Hudson

Chapter Nineteen

“Hudson.”

Celia’s voice on the other end of my office line surprises me. I haven’t spoken to her since my mother’s birthday four days before, but it isn’t the length of time between then and now that throws me. It’s the tone in her voice. There’s something I can’t identify beneath that one word. Something…off.

My body tenses immediately. “What’s wrong?”

“I need to see you. Now.”

I have a business meeting and two phone calls left before my day is over. Then I hope to convince Alayna to join me on my trip to Japan to try to win back Plexis. “Now’s not good, Celia. Can I call you tonight?”

“No. It’s urgent.” Her voice is tight with emotion. “It’s Alayna.”

She won’t tell me more than that, insisting that she has to see me face-to-face. There have been many times that Celia has snapped her fingers expecting me to jump. I rarely obeyed. This time, I do. Not only because she’s said the magic word—Alayna—but because her demeanor is so completely foreign. It’s fragile and fearful. These are traits I haven’t seen from my old friend since she lost her baby ten years ago.

I ask my secretary to cancel my afternoon and am out of the office within seven minutes. My mind wants to jump to conclusions, wants to settle on the worst possible reasons for this impromptu meeting, but I don’t allow myself to think about anything but getting to The Bowery. Celia’s riled me up so completely that I didn’t even argue when she declared the meeting place as my penthouse. Though, as I take the elevator up, I remind myself once again that I need to take away her key.

Inside my apartment, I find she’s not alone. My parents are there as well, and a man that I recognize from pictures in Alayna’s file as her brother. I suddenly wish I’d tried to contact Alayna on my way home. Has she been hurt? Has there been an accident? Is that why everyone’s here, to tell me something I don’t want to hear? Something I can’t hear?

I’m on edge now, but I hide it.

I hold a hand out to the stranger. “Hudson Pierce.”

“Brian Withers.” His shake is firm enough, but I can’t help resenting him for the troubles he’s given Alayna. “Good to finally meet you.”

“You as well. Though you’ll pardon me for not being privy to the circumstances in which we’re gathered.” I direct this last comment to Celia. She’s the one who holds the answers.

“I was just getting to that, Hudson. Why don’t you sit down?” Her voice is heavy, as though she’s a doctor about to deliver a terminal diagnosis.

It’s unnerving, and again I’m struck with a cold bolt of fear. Please, God, let Alayna be okay.

Then I remind myself that though she sounds sincere, I’ve heard Celia use that tone many times when she’s not. So I remain wary. “I’ll stand.”

“Whichever you prefer.”

“I prefer you explain what’s going on.” There’s an edge to my words that I recognize as completely unwarranted. Celia had surprised me when she declared her support of me and Alayna, but I didn’t doubt her earnestness. Why am I so ready then to battle her now?

It’s because I’d rather a battle than any other news she could give me. I’d rather fight her than find I have no reason left to fight.

“Calm down, Hudson.” My mother is the last person who can calm me. Her presence alone is a distress. “Pour yourself a drink.”

“Of course that would be your solution,” my father mutters.

It’s the usual banter of my family. Normally, I would echo the sentiment. Right now I only want to hear what Celia has to say.

She senses I’m losing my patience and clears her throat, preparing to deliver what I can’t help but assume is a show. “There’s no other way to say this except to just come out and say it. Alayna has been…well, she’s been harassing me.”

I’m instantly relieved. She’s okay. There’s been no accident. No body waiting to be identified in a morgue.

But the respite is short-lived as a new storm of emotions overtakes me.

“Not just harassment,” Celia clarifies. “She’s been—I hate to use the word, but it’s the one that fits—stalking me. Calling me. Following me.”

“Stalking you, Celia?” I’m incredulous. Alayna knows not to spend time with Celia. She wouldn’t break that vow, would she?

“Stalking, Hudson,” she confirms.

Brian pinches the bridge of his nose. “Not this again.”

