Chapter Twenty-Two
Felicia held up the blue wrap dress. It was perfect for what needed to happen next at the gallery. Hudson would see her in the dress, think about how she’d been wearing it the first time they’d had sex, and it would give her the twenty seconds she needed to get him to talk to her. They’d both said horrible things—awful, mean, but probably true things that had hurt each other. If he wanted to keep Hughston a secret from his family, that was his choice, although it seemed like he’d finally told his mom at least. It didn’t change the fact that she’d fallen in love with him and had spent the last few days realizing that life without him was way shittier than she remembered. That was gonna change. She just needed to get him to listen to her.
Holding up the dress to her body for a final look before putting it on, something else caught her eye in the mirror’s reflection. A line of black in her closet wrapped in a dry cleaner’s clear plastic. It was the dress she’d worn to the museum fundraiser the night she’d met Hudson. Good for parties and funerals she’d told him. It was her happy birthday early gift from her mom and tomorrow was her birthday. Fallon had dragged her out of her apartment earlier in the week and talked her into getting it altered so it fit better. The plan had been for that to make Felicia feel better too but only one person could do that—Hudson.
Without a second thought, she rehung the blue dress and slipped on the black one. It was a bit shorter and more form fitting than before but it was still her. She left her hair down so that it dropped to almost her shoulders in soft waves. A swipe of red lipstick and she was as ready as she could be for facing the unknown without a hypothesis but with a tightly held hope.
When she walked out into the living room, she found Tyler in a tense face-off with Honeypot. They eyed each other warily from opposite sides of the kitchen.
“I think it’s plotting my death,” Tyler said, never taking his eyes off the pacing cat.
There was exactly one person Honeypot liked on a consistent basis and the man in her kitchen wasn’t him. “Probably.”
She slipped her feet into her black kitten heels and grabbed her purse from the counter, her movements jittery as she tried to give herself a mental pep talk. Public declarations were so not her. Frankie? He’d kick ass at that, which was as it should be since he seemed to fuck up with women so much. Faith? As brash as she was brave, she’d do it without a second thought. But Felicia? The Hartigan who hated speaking up in staff meetings of five let alone in a room full of Harbor City art snobs? It made her want to puke.
“You sure you want to do this?” Tyler gave her shoulders a quick hug.
She didn’t even have to think about it. “I’ve never been more sure of anything.”
He grinned. “Then let’s go get your man.”
…
Exhausted and still a little paint covered, Hudson prowled the Black Heart Gallery, looking every bit like a man who hadn’t slept for more than thirty minutes at a time for days. It wasn’t his best look. It sure wasn’t the way people expected him to look. Screw them. Finally, seeing Felicia and showing her exactly what she meant to him was the only important thing. Everly had promised that Felicia would be here.
That she would be was the one thing that had gotten him out of the cabin this morning to hand-deliver all of the paintings in a totally unprofessional, last-minute move. Normally, it took days to get the artwork arranged and hung. Everly had cursed him out and called him every name in the book—all while cajoling him into eating something more than sugared-up coffee—during the process.
Everly stopped next to him and stared at his favorite painting. The one that he’d stayed up most of the night like a man possessed to finish. The giant canvas said everything he’d never be able to put into words. He just hoped it would be enough.
“This is so raw,” Everly said. “Are you sure you want to do this? It could backfire. She doesn’t seem like the showy type.”
“It could, but it’s the only way I can tell her everything.” For once, words had failed him.
“Well, it’s definitely all in there.” Everly sighed. “We would have made a killing off these.”
“They’re not for sale,” he said, the words coming out more harsh than he’d meant.
“Believe me, I’m going to lose my voice telling that to everyone tonight.” She gave him a quick hug. “Time to open the doors.”
