“Thank God,” Penny said fervently, and took the dry-erase pen from him and marked him off for the rest of the week. “Don’t take this personally, but no one wants to see you back here until you’ve handled your shit and have the girl.”
Hud followed the GPS to Bailey’s Denver address and found himself in a neighborhood that had seen better days. Snow covered the yards in huge berms, but he’d bet even in spring there wasn’t much landscaping going on. There were few cars in the building’s lot, which suggested this was a hard-working area and everyone was on the job.
When he parked and walked the not-quite-shoveled path, a woman stuck her head out the first apartment, which had MANAGER printed on the door.
“Can I help y—” She broke off at the sight of him and narrowed her eyes. “You.”
It was Bailey’s mom. “Me,” he agreed. “Is she here?”
She slammed the door on his nose.
He dropped his head, studied his shoes, counted to five, and knocked on the door.
It opened slowly. “I don’t talk to heartbreakers,” Bailey’s mom said.
“Mrs. Moore, I screwed up with your daughter, but I’m here to tell her I was an idiot and that if she’ll let me make things up to her, I’ll never be an idiot again.”
She sniffed. “No man can promise to not be an idiot. It’s in your blood. You’re cursed.”
“Okay, true enough,” he allowed. “I’ll probably be an idiot several more times this week alone, but if she’ll let me, I’ll love her for the rest of time in spite of it.”
She stared at him for a long beat. “She won’t let you love her,” she finally said, but her voice was warmer and hey, she hadn’t slammed the door on his nose in a whole minute now.
Both good signs. “Why won’t she let me?” he asked.
“She talks a good game, wanting to live the life she could only dream about before,” she said. “But she’s not all that good at putting herself out there. She used to do that with her dad. He’d promise to come visit and she’d get all ready for him, using energy she didn’t have to waste, making him cards and stuff. And then she’d sit in the window in the living room and wait for him.”
Hud’s gut tightened for the little girl she’d been.
Her mom made a noise of anger and remembered frustration. “He’d show up just enough to completely mess with her head, but more often than not, he’d forget.”
Hud knew that feeling. His dad had been no better.
Bailey’s mom hesitated. “And then there’s Aaron. I love that boy as if he was my own, but he screwed up once and Bailey’s…” She shook her head. “She’s used to a black-or-white world. Sick, not sick. Alive, making plans to not be alive. No gray. No middle ground.” She paused. “When she was so sick, forgiving came easy. Too easy. She was way too kind. But now…” She smiled a little. “Healthy Bailey isn’t quite as forgiving. It’s as if getting to live made her more human. And we all know humans are flawed. She’s working on that. She’s working on a lot of things. And she’s forgiven her father and Aaron, but she hasn’t forgotten. Karma or fate or God, whatever you want to believe, gave my daughter a second chance at life and she’s taking it. Thank God. But I’ve influenced her decisions enough. And I learn from my mistakes. She makes her own now, with only loving support from me.”
And with that, she pulled her head back inside her place and shut the door.
Hard to argue with that.
Hud continued along the path, winding his way until he found 10A, which was the address Bailey had listed as hers. Heart pounding against his ribs, he knocked.
No answer.
He knocked again and would’ve sworn he felt someone watching him. “Bailey,” he said, hand flat on the door. “Listen to me, I was wrong, okay? About a lot of things. But mostly about us. I want an us. I always did, I was just…” He sighed and set his forehead to the wood. “Scared.” He blew out a breath. “Bay, I need you to open up the door now and forgive me.”
Her door didn’t open.
Instead the door across the way did and… shit… Aaron stood there. “Nice on the spilling your guts,” he said, “but typically an apology involves more ‘I’m sorry’ and ‘please’ and question marks, not a demand to forgive.”
Hud ground his back teeth. “Where is she?”
“Not here.”
Hud blew out a sigh. “You all live in the same building?”
“Yes.” Aaron paused and his voice warmed slightly. “When someone you love gets as sick as she was for as long as she did, it takes a lot of care, twenty-four-seven sometimes. She and her mom had to downsize, sell the family house. The medical costs devastated them. They moved here and so did I, to be around to help when she needed it.” He paused. “She hasn’t needed it for a while,” he admitted.
“Where is she now?” Hud asked.
“Your guess is as good as mine.”
Hud stared at Aaron, who stared back, eyes clear. “You really don’t know,” Hud said.
“I really don’t know,” Aaron agreed. “She might be mad at you, but she’s even madder at me.”