I want to punch him. Because even if I didn’t know to question the source of the accusation, I would not jump to believe anything spoken against Alayna.

But more than that, I want to punch Celia. I realize now why she’s included my family here. It’s the only way she can say these lies and stand a chance of being heard. “This is bullshit. Get the fuck out.”

“Hold on, Hudson.” Celia crosses to me. “Before you decide not to believe me, listen to what I have to say. I have proof.”

She hands me a stack of papers. I consider tossing them to the ground, but there are other people in the room. Throwing a tantrum will not win them to my side. My eye twitches, but I focus on the page on top. It’s a call log. Celia’s, to be precise. Several phone calls have been made to her from the same number. Alayna’s number.

“This proves nothing.” Celia must have stolen her phone somehow. Or paid someone to use it. Maybe someone at the club? I shove the papers back at her.

She doesn’t take them, ignoring them to answer the ding on her phone. My mother grabs the log out of my hand instead. She can have them.

“And look at this,” Celia says, turning her phone toward me.

On her screen is an image that seems to have been sent by text. The woman in the picture has her back to the camera, but it’s clearly Alayna.

“This is at the job site where I’ve been working this week. Fit Nation. She’s shown up there so many times to bother me that I asked the front desk guy to document it the next time she came in. This is from today, Hudson. Twenty minutes ago.”

I shake my head. “This is ridiculous.”

“You just don’t want to hear it.” She returns her phone to her slack pockets.

I get it now. I see her angle. She never meant the kind words of support she delivered at the restaurant. She meant to throw me off guard. It’s the next play in her game.

It doesn’t surprise me, but it stings. I’d wanted to believe that we shared something beyond the hateful schemes we concocted. I’d wanted to think that she actually…cared…for me. The way that I suspected that I cared for her.

No more. The blinders are off. If we’re meant to be foes, so be it.

I step toward her. We’re face-to-face now. Close enough that she can see I’m serious when I say, “Drop it, Celia. Let this go.” There’s no mistaking that this is a threat. She may hold things over me, but she can’t forget that I hold things over her as well.

She doesn’t back down. “There’s more. Besides the calls, Alayna’s shown up at restaurants while I was dining, left messages with my office, followed me on the street.”

“It’s a bunch of goddamned lies.” I narrow my eyes, accusing. “This is what you wanted to happen, and when it didn’t, you made it up.”

“I didn’t want it to happen, Hudson.” Celia leans in so that I’m the only one who can hear her. “Not anymore.”

Her expression is not only genuine but desperate. It’s not a look I’ve seen before on her. She can be cold, calculating, but this…this is different. Why does she care so much that I believe her? She can cause her trouble without me. She’s never cared if we were on the same side. So why this time?

My conviction wavers.

What if she’s telling the truth? I’m fully aware of how “proof” can be fabricated. I’m also aware of how past addictions can call to you. How easy it is to fall into old patterns. Has Alayna really fallen off the wagon, so to say? We pushed her toward this. Did we achieve our goal?

“Why would Celia make it up?” My mother, ever the clueless, pipes up from her place on the couch.

I could school her on that, but it would break every rule of the game. Or has Celia already broken every rule by making up this entire scheme? I’m suddenly uncertain of everything.

“Because that’s what she does.” Jack’s snide remark reminds me that he too has been played by Celia. He’d been old enough to know better when she’d shown up on the doorstep of the guest house, but she was manipulative enough to fool even the wise. “Ah, and many of these questions can now be settled because the subject at hand has arrived.”

In sync, every eye in the room turns toward the newest occupant.

“What’s going on?” she asks, her gaze pierced on me.

“Alayna—” God, I wish I could steal her from this moment. It’s going to be a bloodbath, and all of it, whether there’s any truth to Celia’s accusations or not—am I really considering that there is?—all of it has come about because of me.

I wanted to protect her. I thought I had succeeded. I was wrong.