She walked away, leaving Hudson alone to stare up at Felicia’s face on the canvas. He’d painted it from one of the sketches he’d done of her at the cabin. She had just-been-fucked hair and a satisfied smile on her face. The sheet was draped around her hips, and her arm lay in front of her chest, blocking the viewer from seeing anything beyond the upper swell of her breasts. What gutted him, though, was the mixture of confidence and compassion, vulnerability and strength, the know-it-all and the curious-about-everything that came through. And it wasn’t just on this canvas. Everywhere he looked she was there. The way her skin flushed when she got nervous. The strands of hair that always managed to escape her ponytail as she walked away. The new dresses. The brief hints of skin. The curve of her bottom lip. The unmistakable intelligence in her eyes. The absolutely everything he could ever hope for and more than likely didn’t deserve but couldn’t live without.
The chatter was starting to build as people streamed into the gallery, so he did what he always did during a Hughston show and headed for the bar. He’d made it halfway through the crowd when he spotted her across the room.
Felicia had stopped in front of a painting showing her at the museum fundraiser, her hair escaping from the ponytail and wearing that awful black dress, but with a spark of something in her bright blue eyes that drew in the viewer. In the painting, she had a shy smile. In the real world, her lips were smashed into a straight line, and a flush had climbed from her chest to her cheeks. Hudson’s gut twisted. She hated it. He could tell in her clipped steps as she went from one painting to another to another until she came to a stop in front of his favorite.
He’d painted her in the ant lab, surrounded by the glass-encased colonies and wearing one of her ant T-shirts and baggy jeans. It was the exact moment she’d gone into great detail about the feeding habits of the honeypot ants. There was no missing the fire in her eyes and the absolute pleasure on her face. Her smile had been captured in the moment right before a laugh had escaped. That was it. That was the moment he should have known there was no way he could help her land another man. It was the instant he’d fallen in love with her—and right before she’d told him to go take a flying leap, ignoring his charm and money and the facade he’d projected. She was a scientist who didn’t deal in white lies but in observable truth. And the reality was that she was right. He had been a chickenshit about admitting he was Hughston and about owning up to the fact that he loved her.
He took two steps toward her, but jerked to a stop when Tyler appeared at her arm and handed her a glass of champagne. She downed it in one gulp and snagged the second one the man was holding. Ignoring the possessive caveman roaring inside him when Tyler took Felicia’s arm and started leading her from painting to painting, he forced himself to stay still. There was nothing he could say that the paintings didn’t already. He’d brushed every emotion, every desire, every hope onto the canvas with each stroke, adding layer upon layer until it showed the depth of how he felt about Felicia.
She stopped in front of the partial nude of herself, and her entire body went stiff, her eyes going wide with mortification and her cheeks turning from pink to scarlet. Shit. That’s not the reaction he’d been hoping for. Yes, it was really putting her image out there, but that’s how he loved her best, fresh, unadorned, herself. In that moment, there had been no barriers between them.
Slowly, like in a horror movie, she turned, her chin up and her shoulders locked. How she’d known he was standing only a few feet behind her he had no idea. She marched toward him and the chatter around them intensified. There was no way anyone could miss that this was the woman in every painting and that she was pissed as hell.
…
Felicia could feel every eye in the gallery—including numerous reproductions of her own—on her, but her attention was focused solely on one man. Hudson Carlyle. He’d done this—and it had to have taken months—without ever letting on. There was no missing what he’d felt when he’d painted them—especially not the one of her in the very dress she had on at this moment. By the time she got to him, people weren’t even pretending to look at the paintings, and she couldn’t have cared less.
She stopped in front of Hudson, her heart trying to beat its way through her rib cage. “You are the most moronic, annoying, fucked-up man I’ve ever met,” she said, jabbing a finger into his chest hard enough to leave a bruise. “How dare you. You—”
“Let me explain,” he interrupted.
Oh no. For once, he wasn’t going to get to finesse his way through a situation. “What could there be left to say?” She waved her hand at the paintings around the room, her throat growing tight with emotion as she looked at everything he’d done, everything he’d told her without ever saying a thing. “You felt all of this, and you didn’t say a word? Ever?”
The vein in his temple pulsed. “What could I say?”
