Connor’s throat closed up to the point of asphyxiation. He couldn’t get a single word out, and his silence only deepened the bitterness darkening Hudson’s expression. Her accusations poisoned the air between them.
“Yeah, I didn’t think so,” she muttered.
She turned her back to him and headed toward the bike. A dismissal. A slap in the face. He stared at the high set of her shoulders, the golden hair streaming down her back, and something inside him snapped. She had no right throwing out accusations. Telling him he didn’t care, he didn’t love. She didn’t know a goddamn thing about him.
“Yes,” he spat out.
“Yes what?” she said without turning around.
“I know what it’s like to love someone.”
He saw her shoulders tense. “I don’t believe you.” She kept walking.
“I loved my wife.”
That got her attention. No, it did more than that. She stumbled midstep, caught her balance, then spun around to face him. Her shocked expression collided with his uneasy one.
“You’re married?”
“I was.” Pain lodged in his rib cage. “She’s dead now.”
Son of a bitch. He wished he’d never opened his mouth. He’d wanted to knock Hudson off her high horse, teach her that she had no business making judgments about him, but now her features had softened and her eyes flickered with sympathy, and he couldn’t have felt more exposed than if he’d sliced his chest open and put his insides on display.
He gritted his teeth. “Can we fucking go home now?”
“No.”
Shit. He knew that look. It was the one that stubbornly said, We’re not going anywhere until I get my way.
“What happened to your wife?”
“I just told you. She’s dead.”
Hudson bridged the distance between them and caught his chin in her hands, tugging it downward so he had no choice but to look at her. “How did she die?”
“How the fuck do you think she died?” He let out a ragged breath. “Dominik killed her.”
Hudson’s breath hitched. She looked stricken, but also confused, which puzzled him. What was there to be confused about? Enforcers killed outlaws. End of story.
“You… saw him kill her?”
Connor gave a terse shake of the head. “I didn’t see him pull the trigger, but I watched him walk away from the scene.” His tone held a bite of sarcasm. “I put two and two together when I found the bodies.”
“You weren’t there when your camp was attacked?”
The question sliced into his heart like a cold blade, because he should have been there. He never should’ve left Maggie alone.
“I was out hunting. I was the only one who knew how. The people Maggie insisted on taking in…” He ignored the resentment climbing up his spine. “They were… they were weak, okay? Women who’d always had men to take care of them, kids who’d lost their parents to disease. Maggie and her sisters were bleeding hearts, all three of them. They adopted anyone we crossed paths with.” He couldn’t stop an irritated curse. “There were twelve of us, and I was the only one who knew how to hunt.”
Hudson hesitated for a beat, then laced her fingers through his. He let her, because he suddenly wasn’t feeling too steady on his legs, like he might keel over if he didn’t have something to hold on to.
“We’d heard rumors that Enforcers were sweeping the area,” he admitted. “I wanted to abandon camp, but Maggie was adamant about staying. She was trying to make a home for us.”
Hudson picked up on the bitter note in his voice. “There’s nothing wrong with wanting a safe place to call home,” she said softly.
He released a shaky breath. “No, but I shouldn’t have let her convince me to stay. I knew in my gut it was the wrong move, but everyone was tired of traveling, and we had a solid camp set up. A well, an orchard, a forest in our backyard with plenty of game. That’s where I was when the Enforcers came. I was tracking a deer in the forest. I’d left this kid Dan in charge – he was only seventeen, but other than me, he was the only one who was proficient with a gun.” He swallowed. “I tried to teach Maggie how to shoot, but she resisted. She said that even if she knew how to, she would never be able to take a life, animal or human.”
The memory chipped away at another piece of his heart. Maggie’s compassion was one of the reasons he’d fallen in love with her. That and the eternal optimism she’d possessed. He hadn’t realized until later that it wasn’t optimism – it was na?veté. She’d believed that deep down everyone was good, that a gentle touch could accomplish so much more than a hard one. She’d tried to mold Connor into thinking that way too, but it had been like asking a wild animal to suppress its violent instincts. He wasn’t gentle. He wasn’t an optimist. He was a ruthless, cynical bastard who did whatever it took to survive.