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Heat warmed my cheeks as I silently followed him through the room and into his adjoining ensuite bathroom. Marble again. The tub, the sink, the floor. The glass shower sat recessed into the house's front wall, large enough for a hockey team to shower together, with two rainfall shower heads on either end and a marble bench that stretched the length of it. It made my shower-tub combo look tiny in comparison.
Don’t imagine him in it.
Don’t imagine you in it with him, Sophie.
“Here we go,” he said, cutting through the heated images beginning to form in my head. I’d never been more grateful to hear him speak.
He held up a medium-sized basket, filled to the brim with medical supplies. I’d been expecting a simple, fold-open box with the basics but really, I should have assumed more from a doctor.
“Anything you could possibly need is in here.”
“Yeah, if I can find it,” I quipped, looking through the clear sides into the layers upon layers of band-aids, gauze, alcohol wipes, medicine, burn cream… goddamn, I could fit my whole house in there.
He leveled a glare at me as he slid the box back under the sink cabinet. “If you need anything at all, or there’s an emergency, or you get confused?—”
“Yeah, yeah, call you. I know the drill, Dr. Brady.”
His jaw hardened. “Hudson.”
————
Slowly, painstakingly slowly, Jamey came out of his shell.
The shy little boy I’d met earlier that morning had come up to me around ten a.m. and asked if I’d paint with him. I had enough time in my schedule for the day, so I was happy to join him.
By noon, he finally showed me his room. It was decked out with science toys, from a working telescope to a constellation tracker. His ceiling had been painted black, and little, glow-in-the-dark stars were stuck all over it, glowing bright when he turned the lights off and shut his black-out curtains.
Around one o’clock, he begged me to make him lunch. I’d made mac and cheese with chicken nuggets, and he’d squealed in excitement when I served it to him.
At three, he asked me to play tag with him in the backyard, and I had to pretend that I couldn’t run as fast as I really could. I let him win most of the rounds.
When the clock finally struck five, we were so deep in a game of hide-and-seek that I’d hardly gotten any of my work done. Jamey had hidden somewhere that I couldn’t find, and my exploration had left me more familiar with the house. I’d found a closet that I thought was a room, filled with junk and boxes, and when I’d gone searching behind them for the four-year-old in question, I’d accidentally knocked one of them over.
The contents spilled onto the floor, and in my desperate attempt to reassemble the box of random items as best I could, I couldn’t help but notice a small wooden frame lying face down. On the back, scribbled in pen along the MDF backing read: Becks and Jamey, Jamey’s First Birthday.
The sinking feeling in my gut told me I shouldn’t look. It told me that it would be an invasion of privacy, a crossing of a boundary I desperately needed to put in place. But I couldn’t help myself.
I picked up the frame, turning it over in my hands.
A gorgeous blonde woman smiled brightly for the camera, a baby boy with a thick mop of black hair in her lap. Jamey was mid-clap with cake smeared across his fingers and his mouth, a discarded birthday candle off to the side of the frame. The woman—Becks, I’m assuming—was the polar opposite of me. Clear, unfreckled skin. Bright blonde, almost white, hair. Sharp brown eyes, creased at the edges from her wide smile. She was stunning.
The sound of footsteps in the doorway didn’t make me turn as quickly as it should have. In my defense, I thought it was Jamey, finally coming out of his hiding spot to announce that he had won. But when I turned, the photo still clutched in my grasp, I found Hudson.
I could feel every ounce of blood drain from my face as I took him in, all six-foot-something of him. “I-I’m so sorry,” I muttered, fumbling as I tried to put the frame back into the box before he could see. There had to be a reason she was in here, in a box, hidden from the world. There weren’t any photos of her around the house.
Hudson swallowed, his jaw twitching as he watched me. My brain scrambled under his stare, all sense leaving my mind.
“Who…?”
“Becks,” he said, his voice quiet, almost solemn. “Jamey’s mom.”
“Is she…?”
“No.” He shook his head as he took a step toward me. There was nowhere for me to go without knocking anything else over. “Last I heard, she is very much alive and on the other side of the country. Out of our lives.”
Even in his scrubs, even as unreadable as he looked with his hair falling around the edges of his face and his chin hard set, his closeness made something low in my gut spring to life. I’d been caught doing something I absolutely shouldn’t have, so why on earth was I unable to tear my gaze from his perfect lips, his straight nose, his glaringly green eyes?
“I’m sorry,” I whispered again. I didn’t know what else to say.
