Page 98 of Critical Mass
Hudson stood in the doorway, his expression uncertain in a way she’d never seen before. Not the confident Timothy Shaw. Not the tactical operative Hudson Roberts. Just a man who looked like he didn’t know what to say.
“Can I come in?” he asked, his voice quiet.
Natalie wanted to say no. Wanted to keep the walls up, keep him at a distance where he couldn’t hurt her anymore.
But she nodded.
Hudson closed the door behind him and quickly checked the room for any bugs.
Then he stood in front of her. “I’d like to send a Blackout member to meet Jonathan.”
“What?”
He nodded, reassuring her she’d heard correctly. “It will be safer that way, just in case it’s a trap.”
“But he’ll know it’s not me.”
“Maybe not at first. We can make someone look like you. We’re professionals.”
She let the thought simmer a minute. “I don’t know . . .”
“You won’t be able to meet him—not with your father so close.”
She couldn’t argue with that statement.
Finally, she sighed. “Okay then. If that’s what we need to do.”
She gave him the details.
“I’ll set it up.” He paused.
She expected him to leave.
Instead, he said, “There’s something I need to tell you. And I need you to really hear me, even if you don’t believe me.”
She braced herself for whatever he was about to say.
Hudson felt the weight of everything unsaid pressing down on him like a physical force.
“I need to tell you the truth. For once.” Hudson moved closer but stopped a few feet away, giving her space.
He could see the walls she’d built, the defensive posture, the way she held herself like she was bracing for another blow.
“You’re right about everything you’ve said,” he continued. “I approached you as an assignment. The cooking class, the conversations, the dates—it all started as part of an operation to get close to your father.”
He watched her chest rise and fall, saw the way her hands clenched at her sides. Hearing him admit it out loud hurt her, and that knowledge felt like a knife twisting in his gut.
But she needed to hear this. All of it.
“But somewhere along the way,” Hudson continued, his voice rougher than he intended, “it stopped being an assignment. What I feel for you—that’s real, Natalie. When I’m with you, when I see you smile, when you challenge me or make me laugh—that’s not the operative doing his job. That’s me. Hudson. The man who fell in love with you without meaning to.”
“Don’t,” she whispered, and the pain in that single word nearly broke him. “Don’t say that.”
“Why? Because it’s easier to believe I’m a monster who feels nothing? That every moment we shared was calculated manipulation?”
She said nothing, just stared at him with those expressive brown eyes that saw too much, that made him want to be someone better than who he was.
Hudson longed to close the distance between them, to pull her into his arms and make her understand. But he stayed where he was, giving her the space she needed even as everything in him screamed to reach for her.