“If you had to take a wild guess…” Hud said.
“I’d say she was after something she always wanted.” He shrugged. “You’ve seen her list. She could be anywhere.”
“You saw her leave, don’t tell me you didn’t. You see everything when it comes to Bailey.”
Aaron gave a barely there, slight nod. “So?”
“When?” Hud demanded.
“An hour ago.”
Ah, hell. One hour. He’d missed her by one fucking hour. “Did she have suitcases or duffel bags? Do you know if she had her passport?”
“You mean for a cruise through the Greek Islands, touring the castles in Scotland, visiting the glaciers in Greenland, whale watching…”
The list that had once thrilled him was now terrifying him. “Yes,” he ground out.
Aaron paused and then shook his head. “You know, I really want to be a dick here and tell you yeah, she was packed and loaded for bear, but she only had her backpack. There’s no way she went anywhere on a plane, because trust me, if she had, she’d have packed a huge bag. Or ten.” He paused. “She did say something about having a few things she wanted to say to her last ski instructor.”
Hud nodded. Breckenridge. That he could deal with. “Thanks.”
“Oh, don’t thank me,” Aaron said. “We’re not on the same side, you and me.”
Hud ignored this and drove to Breckenridge.
Chapter 31
Six hours later, Hud had to admit defeat. He’d been to Breckenridge. He’d scoured the entire town.
Not a single sign of her.
Frustrated, out of options, he drove back to Cedar Ridge. It was midnight when he pulled in and parked. He didn’t pay much attention as he let himself inside the place that had always been home to him.
Every light was on.
The first thing he saw was Kenna sitting Indian style on the island eating from a huge pizza box. This was unusual because one, she was actually smiling instead of snarling, and two, she was looking happy, and three…
His entire family was there, crowding in his kitchen, sitting on every available counter or chair—or in Aidan’s case, leaning up against the sink inhaling a huge piece of pizza standing up.
And then his heart stopped because as everyone turned to him in unison, shifting, the person sitting on the table came into view.
Bailey.
“What took you so long?” she asked, and took a bite of her piece of pizza.
“What took so long?” he repeated dumbly.
“Yes,” she said, chewing, swallowing. “I figured out almost as soon as I left here that leaving was a mistake, that I never should have walked away like that without at least giving you a shot at groveling. It’s taken you days.”
Aidan snorted and then turned it into a cough when Hud looked at him. Suddenly everyone was busy staring at the ceiling or their shoes but no one, apparent
ly, was leaving the show.
Hud let out a breath and pushed them all out of his mind, concentrating on Bailey. “I’ve been one step behind you for… Shit.” He laughed mirthlessly and shook his head. He was so stupid. He’d been her last ski instructor. “Hell, Bailey, I’ve been one step behind you for months.”
She swallowed hard, eyes a little wide, and full. So full of things it almost hurt to look at her, but he managed as he tossed his keys aside and walked into the kitchen. He strode straight to the table, took her wrist, and directed the piece of pizza in her hand to his mouth.
Not nearly as calm as she clearly wanted him to believe, she stared at him, her eyes suspiciously bright. “Hi,” she whispered.
“Hi.” He swallowed the pizza, decided that wasn’t even close to what he was hungry for, and took it out of her hands, setting it aside. He wrapped his hands around her ankles, uncrossed her legs, and dragged her to the edge of the table, pulling her body flush with his.
Obliging with a gratifying rush of air from her lungs, she wrapped her legs around him and then her arms. “I was wrong to leave,” she whispered. “I didn’t really want to leave, not the town, not the people in it, and not you.” She stared up at him accusatorily. “How could you leave?”
“Because you were gone.” He lifted his head to give each and every one of his siblings and their significant others a hard, dark look for not taking mercy on him and calling him with her location.
Not a single one looked particularly sorry, the assholes. He turned his attention back to Bailey. “I couldn’t be without you,” he said. “I couldn’t breathe here without you, I couldn’t think without you. I couldn’t… be without you. Without you, I wasn’t me.”
“True story,” Gray interjected. “You know those commercials where people turn into bitchy divas when they’re hungry? Hud here took bitchy diva to a whole new level, trust me.”
Penny elbowed him in the gut. With an oomph, Gray stopped talking.
“What were you going to do if I’d moved to New York?” Bailey asked Hud. “Or London? Or Timbuktu?”
He thought about that. “I don’t know about Timbuktu,” he finally said. “But New York has great food and Europe has some pretty cool skiing.”