The room is abuzz around me as Alayna is brought up to speed. I don’t hear most of it, lost in my own battle. The urge to dwell on my fault in this scene is overwhelming. I try to deny it, but it freezes me. Coupled with the desperate plea from Celia, I’m reminded that there is more to this than simply believing her or not. How I choose to handle this will have repercussions. Repercussions for all of us.

I want to dismiss everything Celia’s claimed. It would be the easy thing, to cross the room and stand by the woman I love. But will that be the right decision? I’d have to explain why I think that Celia is lying. How far can I answer that without exposing the game? Without acknowledging my own part in it? And if I am able to save myself from blame, will Celia point the finger at me instead?

As Alayna defends herself, I realize a worse truth—she’s broken her promise. She was seeing Celia behind my back. She’s lied to me, and it’s not the first time. She kept her past relationship with David a secret that I only just recently worked out. Then her ex who had saddled her with a restraining order, reentered her life, and she kept me in the dark there as well.

Now I find that she was seeing Celia covertly on top of all that—what does that mean for our relationship? Can I stand by her when she’s so unwilling to stand by me?

Yes. I can. I will.

But can I so easily assume that Alayna has betrayed me? Perhaps she hasn’t at all. Maybe all of Celia’s claims are true, and I’m ignoring the bigger picture, the mental illness that resides in her. It isn’t what I want to face, particularly when I’m aware that if she’s fallen into old habits, it’s my fault. Yet, if she has—I’ll do anything to help her. Anything to keep her sane and with me. She has to know that I’m on her side.

So which is it? I’m with her no matter how she needs me, but which way is that?

Celia rests a hand on my arm, pulling me back to the present conversation. “I told you that night, remember?”

What night are they talking about? I replay the last few seconds of conversation in my head. There was something about my mother’s birthday. What had she told me that night?

Oh yes. Celia had said that Alayna had harassed her then. Had that been an early sign that I’d ignored?

I pull my arm away from her. “I don’t need a reminder.”

“He refused to believe me then too,” Celia tells the room.

I hadn’t refused. I’d chosen to believe the harassment was born of a different cause. Is this twisting of the truth evidence that Celia’s fabricated it all?

“He’s blinded by the sex. It’s not real.” My mother’s snips don’t faze me. She’s irrelevant in this situation.

Alayna though…

“She told you I harassed her?”

I feel her try to meet my eyes, but I keep them pinned on the floor. She’ll too easily be able to read me. She’ll see the war I’m waging, and she’ll misunderstand what I’m battling. She sees this as Celia versus her. She’s waiting for me to choose sides. There’s only one side—Alayna’s. I just can’t figure out the best way to fight for her.

“Why didn’t you say anything to me, Hudson?” Her voice is pleading.

Why didn’t you say anything to me? I ask silently. One thing I can say for sure—the two of us have to work on our communication. I’ve blamed myself for the gaps in our connection, assuming I’ve had the bulk of secrets between the two of us, but now I’m learning she has secrets too.

More accusations fly, more heated words. Celia brings up Paul. The fact that she knows about Alayna’s recent interaction with her ex is another detail that baffles me. Does Celia know because she’s been tailing her? Or because Alayna told her? And if the latter is the case, I’m again struck with the knowledge that Alayna left me in the dark while letting others in.

Honestly, if it’s because she’s sick again, it will feel like less of a betrayal.

I turn away, hoping to shut it all out while I work through the facts. But tempers in the room rise, and soon I find I’m unable to zone out the conversation any longer.

“Do you hear her, Hudson?” my mother says behind me. “She threatened Celia. In front of everyone.” She isn’t helping.

“Mother, stay out of this.”

“Hudson, you have to get rid of her. She’s dangerous. Celia tells me she has a record. Why on earth would you let her into your life when you knew these things about her?”

I won’t hear this. “Shut up, Mother.”

I spin around and brush past Celia and Sophia, stopping in the center of the room to finally meet Alayna’s eyes. Though I’m torn and uncertain, there is one truth that does not waver—I am in love with Alayna Withers. I will do anything for her. She is my light, and I will fight like hell to keep her from my darkness. Whatever that takes.

