Then I lost her.
Lex snatched her arm away and spun all at once. She was a tornado touching down with deafening lulls and violent whirls.
“Where’s my phone?!” she shrieked at a soul-crushing octave. “Where’s my fucking phone! I’ll call him. I’ll prove he’s fine.” With wild eyes, she darted around her parents’ kitchen, looking for a phone that she’d told me only minutes ago was dead.
I followed after her, my heart in my throat, the seconds on the clock ticking away at an agonizing speed. “We gotta go, Lex.”
With trembling hands, she found her purse on the island and dumped it out, the contents rolling off the counter, crashing to the floor right along with her heart. “This is bullshit. He knows how to ride a four-wheeler, Hudson. He wouldn’t fucking flip it.”
She pushed past me, but I caught her by the arm. It would be years before I forgave myself for the way I jerked her against me and shouted, “I wouldn’t lie about this! Please, fuck, we need to go.” It was louder than I’d intended, but it momentarily snapped her out of it.
Her head tipped up, her life-altering green eyes pleading with me long before her words did. “How bad?” When I didn’t immediately respond, she yelled, “How fucking bad, Hudson?”
I could have lived a thousand years and I’d never forget the complete and utter devastation on her face. I fought the urge to squeeze my eyes shut to block out the searing pain of reality. But if I did, she’d be forced to live this hell alone.
Holding her gaze, I whispered, “Bad.”
With that one single syllable, she flew away from me as though I were her mortal enemy. In that second, I guess in a lot of ways, I was.
When her back hit the wall, she managed to rasp, “Is…is he alive?”
“Yes!” I exclaimed, jumping on the only good news I had to offer her. It was one tiny morsel of hope, and I prayed it was enough. “The four-wheeler flipped on his way back from the pond. They life-flighted him out, but…” Fuck. Fuck! I moved into her, stopping only inches away. Careful not to touch her again, but close enough to catch her if her knees buckled. “It’s bad, Lex. Like really fucking bad. But Brenden’s a fighter, and the sooner we get there, the sooner we can get answers.”
She was frozen in place, her hands in midair as though she were about to reach for my biceps, tears dripping from the corners of her eyes as she searched my face. “So he’s okay?”
He wasn’t. Not even close.
But the spark of hope that lit her eyes turned that rock in my stomach into a boulder, and I knew there was no way I would get her out of the house in one piece if I told her the absolute truth.
So, even though I prided myself in being honest to a fault, I swallowed my pride and told the biggest lie of my entire life. Staring into the terrified face of a woman I would burn down the world to protect, I forced a nod. “Yeah, Kid. He’s gonna be fine.”
She sprang back into action, her emotions spinning so fast her legs couldn’t keep up and she nearly tripped. After a few eternally long seconds of searching for her shoes, I told her to forget them.
I carried her from the house that day, barefoot, sobbing, and tearing apart at the seams.
Held her hand on the way to the hospital.
Stood behind her as she sat at his bedside—a million tubes and wires making him unrecognizable—begging the only man she had ever loved not to leave her.
I slept in a chair in the waiting room for a week when she refused to go home.
And I held her, wrapped in my arms, her tears soaking my chest, agony ravaging her, the day Brenden’s body finally gave out.
Cal, Lauren, and I did everything we could to ease Lex’s pain. But it was an impossible job.
I couldn’t fix it for her, but I never stopped trying.
Not when she fell into the depths of depression.
Not when the darkness closed in.
Especially not when the simple task of breathing became too much.
Looking back, I was so damn thankful I’d taken the second to memorize her face before I shattered her dreams, because it took years before I saw another genuine smile grace her face again.
Six years later…
I stared down the aisle and could barely believe it was really happening. I had on the dress, the shoes, the jewelry, and my hair was exactly as I’d been instructed. Big.
There were a lot of people, and as at any wedding, their eyes were trained on the door I was about to walk through—that was if he would just get over here and take my damn arm.
Did he have to pick today to become social?
The music began, and it took everything in me not to scream to get his attention. My only option was the Jedi death stare. If you could hear a glare, mine would have been deafening, but it worked.
He leisurely strutted over and linked his arm with mine as if it were no big deal that we were up and everyone was waiting. It wasn’t like we hadn’t been forced into practicing this very thing the evening before.
“You look like a clown with all that makeup on,” Hudson whispered as he leaned into my side.
“Yeah, well, I didn’t think they made tuxedos in size Sasquatch, either. Yet here we are.”
Leave it to him to say something totally blunt and slightly rude, but he wasn’t wrong. I normally wore some makeup, but never to this level. It had taken forever for the hundred-dollar-an-hour makeup artist to smear it all on. But again, I was just going along with what had been forced upon me.
I wasn’t the kind of woman who fawned over the idea of holy matrimony or happily-ever-afters—at least not anymore. Because, although I loved the company of men, I was a single mom to two cats. Beep and Boop’s half-assed brand of tough love was all I needed in my life. Not that my meddling parents understood that.
A wave from the uppity wedding coordinator, whose hair was higher than the steeple on the church, put our feet in motion.
“We can always object,” he said and then cleared his throat. “Rock, paper, scissors for which one of us does it.”
I grinned at my aunt and uncle as we slowly marched closer to the altar. With a bright smile on my face, I replied, “He’d kill us.”
“The lesser of two evils.” He pretended to shiver. “At least we’d get out of this stupid wedding pageant quicker.”
He had a point.
Still, there was no way I was going to ruin my brother Calvin’s wedding day—crazy debutant bride or not. And deep down, Hudson would never do that to his best friend, either. It was bad enough that Lauren wasn’t there. We’d all done our fair share of shit to each other over the course of our lifetimes, but objecting would be a step too far—even for us.
At the pulpit, before we split, he leaned over again and muttered, “I can’t wait to hear all about how it’s going with you and that mouth-breather you brought, Lex.” He hung his jaw open, panted, turned on his heel, and clapped Calvin on the shoulder, taking his place beside him as best man.
Holding my bouquet, I flipped him off where no one else could see, and he gave me a smug wink.
At least I have a date, cocksucker.
He’d brought a seven-year-old.
Yes. That’s right. I was the maid of honor in this circus. Not because Vanessa and I were close—or even friends for that matter. Truth be told, if she hadn’t had a collar around my brother’s neck for the past two years, I wouldn’t have given a shit about knowing her at all. But for whatever reason, they were getting married. Hooray.