She looked around at the paintings. Sure, it was more than a little uncomfortable to see herself—sometimes almost all of herself—but she couldn’t deny that this was exactly what she’d been too scared to even dream could happen.
“That you saw what no one else did,” she said, her voice trembling. “You saw me from the very beginning.”
“How could I not? I couldn’t look away from you from the very first time I laid eyes on you,” he said. “I’m sorry. I should have warned you about the paintings, but I wanted you to see for yourself. And if none of it mattered to you, then I’d know that your heart belonged to Captain Clueless.”
“I’m right here,” Tyler shouted from somewhere off to the left.
“Shut up, Tyler,” she and Hudson called out together.
The crowd chuckled, but Felicia barely heard them. This moment wasn’t about the rest of the world; it was only about her and the most frustrating man she’d ever met and fallen in love with who had nearly demolished her heart.
Raising herself up on her tiptoes so she could reach his shirt collar, she yanked him close, relief and confusion and love swirling through her like a triplet of tornadoes. “If you felt all of this, why did you push me away? Why did you say I wasn’t your type? Why did you turn me down in the dressing room? Why…that last time?”
This time it was Hudson whose cheeks turned a light red. “All I wanted—and still do—was to give you what you wanted and what would make you happy.”
Everything fell into place. The desperate intensity of the other night when they needed to touch each other more than they needed to breathe followed by the text from Tyler, and then that fight. She’d never expected to find these paintings when she’d walked in the gallery ready to apologize for her harsh words. All she’d wanted was a second chance with the man she loved if it was possible to move past their fight.
“I’m sorry for what I said the other night. It’s your life, and you get to choose who you tell or don’t tell. I just wish you’d remember that you’re not only taking away other people’s choices when you decide to do what’s best for them, you’re taking away your own, too.” A tear escaped one eye and tracked its way down her cheek until she flicked it away with her wrist. “Basically, you need to stop being such a selfless asshole.”
“About that night.” He looked down for a half second and then back up at her. “I let my jealousy get the best of me and said some really out-of-line stuff. I just couldn’t pretend anymore that I wasn’t in love with you and it scared me.”
Her heart stopped. She must have heard that wrong. “You love me?”
He laughed and gestured toward the paintings surrounding them. “Could you come to any other conclusion after seeing those?”
Maybe she went in first, maybe it was him. It didn’t matter. All that did was the kiss that acted as apology, declaration, and promise all in one. It was the kind of kiss that gave a glimpse of the future, complete with family and friends and a lifelong happily ever after. It wasn’t until they broke apart that the fact that everyone around them was clapping, including Tyler, who was standing with Everly, Helene, Sawyer, and Clover.
It took a second, but the meaning of all the attention sank in. “Shit. I think I just outed you as Hughston. I’m sorry.”
He tucked her close to his side and brushed a kiss across the top of her head. “You obviously didn’t see the placard with the name of the show.”
“I was a little distracted by the giant paintings of me to everywhere.” Yeah, that was putting it mildly.
“Come with me.”
Hand in hand they walked through the crowd of people who were wishing them well and offering their congratulations for some reason. She’d figure out why later; right now she just wanted to enjoy being with the man she loved. Hudson stopped in front of a large black sign decorated with honeypot ants that read:
Hughston (Hudson Carlyle) presents his latest collection: Wife
Her heart stuttered, and she looked around at all the paintings, her gaze finally landing on Hudson, the man she’d declared Genus: Man, Family: Not for Her, and thanked God she’d so misclassified him. Not that she could let him know all of that. Charming Hudson was bad enough, Cocky Hudson would be impossible to live with, though she sure would enjoy it anyway.
She jerked her chin in the direction of the sign. “Is that a question?”
He gave her that signature, panty-melting smirk of his. “I’m hoping it will be an undeniable eventuality. After all, who can say no to a charmer like me?”
Not her, that was for sure. “I love you, Hudson Carlyle.”
He dipped his head down so his mouth was almost touching hers. “I love you, too.”
This time it was definitely her that kissed him because she really was a fast learner, and there was no greater lesson than learning to fall in love.