeply, trying to keep the nausea at bay and steady her frantic heartbeat. Panicking wasn’t going to get her anywhere. Tamara would keep her mouth shut, at least for the time being, so there was no reason to freak out right now.
She had to relax. And breathe. And figure out how to silence her new ally.
For good.
16
There weren’t many official marriages in the free land, not unless one or both parties happened to still believe in religion, which had been the case with Connor’s wife.
Maggie’s father, who’d been alive for the war and had continued his work as a minister after it, had raised his daughters to believe that a union needed to be sanctioned by God or else it wouldn’t be binding. Connor had agreed to the ceremony because he wanted to make Maggie happy, but their titles of husband and wife were rare outside the city.
Most outlaws referred to their partners as “my woman” or “my man.” Their commitment to each other was usually an unspoken one, unless they needed to send a message. To stake a claim in public and make it clear to everyone around them that one or both of them was untouchable.
Connor had sent a message tonight.
He hadn’t done it intentionally, or even consciously, for that matter. His men messed around in the main room all the time. He didn’t. And by doing it tonight, he’d pretty much held up a sign to everyone at Lennox’s that Hudson was his. That she was important to him. He’d shown them his weakness, and although Lennox was a valuable ally, Connor knew the man wouldn’t hesitate to exploit that weakness and use Hudson against him if it ever came down to it.
Hudson didn’t say a word as she settled behind him for the long ride home. He appreciated her silence, because he sure as shit wasn’t feeling talkative either.
With the moon shrouded by thick clouds tonight, he had no choice but to switch on the headlights, which only added to his agitation by making him feel exposed. But it was either risk an Enforcer patrol spotting the lights, or risk breaking Hudson’s neck on the pitch-black road, and he wasn’t about to endanger her life.
The fact that he was putting her well-being ahead of his own was a fucking mind-boggler. When had he started viewing her as part of the group? He wasn’t sure how that had even happened. All he knew was that keeping her safe mattered to him.
They’d been driving for thirty minutes when the headlights caught a flash of movement on the side of the road.
Connor made out two shadowy figures. Had to be outlaws, because bandits traveled in larger groups and Enforcers wouldn’t be walking. He slowed down instinctively, then cursed himself for it because at the sound of the engine, the dark figures halted in their tracks and began waving their arms in the air. The words stop and please and help carried in the night air, and Connor would’ve kept driving if Hudson hadn’t squeezed his shoulders, her voice urging him to pull over.
Shit. He didn’t need this right now.
“Stay on the bike,” he ordered as he came to a stop. “We don’t know what we’re dealing with.”
He already had his gun in hand and the safety clicked off as the stragglers stumbled toward the motorcycle. Two males. One in his forties, one in his teens. Both froze at the sight of Connor’s weapon.
“Don’t shoot,” the younger one blurted out. “Please. We need help.”
Connor swept his gaze over them, taking in their dusty clothing, disheveled hair, and the bloodstained rag tied around the teenager’s upper arm.
“What happened?” Hudson asked, her gaze resting on the bloody wound Connor had been scrutinizing.
“Bandits,” the older one croaked. He stepped closer, and the lights illuminated his face, revealing a swollen right eye and a split lip still caked with blood. “They jumped us about ten miles back.”
Connor’s shoulders instantly tensed. “How many of them?”
“At least seven.”
“Nine,” the kid corrected wearily. “I counted.”
Hudson tried to move, but Connor reached down with his free hand and gripped her thigh, an unspoken command to stay put. “Where were you headed?” he asked the outlaws.
“South,” replied the older one. “We’re making our way to the coast, hoping to find a ship that’ll take us to South Colony.” He hesitated. “My son was stabbed during the attack. We need help… supplies… water to clean the wound…” He trailed off when he saw the look on Connor’s face.
“There’s a house about twenty miles west of here,” Connor said curtly. “They’ll have everything you need, give you a place to stay until you’re ready to travel.” He tucked his gun at the small of his back. “Tell Lennox that Connor sent you.”
“But —”
“Good luck.” He ignored Hudson’s shocked squeak and revved the engine. The motorcycle shot forward, leaving the stragglers in its dust.
“What the hell!” Hudson’s voice was muffled by the wind, but he could feel the anger vibrating from her body.
