The Fixed Trilogy(Fixed on You, Found in You, Forever With You)(104)

Socks on, Hudson stood and peered down at me, his eyes clouding as he perused my naked body. “Fuck, Alayna, you’re making me want to cancel my afternoon, too. And I can’t cancel my afternoon.”

I grinned. “Sorry.” But I wasn’t. Hudson could make me wet from across a crowded room. It was nice to think I had some of the same power over him. “Um, I need to get up. Is that going to be too…distracting?”

He narrowed his eyes at me then turned and disappeared into a closet returning with a cream robe. “Here.”

I took the robe from him, not bothering to put it on until I was standing.

“You’re a wicked, wicked woman,” he said as he watched me pull the garment around myself.

“And you love it.”

Without acknowledging my statement, he nodded toward a closed door. “The bathroom’s there. There should be brand new toothbrushes in one of the drawers. Look around until you find what you need.”

“Thank you.” I crossed to him and gave him a peck on the cheek before making my way to the bathroom to pee.

It hadn’t been a cuddly afterglow morning like we’d spent together at Mabel Shores, his family’s summerhouse in the Hamptons. But this was Hudson—aloof and compartmentalized. He was focused on getting to work, and, to his credit, he’d been pretty hospitable considering.

I found the toothbrush easily; as he’d said, there was a drawer full of them. While I brushed, I wondered about that. What was with the surplus? Did he simply want to always be prepared, in case he needed a new one? Maybe he believed toothbrushes should be disposable. He certainly could afford that attitude.

Or did he have them for overnight guests? Female overnight guests, to be precise.

I might have decided I was being paranoid, except it wasn’t only the toothbrushes. Now that I looked around, there was floral scented deodorant by one of the sinks with a bottle of women’s face cream and another bottle of moisturizer next to it.

And the robe—the woman’s robe that I was wearing at that very moment —where had that come from?

A chill ran down my spine. I tightened the sash around myself, despite my growing concern that I was wearing clothing that belonged to someone else. To another woman. Another woman in Hudson’s life.

Okay, okay. No need to panic. Maybe there had been other women before me at the penthouse. That was fine. Not wonderful, but fine. I just wished he hadn’t lied about it. And why had he lied about it?

I opened the moisturizer and brought the bottle to my nose. It smelled fresh and familiar—was that the scent Celia wore?

Now I was being ridiculous. Paranoid, even. Knowing that didn’t change the sick, angry emotion rooting through my gut. It was a feeling I’d once been very intimate with. The driving force of most of the unhealthy behaviors I’d acted upon in the past. Behaviors I did not want to relive.

I had to get calm, handle the situation constructively. I forced myself to count to ten. In between each number I repeated the mantra I’d learned in counseling: when in doubt, talk it out. One, when in doubt, talk it out. Two, when in doubt, talk it out.

Yeah, easier said than done.

By the time I reached four, the mantra had turned into when in fucking doubt and still I was very much doubting.

But that was my tendency, my go-to in all of my relationships. I jumped to conclusions—conclusions that very often were way off-base and unfounded. Late nights at work meant another girlfriend. Mysterious phone calls meant cheating. With my previous boyfriends, I never asked. I assumed. I accused.

Not this time. This time I would be different. Even though the evidence suggested that Hudson had lied to me, I couldn’t accept that as fact. I would have to ask him about it.

I scrubbed my face clean with the facial cream, hoping that stalling before I talked to Hudson would relieve the simmer of fury. After patting my face dry with a hand towel, I convinced myself that I was together enough to address him and started out of the bathroom, grabbing the cream and moisturizer to take with me as evidence.

So, maybe collecting evidence was more of an attack than a discussion tactic. As long as I didn’t end up throwing them, I considered it an improvement on my past.

Hudson wasn’t in the bedroom when I came out, so I made my way out through the apartment until I found him in the kitchen. He’d donned his suit jacket now, and he stood at the kitchen table, reading the paper as he drank from a mug.

He looked up when I appeared. “I made you some—”

“Why do you have all this stuff?” Though I’d cut him off, I was pretty sure my question sounded more curious than accusatory. Hopefully.

“What stuff?”