I tell her this silently through my stare, and I feel her acknowledgment pass back to me. She knows. She has to know that I’m here for her.

I’m barely aware as my mother prattles on behind me. “It makes sense why she’d be obsessed with Celia. She knows you belong together, Hudson, and she’s jealous. Celia was pregnant with your baby. She can’t compete with that, no matter—”

“Aw, shut the fuck up, Sophia,” my father cuts her off. “It wasn’t even Hudson’s baby. It was mine, you ignorant bitch.”

And then all hell breaks loose. My rage, already bubbling just under the surface, ignites in a blaze. “Goddammit, Jack.”

“It’s my business to tell,” he says, “and I’m tired of this lingering lie.”

“It wasn’t a lie we told for you.” For as much as I’ve resented that I had to keep his secret, I guarded it wholly. There are too many people who will be hurt by this unveiling. My mother. Celia’s parents. Alayna, because I never told her. It was a secret best kept to the grave.

Now the room swarms with the aftermath of this. Sophia’s crushed. Celia’s embarrassed. Jack’s…relieved, it seems. I’m surprised to realize I don’t care as much as I once would have. Everything in my world is dimmed next to the spotlight of my precious Alayna.

In the bustle, she slips away. I rush to follow her, not making the elevator before the doors close. I take the other elevator down and find her in the lobby.

“Alayna,” I call after her. She waits for me, but when I reach her, I realize I don’t know what to say. So I settle on, “Why did you leave?”

“Isn’t it obvious? That was a madhouse, and I didn’t want to be there anymore.”

“Yes, that it was.” There are words sitting at the tip of my tongue. So many of them. Which do I choose?

“I, um…why didn’t you defend me up there?” she asks before I’ve decided how to respond. “Are you that mad about the David situation? It’s me that’s supposed to be mad at you, remember?”

Was it only this morning that I transferred David to my club in Atlantic City? It seems like a lifetime ago that I was worrying about her and him. I don’t regret my decision to move him from The Sky Launch—that club belongs to Alayna—but I admit that I was underhanded in my dealing with it.

Now that feels benign in comparison to the malignancy that I’m about to inflict upon our relationship. But if we have any chance of working past our issues, I have to be sure we’re both mentally able to handle the task.

“Wait—” She realizes it before I have to say it. “You believe her.”

My jaw twitches. I don’t know.

“Hudson?”

I put my hands on her upper arms. “I believe in you.” They’re the truest words I’ve ever spoken. “And whatever you need, I want to give it to you. If you need help—”

“Oh my god, I can’t believe this.” She backs away from me. “I can’t fucking believe this.”

I clench and unclench my fists as if it will somehow help me hold onto her. “Tell me that you didn’t do it. Tell me you didn’t call her. Tell me you didn’t see her.” If she tells me she didn’t—I’ll believe her.

But she doesn’t.

It’s confirmation that she’s lied to me. I can’t bear to think that she’s done it willfully. She has to be acting out of her illness. It’s the easiest thing to believe.

She shakes her head. “It’s not how it looks, Hudson. I didn’t stalk her or harass her or whatever she’s claiming. Are you on her side or mine?”

“I’m on your side. Always, your side.” How can she not know this by now? Everything I do, everything I say, it’s always for her.

“Then you believe me?” Her eyes are soft, pleading.

It’s not that simple.

I stick my hands in my pockets. If I don’t hide them away, I’ll pull her into me, and then I’m afraid I won’t ask her the hard questions. “Did you call her?”

“Yes! I said I did upstairs!” She pulls her phone from her bra and shoves it toward me. “Here, you want to see? Take it! You’ll see all the times I called her since that’s what you seem to be concerned with.”

I ignore her outstretched hand. “I don’t want proof. I want to help you.”

“I don’t fucking need any help!” She throws the phone across the lobby. It shatters when it lands.

