Page 1 of Georgia-Blue & Hudson

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Georgia

Hudson Nash has been the thorn in my side for as long as I’ve known him, and that’s pretty much my whole life.

I’m used to our back and forth banter by now, but he’s been busy on his family’s cotton farm with the upcoming harvest, and I haven’t seen him around the distillery as much in the past few weeks.

It’s not that I miss Hudson — far from it — but I’m used to hearing his snarky quips, and a part of me has grown to like it… not that I’d ever admit that to him.

Me and my new sister-in-law, Autumn, plan on heading over to the Nash farm today for work and my fingers are hovering over the text I’ve tried to send five times.

Me

Wake up sleepy Jean

Hudson’s an early riser but I still like to annoy him whenever I can.

When there’s no response, I send another:

You didn’t forget about me and Autumn coming over, did you?

Since Autumn came back from her honeymoon with my twin brother, Beau, she’s been asking me to go over to Hudson’s cotton farm so she can shoot some photos of the harvest. Updating her portfolio will give us botha perfect opportunity to check out some unique locations for photo spots. My bestie, Celeste, is marrying my cousin, Callan, soon and everyone is excited.

Since Autumn is the official photographer, she wants to see how the cotton fields are looking at this time of year. It’s all about the light apparently.

A message pings through just as I’m swiping some pink lip gloss on.

A little smile twitches when I see it’s Hudson. Finally. He’s not an avid texter, and sometimes it can take days to get a reply.

Huds

How could I forget about that, Blue Belle?

He’s been calling me that nickname since forever and a day. I don’t exactly know where it came from, but it stuck. He goesbetweenBlue Belle, toPrecious Princess, to justBlue. Beau decided to give me the name ‘Precious Princess’ as my discord username after hearing Hudson a million times, just to annoy me. Of course, I played dumb like it didn’t affect me. Reverse psychology and all of that.

My nickname in turn for him is GP, or Grumpy Pants as he’s well known. Mainly because he’s a broody, dark-horse cowboy that doesn’t seem to know how to have fun.

We jab each other all the time and I go out of my way to make sure I’m annoying the shit out of him whenever we cross paths. And he does the same to me. Why? Celeste says it’s because I’ve had a secret crush on him for years. Oh, and he’s cute, there’s no denying that. He’s also rugged, tall, dark and solidly built, or as I prefer to call it: a body built for sin.

So I admit that he’s attractive. It doesn’t mean anything. Even if he annoys me so much I want to scream, it’s not like I haven’t noticed his attributes over the years.

He’s tanned from working all weathers, has a short year-round beard and dark, mysterious eyes that penetrate your soul even when you’re not aware he’s in the room. It’s like you can sense his presence.

That’s Hudson. And he drives me crazy.

But attraction isn’t why we annoy each other. Oh no. It’s just something we do, like a rite of passage.

And maybe somewhere deep down inside, I do have a teeny, tiny crush on him because he’s someone I can never be with. But it’s all aesthetics, even I know that.

I’m a sucker for a pretty face.

Some say he’s a brooder from way back, and while he has always been kind of quiet, things changed a few years ago when his bull-fighting career came to an abrupt end.

He was in a serious relationship back then, with a woman I only know as Everly. She lived in Nashville, but that came toan end, too, and I’ve no idea why. He’s a closed book about everything, even if he has been besties with my eldest brother, Gray, for years.

Then Huds’ mom became seriously ill soon after his breakup, and she passed away two years ago.

It’s been rough on him, that’s for sure. But he shows nothing of that to the outside world. So much so, it often makes me wonder what’s going on inside his head.

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