Page 20 of Waiting for Forever
This week, he’d started questioning her and making suggestions, specifically about him tackling the plumbing issues, but Paige continued to dig her heels in. Part of him wondered if her stubbornness had less to do with a rigid adherence to the plan and more to do with punishing him for being a prick when they were younger.
Maybe it was a bit of both.
Tonight, however, he hoped perhaps they were turning a corner because it was starting to feel like they were becoming friends.
Right.
Friends.
Hudson felt a lot of things when it came to Paige Sparks these days, but not too many of them could be classified as “just friends” feelings. He’d never struggled with an attraction this damn powerful. It was off the charts and getting worse with each passing day.
This was his fault. He’d abstained from sex for too fucking long. Two goddamn years too long. That was how long he’d been his dad’s primary caregiver. Dad had been okay the first year after his cirrhosis diagnosis, but by year two, he’d started to decline. Hudson spent too many hours away from him during the day, while working, so he’d devoted his evenings to making sure Dad was comfortable.
Hudson took another glance at Paige, who was toying with the frayed edges from a rip in her jeans. He knew why he was single, but he couldn’t for the life of him understand why someone as beautiful, smart, and funny as Paige was.
“Why haven’t you ever gotten married?” he asked, before he could think better of it.
“Why haven’t you?” she lobbed back playfully.
Hudson laughed and grabbed his chest as if wounded. “Stabbed by my own sword.”
Paige grinned, then answered his question. “I didn’t put much stock in getting married and settling down in my twenties. I had a few boyfriends, but none of those relationships went the distance. Hell, I knew when I was dating them, they weren’t ‘the one.’” She finger-quoted the last two words.
“So you don’t want to get married?” Hudson was surprised by her response, since everyone in her family had taken that trip down the aisle. Unlike the Ryan men, the Sparks family was blessed when it came to finding their happily-ever-afters. He didn’t think there was a single divorce in the bunch. Not only that, they seemed to be procreating at a rapid pace.
While he’d only been home a few weeks, he’d followed Granddad’s lead on mealtimes, which meant the two of them wound up at Sparks Barbeque at least four or five times a week, either for lunch or dinner or Sunday brunch. As such, he’d run into just about all the Sparks again—and mercifully, like Paige and Macie, he’d been greeted more warmly than he deserved. Her brother, Tyson, had even joined him and Granddad for lunch one day, him and Granddad keeping Hudson in stitches as they told hilarious stories about lots of Maris locals.
“I didn’t say I don’t want to marry. I guess…” Paige lifted one shoulder. “I didn’t make time for it before because I was so focused on my career, on building the business. You know how it is when you’re in your twenties. You think you have all the time in the world. Now, though, at thirty-one…” She sighed. “The clock is ticking.”
He supposed that made sense on one level, but he still couldn’t help but wonder what the hell was wrong with the menaround here. Even if Paige wasn’t looking, there had to have been plenty of men who could see her.
“So what about you?” she prodded, putting the ball back in his court.
“Unlike you, romance and forever has never felt like something that’s in the cards for me.”
She frowned. “Why not?”
“We Ryan men aren’t built for marriage. Granddad and Dad were both divorced before they hit the double-digit anniversaries with their wives.”
“You aren’t seriously avoiding relationships simply because your dad and grandfather got divorced, are you?”
Hudson shrugged. “Not really. I just never made time for dating. After I left Maris, things were…rocky, for a while. Took some time for me and Dad to get back on our feet again. And then, I was like you, focused on my career, apprenticing as a plumber, working long hours. Time got away from me.”
He didn’t mention his dad’s illness, and Paige didn’t ask. She knew his father had died, so perhaps she was letting him brush over the details of that, thinking it would upset him to talk about it.
It wouldn’t. He’d made peace with his dad’s illness a long time ago. When a person lives as hard a life as Granger Ryan had, longevity would be nothing short of a miracle. The man had been a hardcore drunk for thirty-plus years of his life, and a chain-smoker on top of that. He cracked open the fifth of whiskey first thing in the morning, and he didn’t bother watering it down with orange juice or even ice.
Hudson was sure the guys he used to work with back in Dallas wondered why he stuck by his dad, considering he was always wasted and couldn’t hold down any job for more than a week or two. Hell, sometimes Hudson himself wondered.
Prison had changed his dad. He’d always had a drinking problem, but once Dad got out of jail, it was twenty times worse. And when Hudson returned to Dallas, eighteen years old, with a high school diploma and a job Granddad had gotten for him, it was apparent he was the only one capable of keeping a roof over their heads and food in the fridge. He became the parent, and Dad, well…he became a ghost.
Dad wasn’t a mean drunk. He never yelled at or hit him, never belittled or insulted him.
Most days started okay, with Dad asking him about work, about his personal life, the two of them chatting about their sporting teams and the weather. However, as the day wore on and Dad got drunker, he went quiet. Most evenings, by the time Hudson returned home from work, his dad was at the bottom of the bottle, more asleep than awake, so they’d sit together in the living room, Hudson doing all the talking, while Dad merely nodded or grunted in reply.
“Time does have a way of slipping by, doesn’t it?” Paige agreed.
“Guess we need to start paying attention to it.”
