Pressing my body tight against the wall, I peered around the doorframe and down the hall. Her back toward me, I saw a woman dressed in a light blue sundress, directing men with boxes toward the library. Her hair, wrapped into a loose yellow bun at her nape, was what gave her away.
It was the woman Hudson grew up with. The woman Hudson had falsely claimed he’d gotten pregnant. The woman Hudson’s mother had wanted him to marry.
It was Celia Werner.
Chapter Three
One of the deliverymen spotted me and nodded his head in my direction. Panic bubbled in my chest as Celia turned to see what he was gesturing at. I ducked back around the corner, but not before she saw me.
“Laynie?”
Shit, shit, shit. I didn’t want to see her, didn’t want her to see me.
Her heels clicked as she walked down the hall toward the bedroom. “Alayna, is that you?” She peeked into the room and found me pressed against the wall, still dressed only in a towel.
“Hi.”
“Wow.” Her smile brightened as her eyes moved up and down my body, taking in my lack of clothing. “I didn’t expect you to be here.”
This was ridiculous. I was acting like I’d been caught doing something wrong, but I hadn’t. I had every right to be there and, as far as I knew, Celia did not.
I straightened my back and stepped away from the wall. “I didn’t expect you either. Hudson didn’t say you were delivering the books.”
Celia shook her head. “He didn’t know. He ordered them through my office and my schedule was open today, so I thought I’d make sure they got here okay and help unpack them if need be.”
“You have a key.” It was honestly the only thing going through my mind at that point, and I hated how pathetic I sounded mentioning it. I had a key too, after all.
She leaned her shoulder against the door jam. “I do. Since I did the interior decorating. We’re always updating, and we thought it was easiest for me to keep a key.” Her eyes glanced over to the unmade bed, sheets in disarray from my night with Hudson. When she looked back at me, her smile seemed wider. “I did buzz though before I came up and there was no answer.”
“I was in the shower.”
“I see that.” She winked, and I knew she was saying that she was seeing more than me wrapped in a towel. She was getting the whole picture.
Well, good. I was glad. Then I wouldn’t have to feel like a jerk when I spelled it out for her. Hudson and I were together now. Whatever anyone else had ever planned for Celia and Hudson, it was moot. I was the one he’d chosen. End of discussion.
Except that discussion had only occurred in my head. Some things probably still had to be said out loud.
Celia seemed to be thinking the same thing. “Look, let me get finished with the delivery guys and you can get dressed. Then we can chat or whatever. It seems we have some catching up to do.”
She shut the door behind her, and I let out a deep breath. I wasn’t sure why Celia’s presence was giving me so much anxiety. She wasn’t a threat to me. She felt like one, though. I’d been jealous of her since I’d met her. As Hudson’s oldest friend, she knew him better than anyone. He told her things. He kept her secrets. She’d been the only one who knew about Hudson and me pretending to be a couple. It was an intimate friendship they had.
Hudson had insisted that friendship was the only thing between them. I had to trust that or the envy would tear me apart. The whole charade had started in the first place so that Celia and Hudson’s parents would stop trying to pair up the two. If there really had been something between them, then why would I have been brought into the middle?
I’d only discovered the day before that the reason the Werners and Sophia Pierce were so keen on playing matchmaker was because they thought Hudson and Celia had been together in the past. They thought Hudson was the father of the baby Celia had miscarried. But he wasn’t, and they had never been together. The truth was worse—Hudson had played Celia, had tricked her into falling for him, had sent her spiraling into depression and wild partying. So when she’d ended up pregnant, he felt responsible and claimed parentage.
In a way, Hudson had been responsible. But he wasn’t the man of his youth anymore. He wasn’t so responsible that his games had to follow him for the rest of his life. I couldn’t believe that. Otherwise I would have to believe the same about the things I’d done to others. Certainly even people like us—people who had been so broken that we destroyed others around us—deserved happiness of our own. We didn’t have to spend our entire existence making up for our mistakes. Did we?