She stares at it while I stare at her. She’s hurting. She feels like I’ve let her down.

But she let me down as well. I’m hurting too. I’m new to this pain, and I don’t know how to deal with it. Her constant betrayals are wounds that I know I can learn to ignore, but I’m not sure how or if they’ll ever completely heal.

She turns and runs. Out the front door.

I follow. “Alayna, come back here.” I catch her by her wrist. “I’ll cancel my trip. We’ll find the best treatment—”

“I’m not sick.” She yanks her arms from my grip. “Go to Japan, Hudson. I don’t want to see you.”

Jesus, Japan. I’m supposed to be leaving in a couple of hours. “I’m not going to Japan now.” I’ll cancel everything for her. There is nothing without her.

Still, she walks away. “Go to Japan,” she calls back to me. “I don’t want to see you for a while, if not ever. Got it? If you’re at the penthouse when I get home, I’ll find somewhere else to sleep, and I don’t mean for just one night.”

She keeps walking. I let her.

I watch after her for long minutes though. I chose wrong; I know that. I probably knew that as I was pushing treatment on her. She’s not sick. She didn’t do the things Celia accused her of. She was in her right mind when she went behind my back.

I have a new decision to make. I can either choose to let this pain weigh me down and ruin our relationship forever, or I can choose to make my own transgressions right.

The decision’s easy. I won’t lose Alayna. Before I can try to win her back, though, there is an obstacle that must be dealt with—Celia.

Crying and yelling meet me when I return to my apartment. Celia and my father are in a screaming match, my mother’s sobbing. Or pretending to sob. There’s no actual tears. Brian is studying the artwork on my walls, seemingly trying to be invisible.

I almost feel bad for the guy.

I don’t feel bad for anyone else. In fact, they need to leave. “Thank you everyone for the chaos in my living room. It’s time for all of you to go now.”

Brian heads first toward the elevator, as if he’d been simply waiting for permission before he bolted.

I stop him. “Not you. I’d like you to stay, if you don’t mind. Alayna has asked me not to be here when she returns, but I’d rather she isn’t alone.”

Brian’s mouth opens, his eyes darting. “I suppose that would be fine.”

“Where are you staying? The Waldorf?” I surprise him with my accurate guess, but he simply nods. “I’ll arrange to have your things moved over here. The guest room is down the hall. Make yourself at home.”

He nods and heads to where I’ve directed him, happy for the escape.

Celia’s tried to sneak past me while I was speaking to Brian, but I catch her before the elevator arrives. “And I didn’t mean you should leave. We have to talk.”

Her eyes are red and tired. “Hudson, I’m not in the mood.”

“Oh, let’s not talk about mood.” My delivery is even and cold. I’m actually surprised I have as much patience as I do for her. Inside, I’m boiling.

“Do you not realize what just happened here?” Her voice is low, but she’s seething. “My parents are going to fucking kill me. They were never supposed to find out about me and Jack.”

“It’s called karma, Celia. You reap what you sow. And today you sowed a lot of bad karma. Would you care to explain?”

“I’ve done all my talking. I have to be somewhere now, so pardon me.” She brushes past me into the waiting elevator.

She won’t get away this easy. I step in after her. “I’ll see you down.”

Celia rubs at her temples. She’s not happy about this, but she has little say.

“I’m coming too.” My mother sticks her hand in just as the doors begin to close.

I may actually snarl when I say, “Take the next elevator.”

But my mother isn’t fazed. She slips in despite my command. “I’m not staying another minute here with that man.”

That man is standing behind her, a surly expression on his face. “I’ll take the next elevator.”

I suppose expecting Jack and Sophia to travel down to the lobby together is a bit much at the moment. “Fine,” I concede. I wait for the doors to close before adding, “Though I’m surprised you don’t mind being with this woman.”

Celia throws me a glare.

