But it didn’t matter. Not anymore. Not when everything that my love was based upon was a sham.
There was a short knock followed by the opening of the office door. David stuck his head in. “Are you okay, Laynie?”
Had he heard me screaming a moment before? Or had he simply decided enough time had passed that he should check on me? Either way, I’d never been more grateful for the sight of him. “No. I’m not okay.”
David looked from me to Hudson, not sure what to do.
Hudson tried once more. “Alayna…”
I had no more words for him. Nothing left to say, nothing left to give. I simply shook my head once. I was done. That was all.
He continued to plead with his eyes for long seconds. After a while, he lowered his head. “I’ll leave.” Hudson turned to David. “I’m sorry to put a damper on your party. Thank you for looking out for her.”
He turned to look one last time at me, his expression filled with sorrow, regret, and longing. I knew he believed that I’d run to David after he left, and that the idea pained him even further. He was making a huge sacrifice leaving me with David alone.
But his sacrifice was a classic example of too little, too late.
So he was hurt? Too fucking bad. I was destroyed.
I turned away, not able to look at him any longer. I knew he was gone when David put his arms around me. I let him hug me for a moment, but contrary to what Hudson believed I’d do, I wasn’t interested in seeking comfort from David. All I wanted to do was go somewhere and cry until the pain in my chest, in my head, in my bones, didn’t threaten to pull me under anymore.
I wasn’t sure it was even possible. I suspected that in reality I’d hurt—hurt hard—for a very, very long time.
“What can I do?” David asked as I pulled away.
I wiped a stream of tears from my face. “Get Liesl, please.”
Chapter Twenty
Liesl was an angel.
She calmed me down enough to get me out of the building without drawing attention from the employees. I barely had the strength to walk, and she let me lean on her as we went to the curb and got into the cab that David hailed for us. She didn’t make any jabs about being pulled away early from the party, nor did she try to get me to talk about what happened. Instead, she pulled my head into her lap and smoothed my hair while I cried all the way to her apartment in Brooklyn.
Once inside her place, Liesl tucked me into her bed with a glass of straight tequila. Though she had a futon in her living room, she stayed with me all night. She spooned behind me, and when I woke up from the little bouts of sleep I managed to get, her warm presence calmed my screams to sobs. I hadn’t grieved and mourned that much since the death of my parents. Even then, I hadn’t known the level of betrayal that I felt now.
That was the worst part of it, the betrayal. If I’d heard the story earlier from Hudson, at a point in our relationship where I hadn’t put everything on the line, then I may have been able to survive it. I’d still have left him—I couldn’t possibly be with him after that—but it would have been so much easier to survive. Leaving it as long as he did, especially when we’d talked at end about honesty and transparency—that was the ultimate betrayal. That was the deepest cut.
But the loss of the man I loved so desperately came as a close second.
The first two days were a blur. Liesl cooked for me and forced food down my throat. She listened to my story as I told it, in spurts, piecing it together as best she could, again without pressing. Throughout it all, she refilled my glass any time I asked. In a rare moment where I managed to focus on something other than my heartache, it occurred to me to wonder if that was why my father had spent his life drinking—had he been trying to block out some sort of pain? What had hurt him? Wasn’t it sad that I’d never know?
The rest of my thoughts were mismatches of memories and realizations. Sweet recollections turned sour with the new information layered on top. I relived every conversation that I’d had with Hudson a dozen times. Sometimes all I could do was cry. At other moments, I became angry. I broke more than one glass throwing it in rage.
Once even, I considered taking a broken piece and slitting it across my skin. Maybe not too deep.
Or maybe exactly too deep.
Thankfully Liesl was there to clean up the fragments before I managed to steal any away. Besides, I didn’t really want to end things—I just wanted to end the pain.
Eventually, I began trying to piece things together. Tried to figure out what was real and what wasn’t. Imagined how and where Celia had fit into my relationship with Hudson. Like the way he’d condoned my jealousies, the way he supported my snooping. Encourage her obsession, I imagined Celia saying. Don’t get mad or upset if she shows any of her crazy traits.