He kept his head low as he sped down the center line of the dark, empty road, but it wasn’t the breakneck speed or the wind slapping his face that he needed to worry about. It was Hudson’s fists batting at his shoulder blades as she yelled for him to pull over. His answering curse was sucked away by a gust of wind, and he slowed down only because Hudson no longer had her arms around him and he was worried she might fly off and crack her skull open on the asphalt.
“Let me off!”
Her incensed shout, accompanied by the sharp slap of her hand, triggered his own anger. “Fucking hell,” he snapped as he steered onto the shoulder.
The moment the bike came to a stop, Hudson dove off it and promptly marched away in the opposite direction.
“Where the hell are you going?” he demanded.
Her boots snapped on the pavement with each furious stride, but she only made it about ten feet before she stopped abruptly, as if realizing his lightning-fast speed had managed to put at least a mile or two between them and the outlaws he’d left behind.
She whirled around, advancing on him like a ferocious animal. “What the fuck was that, Connor? Good luck?” Her gray eyes blazed, dark as thunderclouds and just as ominous. “You sent them on their way like they were garbage to you!”
His temper explode
d, ripping a frustrated growl from his throat. “What did you want me to do? Pile four people onto a goddamn motorcycle? We couldn’t have taken them with us even if we wanted to. The only thing to do was send them to Lennox’s.”
“Twenty miles!” she shouted. “Lennox is twenty miles away! It’ll take them hours to walk there.” Her breathing quickened. “I could have waited with the boy while you took the father to Lennox’s, or you and I could have gone there ourselves and borrowed a car from someone – Beckett! Beckett has a car, and I’m sure he would have driven out here to get them. We didn’t have to abandon them, Connor.”
It took a serious amount of effort to get his temper under control. He breathed deeply, counted to five in his head, and didn’t open his mouth until he was sure that something counterproductive wouldn’t come out of it.
“There are bandits in the area, Hudson,” he said flatly. “The kid and his pop got jumped not too far from here, which means we can’t afford to be standing around arguing on the side of the road right now. You can yell at me when we get back to camp, sweetheart.”
“Don’t you fucking sweetheart me!” A helpless wobble shook her voice. “I could have at least looked at his arm! I could have checked his injuries and —”
“He was fine.”
“He got jumped! You just said so yourself!” She sucked in a breath, shaking her head as she stared at him in disbelief. “What’s the matter with you? People need your help out here. How could you not give a damn?”
His jaw tightened. “I took you in, didn’t I?”
“Yeah, and I’m sure it was your idea, right? Of course it wasn’t! Kade probably convinced you to turn around. Or maybe it was Rylan. Either way, you would’ve been perfectly fine leaving me to fend for myself. You probably wouldn’t have lost a second of sleep over it.”
Impatience surged through him. “We don’t have time for this right now. We have a long drive ahead of us.”
She gaped at him as if she’d never seen him before. Then she went silent. So eerily silent and for so long that he was actually considering throwing her over his shoulder and tying her to the bike.
“I’m calling it,” she finally said.
Connor frowned. “What?”
“You said that when one of us was done with… this… we should let the other one know.” Her features went taut with unhappiness. “Well, I’m calling it. I’m done, Connor.”
He couldn’t explain the burst of pain that stabbed into him. The way his stomach twisted and his throat burned. “Why? Because I don’t want to risk our necks for strangers? Lennox will take care of them, damn it.” His harsh voice made her flinch, and he took a breath, softening his tone before he spoke again. “Those people have nothing to do with us. With our…” He faltered. “Relationship.”
“You’re right. They don’t. But you do.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“It means that I’m done trying to figure out who you are.”
She looked so upset he almost moved closer and pulled her into his arms, but he was afraid she’d slap him if he did.
“This isn’t about sex for me anymore,” she admitted. “I’m not like you, okay? I can’t separate emotions from sex, at least not when it comes to you. It’s different with Rylan. I know where he stands. I know who he is. I can mess around with him and not get attached, because it’s just sex, just two people getting off, but… he doesn’t make me feel things.” Misery clung to her tone. “I feel something for you.”
His breathing grew shallow.
“You’re going to hurt me.” Her quiet, emphatic voice sent another shooting pain to his heart. “I can see that now. I kept telling myself that you weren’t a heartless bastard, that deep down you must care. About me, and the guys, and other people. But you don’t, do you? You truly don’t give a damn about anyone, do you?”