My mother throws me a glare as well. “I know Jack. He’s the one who’s responsible. It wasn’t her fault.” She wraps an arm around Celia. “He took advantage of you, honey. I understand. He was the grown-up. You were the child.”

Unfuckingbelievable.

Celia leans into my mother’s embrace, putting on the full victim act. “Thank you, Sophia. That means more than you could know.” She even dabs at her eyes, which, as far as I can tell, are dry.

“Jesus Christ,” I mutter. They’re more alike than I’d ever realized.

My mother scolds me as she affectionately pats Celia’s arm. “I’m not happy with you either, Hudson. Covering for that cheating bastard—”

“I wasn’t—” I don’t finish the sentence. It’s not worth it. She’ll never understand. “Whatever. I’m not going through this with you, Mother. Work out your feelings about this on your own.”

“I don’t know why I expected sympathy.” Her terse tone is well-practiced. “I forgot who I was dealing with.”

I roll my eyes. “Like mother, like son.”

“That’s not how the saying goes.”

Celia straightens and pats Sophia with the consolation I’ve denied her. “This must be so hard for you, Sophia.”

As if she wasn’t the exact cause of all the hard.

My mother takes the inch and yanks it a mile. “It is. It’s devastating.” She continues as the elevator doors open in the lobby and we step out. “God, it feels like so much of the last ten years have been a lie. The baby. The baby wasn’t even mine at all.”

This time it seems tears might actually be forming in her eyes. Somewhere deep inside, there’s a piece of me that acknowledges this is a big loss for her. As unhealthy as it was to do so, she’d focused so much of her energy on her dead grandbaby. The child that would have continued her union with Jonathon Pierce. Today’s revelation had to shake her to the core.

But frankly, at the moment, I don’t give a fuck. “Save it for your shrink. I said I didn’t want to hear it.”

Meanwhile, Celia has tried to sneak away again. I trot after her, abandoning my mother. “Hey, hey, hey.” I grab her by the arm and escort her across the lobby and out the front doors. “We aren’t done. I’ll see you to your car.”

“I didn’t drive.”

“I’ll wait with you until your driver shows up.”

“I was planning on taking a cab.”

“We’ll cab together.” I don’t let her interject another excuse. “Celia, we’re having a conversation whether you want to or not. And we’re having it now, though you are welcome to choose our location.”

Her shoulders fall as she surrenders to defeat. “Cab, then.”

We hail a cab and slip in the back. I dive in the minute she’s finished giving her address to the driver. “This scam of yours, Celia—it’s not cute. It’s not even clever. It ends now.”

“I love how you immediately assume that anything I say is a scam. You can’t ever give me the benefit of the doubt?”

“I did give you the benefit of the doubt. I believed you when you stood there and told me you were happy for me. That you would give up this experiment with Alayna. Blatant lies is your trick now?”

She stares away from me out the window and shrugs. “I changed my mind.”

“And now you’re changing your mind again. Alayna is not your subject. Your experiment is over.”

Her head spins to face me. “Is there a threat buried in there? Let’s not forget that I know things you don’t want shared.”

There’s not a question of what she’s referring to. Yesterday, I could have said the same about her. But the biggest secret I had over her has now been revealed. I have little to hold over her at the moment, though I plan to change that. And fast.

In the meantime, though, I’ll have to gamble on her loyalty. Not to me—to the game. “You won’t tell Alayna that I played her. You won’t tell anyone. It’s against the rules.”

“You’re concerned with the rules? The game is over for you. What do you care about the rules?”

Her nonchalant attitude incites me. “How dare you?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You heard me. How the fuck dare you?” It’s too much. All of it. Not only what she’s done to Alayna, but the insinuation that the way I taught her meant less to me than it did to her. It was my way of life, for Christ’s sake. How dare she act as though I had no respect for it? “I always adhered to our law. I did everything exactly as I said I would, even with Alayna. My only sin was to fall in love. And that was never against the rules.”

“It was certainly implied.”

