Page 78 of Illicit Illustration

So, while I wanted to break the lock and pull her into my arms and apologize for how I hurt her, I did what I knew I should. For her.

Gathering my helmet from the floor, I tucked it under my arm and took a deep breath, shaking my head as I walked out the door of Hudson’s office, quietly closing it behind me. Two steps and I laid my palm against the worn wood of the bathroom door, leaning in to brace my forehead on it as I tried to come to terms with the fact that I had probably pushed away the one woman who could love me because I was a selfish fucking asshole.

“I’m sorry, Haz,” I whispered to the door, but I couldn’t hear anything from the other side. She was probably in there crying and cursing my name and I couldn’t even comfort her, because I didn’t deserve to be around her right now. Or maybe ever.

When the other side of the door remained silent, I stepped away. The walk to the back door was eerily quiet, everyone out front having a good time while I snuck out, knowing in my gut that this was infinitely worse than when I’d left after her accident. Because she wasn’t just going to avoid me because of embarrassment for a few years. No, she was going to avoid me for the rest of my life. And to make matters worse, there was a man on the other side of the building more than willing to go after her and maybe deserve the feelings I’d hoped she had for me.

Keeping my head down, I briskly moved down the hall, but as I passed the storeroom, a figure emerged, blocking my path.

“Where are you going?” Hudson asked. “Does Charley know you’re leaving?”

He hadn’t said anything outright over the last few weeks, but I had a feeling his girlfriend had told him how she convinced me to do the event. Not that it’d taken much convincing for me to agree.

“Yeah. It’s all good. Heading home. Just didn’t vibe with anyone.” Even to my ears, it sounded like a lie. I may not have vibed with anyoneelseduring the event. But I’d shared much more than vibes with the woman hiding from me in the bathroom.

“I think we both know that’s a lie.” Hudson’s arms crossed his chest. We were probably built about the same—although I was a few inches taller—but he had a menacing expression suddenly taking over his face. It was then I knew he had more information about what had been going on in the last two weeks than he’d let on.

“What?”

“You think I’m that stupid? I’m only gonna ask you this once, and I deserve an honest answer.”

I nodded, suddenly afraid that fucking this up had lost me more than just the woman I was in love with. “You know I’ve never lied to you before.”

“Yeah, you just sneak into my bar after hours to come after my little sister. Lies by omission are still fucking lies.”

Taking a step back, I blinked, wondering exactly what he knew and where he’d gotten the information from.

“She told you?”

“Gonna need to define who she is, asshole,” he growled, continuing to block my path. “Charley finally confessed to me a few days after the first event that she’d asked you to take part. And while I didn’t want you to make Hazel uncomfortable, she assured me that everything was fine.”

“But I wasn’t sure how true that was this morning, because I come in here to get set up and Char is consoling Hazel about something, and I thought it was because of some Seven dumbass. I’m not ashamed to admit I eavesdropped a little, and concluded that my sister was about to let this guy down easy tonight.”

I wasn’t sure if he was done talking, so I just stayed quiet.

“But then my sister shocks the shit out of me when she confesses that she’s in love with you. I’d always kind of known she was attracted to you. Even when she ran away from you, she watched you. I hadn’t realized that I needed to be worried about my best friend fucking around with my baby sister until now.”

“I wasn’t…”

“And after she talked to me, before I spent all day having to run around because my fucking freezer died an awful death, I realized that I’d been getting weird alerts from my security cameras for the last two weeks. The cameras that send an alert to my phone after hours. I hadn’t checked the footage until today, because the alarm never went off, so the person coming into the bar late at night had the code to disarm it. But when I did, I was a little shocked that it wasn’t just recordings of Hazel coming and going after midnight.”

My eyes widened as he stepped in closer, staring directly into them.

“Kind of curious that you’ve been here almost every night for weeks and never said a damn thing. So, right now, you’re going to tell me what the fuck is going on.”

I wasn’t sure what to tell him. He could see from the lanyard hanging around my neck that I was Seven, the guy Hazel had been talking to. And now he knew I’d been sneaking over here at night as myself. I hated fucking lying to him, but my loyalty was to the privacy of the woman in the bathroom right now, so I told him as much of a truth as I could manage without giving away secrets I didn’t have permission to give. “I’ve been helping her with her illustrations.”

“So that’s why you left with sex hair last night,” Hudson scoffed. “Did you fuck my little sister?”

Shaking my head, I took a step back, but he raised an eyebrow. Backing away from him only made me look guilty as fuck. “No, but…”

“What the fuck, Reid. You couldn’t have just gone after someone else? She’s a fucking virgin, dude. And you’re my best friend—at least I thought you were. You can’t just fuck my sister and then expect me to be okay with it.” His anger had transformed into disappointment, and I realized maybe I deserved to lose them all over this. “When you get bored, Char and I are going to be the ones left picking up the pieces. She’ll leave. And then every time she refuses to come somewhere she thinks you might be, I’ll want to beat the shit out of the man who I thought was going to be mybest friend until we were old fucks sitting out on our front porches scaring away the neighbor kids.”

“So that’s it, you don’t trust that my feelings for her are genuine? That it didn’t kill me to see her face drop when I took off my helmet and she realized what I’d been hiding. That she is locked in the bathroom right now, hidingfrom me.And that I won’t ever be able to do anything about the fact that there is some fucker out there who doesn’t deserve her. Someone she’ll decide to give her heart to instead.”

“And you think you deserve it? You’re bailing before things have even started.” He shook his head, looking at me like he didn’t know me. I didn’t know myself anymore either after the last few weeks. At least the person I thought I was.

“I fuckingloveher, Hudson. Like my heart pounds every time I walk into the same room. I can’t go for five minutes without thinking about her. When I’m not around her, all I think about is the next time I’ll get to talk to her. She’s all I see…” I confessed, my voice cracking. “And the worst part of it is, she doesn’t want me.”

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