He tried speaking past the lump in his throat. “Hudson —”
“Do you even know what it’s like to feel something for another person? To care about whether they live or die? To want to reach out and help someone, even if it means putting your own life at risk? Do you know what it’s like to love someone?”
Connor’s throat closed up to the point of asphyxiation. He couldn’t get a single word out, and his silence only deepened the bitterness darkening Hudson’s expression. Her accusations poisoned the air between them.
“Yeah, I didn’t think so,” she muttered.
She turned her back to him and headed toward the bike. A dismissal. A slap in the face. He stared at the high set of her shoulders, the golden hair streaming down her back, and something inside him snapped. She had no right throwing out accusations. Telling him he didn’t care, he didn’t love. She didn’t know a goddamn thing about him.
“Yes,” he spat out.
“Yes what?” she said without turning around.
“I know what it’s like to love someone.”
He saw her shoulders tense. “I don’t believe you.” She kept walking.
“I loved my wife.”
That got her attention. No, it did more than that. She stumbled midstep, caught her balance, then spun around to face him. Her shocked expression collided with his uneasy one.
“You’re married?”
“I was.” Pain lodged in his rib cage. “She’s dead now.”
Son of a bitch. He wished he’d never opened his mouth. He’d wanted to knock Hudson off her high horse, teach her that she had no business making judgments about him, but now her features had softened and her eyes flickered with sympathy, and he couldn’t have felt more exposed than if he’d sliced his chest open and put his insides on display.
He gritted his teeth. “Can we fucking go home now?”
“No.”
Shit. He knew that look. It was the one that stubbornly said, We’re not going anywhere until I get my way.
“What happened to your wife?”
“I just told you. She’s dead.”
Hudson bridged the distance between them and caught his chin in her hands, tugging it downward so he had no choice but to look at her. “How did she die?”
“How the fuck do you think she died?” He let out a ragged breath. “Dominik killed her.”
Hudson’s breath hitched. She looked stricken, but also confused, which puzzled him. What was there to be confused about? Enforcers killed outlaws. End of story.
“You… saw him kill her?”
Connor gave a terse shake of the head. “I didn’t see him pull the trigger, but I watched him walk away from the scene.” His tone held a bite of sarcasm. “I put two and two together when I found the bodies.”
“You weren’t there when your camp was attacked?”
The question sliced into his heart like a cold blade, because he should have been there. He never should’ve left Maggie alone.
“I was out hunting. I was the only one who knew how. The people Maggie insisted on taking in…” He ignored the resentment climbing up his spine. “They were… they were weak, okay? Women who’d always had men to take care of them, kids who’d lost their parents to disease. Maggie and her sisters were bleeding hearts, all three of them. They adopted anyone we crossed paths with.” He couldn’t stop an irritated curse. “There were twelve of us, and I was the only one who knew how to hunt.”
Hudson hesitated for a beat, then laced her fingers through his. He let her, because he suddenly wasn’t feeling too steady on his legs, like he might keel over if he didn’t have something to hold on to.
“We’d heard rumors that Enforcers were sweeping the area,” he admitted. “I wanted to abandon camp, but Maggie was adamant about staying. She was trying to make a home for us.”
Hudson picked up on the bitter note in his voice. “There’s nothing wrong with wanting a safe place to call home,” she said softly.
He released a shaky breath. “No, but I shouldn’t have let her convince me to stay. I knew in my gut it was the wrong move, but everyone was tired of traveling, and w
e had a solid camp set up. A well, an orchard, a forest in our backyard with plenty of game. That’s where I was when the Enforcers came. I was tracking a deer in the forest. I’d left this kid Dan in charge – he was only seventeen, but other than me, he was the only one who was proficient with a gun.” He swallowed. “I tried to teach Maggie how to shoot, but she resisted. She said that even if she knew how to, she would never be able to take a life, animal or human.”
The memory chipped away at another piece of his heart. Maggie’s compassion was one of the reasons he’d fallen in love with her. That and the eternal optimism she’d possessed. He hadn’t realized until later that it wasn’t optimism – it was naïveté. She’d believed that deep down everyone was good, that a gentle touch could accomplish so much more than a hard one. She’d tried to mold Connor into thinking that way too, but it had been like asking a wild animal to suppress its violent instincts. He wasn’t gentle. He wasn’t an optimist. He was a ruthless, cynical bastard who did whatever it took to survive.