I ignore her caustic remark and continue with my attack. “You’re the one who’s gone off plan. You’ve even changed the goal.”

“I changed nothing. The goal was to make her break.”

I pause, my head tilted toward her. “You mean the test was to see if she would break. There was no goal to make her.” Studying her reaction, I realize that I’m wrong. Celia’s goal was to make Alayna break. Not to simply watch what happened.

I’m baffled by this revelation. “When did our aim become to hurt people? We were scientists, not executioners. We weren’t malicious. We didn’t set out to hurt people.”

She looks at me incredulously. “You’re so fucking clueless, Hudson. We’ve been hurting and destroying people since the game began. You always pretended like that was just an unfortunate side effect, but even pursuing an experiment that might hurt someone is malicious. It’s like performing harmful research on humans. Scientists don’t do that as a rule. You know why? It’s not just unethical; it’s against the law.”

Shaking her head, she faces forward. “I get it, Hudson, I do. You didn’t want to face how fucking cruel you really are, so you told yourself what you had to in order to live with yourself.”

She was wrong. I did know how fucking cruel I was. I knew I was an asshole. I knew that, before Alayna, I had no heart.

But I had been a man with no comprehension of what it felt like to experience real pain. I hadn’t understood the damage I could do to people. Dr. Alberts had likened it to being a blind man asked to describe the color blue. While it didn’t excuse all my actions, it did make them less willful.

“It’s not the same at all.” We weren’t the same. All this time, I’d thought we were. “And the fact that you think so shows what a cruel bitch you really are.”

She claps her hands together with mock enthusiasm. “We’ve resorted to name-calling now, have we? How fun!” Her expression grows sober. “You can’t fucking be serious.”

“I’m dead serious, Celia. You will end this. And us…” I pause, not because the words are hard to say, but because I want to make sure she hears their emphasis. “We’re over too. I want you out of my life. Don’t call me. Don’t stop by. Do you understand?”

She sneers. For a woman so about grace and appearances, she can sure put on an ugly face. “It’s not that easy to just cut me out of your life, Hudson. Our families—”

And there’s a blessing about the recent disclosure of our baby lie. “I’m not so sure our families will be a problem after today. I’d bet our parents are not going to want to spend much time together from now on.”

The reminder of her parents and the afternoon’s revelation seems to shake her. She regroups quickly. “Well, we run in the same social circles.”

“And you will steer away from me when we show up at the same event. Do I make myself clear?”

Her nostrils fume, her eyes calculating. But she concedes with one word, “Perfectly.”

For good measure I add, “You do not want to make me your enemy.”

“Funny, I thought you’d already made me yours.”

That truth lingers in the air around us, irrefutable. She may mean I made her my enemy when I dropped out of the game with Alayna. Or when I left it three years ago and entered therapy. But I think instead it’s more accurate that she became my foe that summer ten years ago—when I decided to break her heart.

I’d told her she was suffering from karma. Wasn’t I as well?

We’ve arrived at her apartment building. The cab pulls over to the curb. “Farewell, Hudson. This is for good, I suppose. The taxi’s on you.”

She gets out of the car. I don’t watch after her.

I instruct the driver to head back to The Bowery. There’s just enough time to collect my luggage before heading to the airport for my trip to Japan. If it were only the Plexis deal at stake, I’d cancel. But there’s something else now, something more important. It’s time to act on the information that Warren Werner gave me about the vulnerabilities of his company, and that will begin with a source in Japan.

When I return, my energy will be thrown into repairing my relationship with Alayna. There’s been serious damage done on both our parts, but we can move on, I think. I have to believe that. Because without her, there’s no reason for anything else.

Though much is in turmoil about me, I feel oddly at peace as we return to my penthouse. Celia is gone from my life, and there’s a freedom with that knowledge that I hadn’t expected. Like a long-growing tumor has finally been removed. There will be a scar, I know. I’ll rub at it and scratch at phantom aches. But it’s gone, and, with Alayna, we can finally begin the process of healing.