“You’d have left here, moved somewhere with me?” she asked doubtfully. “You’d have left your home?”
“Don’t you know?” He set her hand onto his chest, right over his heart. “Home is wherever you are, Bay.”
“Okay, that’s a good one,” Gray whispered. “That’s going to get him laid—Ouch! Christ, woman, watch the goods.”
Bailey stared at Hud and shook her head in disbelief. “But this mountain is everything to you,” she said softly.
“You’re everything to me.”
“What took you so long?” she asked again.
Her voice killed him. Her tone suggested that she’d nearly lost faith in him.
“I was worried,” she said. “I was worried you didn’t care—”
“The thought of you leaving and staying away made me want to drop to my knees,” he said. “How’s that for someone who doesn’t care? It’s been three days, twelve hours, and six minutes without you.”
She blinked. “You kept track of the minutes?”
“No, I made that part up,” he said. “I was trying to load the evidence in my favor.”
Aidan snickered. “Rookie.”
“Shh,” Lily said. “He’s being romantic.”
Hud did his best to ignore their obnoxious audience. “I called you, told you I was crazy for you.”
She closed her eyes. “I deleted your message. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have done that.”
“I got held up by the storm but went after you as soon as I could. You’d left this huge Bailey-size hole in my heart, but the storm—it was the only thing that could’ve stopped me.”
“Oh, good save,” Gray muttered. “Makes up for him being so slow on the uptake.”
Penny smacked Gray lightly on the chest. “Shh. And it wouldn’t hurt you to be taking notes here, Mr. Not Romantic. You might actually learn something.”
Gray sighed and reached for another piece of pizza.
Hud lowered his head and brushed his mouth over Bailey’s. “I knew my mistake instantly,” he murmured, “I don’t know why I resisted.”
“You were hoping I’d be scared off.”
“I was,” Hud admitted.
She nodded. “You about done with that?”
He pressed his forehead to hers. “Yeah.”
“Good.”
Hud couldn’t believe his luck, that she was really here looking at him like she always did, as if he was the most important thing to her. He’d never get tired of that, and how he’d thought he could live without her, he had no idea. “I love you, Bailey. So very much. I have since I first laid eyes on you.”
“On Devil’s Face,” she said softly. “When you inferred that I was a very stupid woman for being somewhere I didn’t belong.”
“If anyone was stupid that day, it was me,” he said. “But that wasn’t the first time I saw you. It was earlier that morning. You were in the parking lot, sitting on your back bumper putting on your boots. Your cap was so bright it made me need sunglasses. You were singing Ed Sheeran. Your eyes were shining with…” He closed his own eyes. “Happiness,” he said. “You were incredibly happy, and what I didn’t know then but know now is that you were just feeling lucky as hell to even be breathing.”
She inhaled, slow and deep and a little shaky. “Yes,” she whispered.
“I took one look at you and you—”
“—made you want to run in the opposite direction?”
“Smile,” he said. “You made me smile. I wanted to know who you were. I wanted to breathe your air and take in some of your glow and feel everything you were feeling because I wasn’t,” he said. “Feeling. I’d closed myself off and yet one look at you and I knew what I was missing.”
“Oh, Hud,” she whispered.
“I have this recurring nightmare,” he said. “You take off with your list and vanish, and I never see you again.”
“I’d never do that,” she said.
“I know, and I realize now that’s not even what my real nightmare would be. My real nightmare would be if you never spoke to me again.”
“C-H-E-E-S-Y,” Gray stage-whispered to Penny.
“I took one look at you,” Hud said to Bailey, “and control went flying out the window. You tore down the brick wall around my heart one smile at a time.”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” Gray stage-whispered again. “Really? Women buy this shit?”
“Yes,” Penny and Lily said in sync. “Shh!”
Kenna shrugged and kept eating pizza. “Depends on what comes next.”
Hud let out a shaky breath and didn’t take his eyes off of Bailey. “I’m not saying we need to buy rings, but I think we owe it to each other to see where this goes. And I want you to know, I’m all-in.”
“What if I get sick again?” she asked with a casualness that didn’t fool him.
His lungs squeezed out all the air so he couldn’t breathe. “I’ll still be all-in,” he managed. “Whatever you need, I’m in.”
“What about if you get sick?”
“I’m not going to,” he said.
“But what if?” she asked stubbornly. “You going to try to push me away again?”
“Never,” he promised. “Never again.” He pulled a small, black velvet box from his pocket and she gasped.
The entire room gasped.