“That is not what this is—or what I think!”
“So, I am wrong to think that you still want children?” he said, not sounding like he believed it. “That you never do? That you are perfectly happy with how things are and that will never change? Do you really expect me to believe that?”
“Please,” she begged him, wanting to go to him, but caught by fear and a sense of unease because this was not going at all howshe imagined. “This has nothing to do with...with that. And you are the one who kissed me?—”
“I am aware of what I have done,” he said, his voice trembling. “A mistake and nothing more. I ask now that you forget it, as I surely will.”
That was like a knife plunging through her stomach. He did not mean it. He could not mean it! “You…earlier…the stables...these past weeks...” She stammered pathetically, unsure now if it was right to push her case. “Have you not felt it? I know that you have.”
“Felt what?”
“That I...that I...” Her body was trembling. Tears began to well in her eyes. Her chest was so tight that it pained her and all she wished to do was dismiss what had happened and laugh it off. But she could not. Not anymore. Not with how she felt. “That I love you.”
The words left her lips and seemed to die as they swept through the room. The heat. The tension. The passion that she was feeling. It was smothered like a fire under a blanket and she knew right away that she had been a fool to utter them.
“Florentia...” Hudson sighed and finally turned about. He was not angry. He was not upset. It was so much worse than that. The look he fixed her in was dispassionate and empty of emotion, like he had turned suddenly into a statue, and she wasnot even in the room. “You know what this is. You have known from the beginning.”
“But things change,” she said weakly, with nowhere near the fire she knew she needed. That she felt! “It has changed! This is not a month ago.”
“I wish it was,” he said, words which were like a dagger stabbing through her chest. She reared back, wincing as if in pain. Sadly, he did not seem to notice or care. “If it were...” He sighed again. “It might make this easier.”
“Make it easier?” She looked at him pleadingly. “Please, Hudson, I know that you did not expect this. But...but you must admit, what we have become, what has happened between us?—”
“Is not what you think,” he said. Emotionless. “I acted hastily and without thought, and if that has confused the matter, again, I apologize. But this marriage was only ever for convenience, Florentia, and despite what you might think you feel, that is how it must stay.”
She stumbled back as if he had slapped her. The tears she felt began to well. Her throat pained her. Her chest felt like it had been crushed. Knees trembling, it was all she could do not to collapse into a heap.
“I think...” He considered his words. “I think it would be wise if we spent some time apart.”
“What...no.”
“Just until you are able to accept that this marriage isn’t going to change. And for that matter, nor am I.” With that, without so much as looking at her, Hudson stepped around her and walked from the room.
The door closed behind him and once it did, Florentia collapsed to the ground, tears free falling, noises emitting from her throat that she might have been embarrassed to make if there was anyone to hear them. She had been wrong. Wrong about it all. How he felt. What they might be.
In fact, the only thing that she hadn’t been wrong about, and she knew that now beyond anything else, was how she felt about her husband. And that realization, that truth, hurt like nothing she had felt before.
Hudson stumbled into his bedroom, slamming the door closed behind him. From there, he made for his bed to sit down, collapsing instead as his legs gave out from under him.
He felt like he was going to be sick. He wanted to be sick, as if spewing up his insides might be a way to rid himself of this horrid feeling that had taken him in its cold grasp and refused to let go.What on earth is happening to me?
Oh, it wasn’t as if Hudson was such a fool as not to understand the emotions that besieged him. He was aware ofwhatthey were. What he didn’t understand waywhythey were happening.
My entire life...all I have done...all I have dedicated myself toward...controlling my emotions, and most importantly, not giving a damn what other people thought of me or how they felt themselves!
His marriage to Florentia had changed everything.
He wasn’t surprised that she was falling for him. That was what normal people did, after all. They met, they spent time together, they fell in love. He just had to look at his brother to see proof of that. These past few weeks had been pleasant. He had been kinder and more caring than he’d meant to be, so it wasn’t as shocking as it might have been that Florentia had correctly read their relationship, seeing the truth of it where Hudson had refused to.
The problem wasn’t Florentia and her tempestuous emotions. Hudson was not angry at her. No, no. The reason that Hudson felt so suddenly ill, so rotten to his core, was because he could not understand why he felt the same way for her as she did for him.
I am not meant to fall in love. I am not meant to care about others. I do not want this! What is happening to me?
He should not have given a damn about how Florentia felt. The old Hudson wouldn’t have thought twice about denouncing herproudly because she had let her emotions get the better of her in a wholly predictable manner. Not his fault, so no guilt to be had.
Only, he did feel guilty. Dammit, he felt awful. To think of the look in her eyes, the hurt and pain that she felt, the shock at his rejection of her, the disbelief because she seemed to understand what Hudson still refused to admit. That was why he felt so sick. He had hurt Florentia in ways he’d never intended, and he hated himself for it.
When he’d kissed her just now, the explosion that had ripped his soul wasn’t painful or destroying. Rather, it had lifted him. It had made him feel whole in ways he never had before. Her lips...the feel of her breath...her soft skin...the way she moaned at his touch. It was unlike anything he had ever experienced, a joy he had not known existed, and a moment in time he wished to live again and again and again...
