I did my best to silence them.
“She’s fine.” My head nodded up and down while I rubbed Romeo’s head and my eyes filled with moisture. “Right? She has to be fine.”
Knowing that tears weren’t going to help the situation, and not wanting to put any bad juju into the world, I decided to go against every instinct I had and focus on the one and only thing that actually did have the power to distract me from this.
Hudson Reed.
It’d been nine days since our Thursday afternoon lip-lock at the ranch and unnervingly intimate conversation in his SUV that evening. I’d spent all last weekend fantasizing and dreaming about what it was going to be like when I showed up to the ranch on Monday.
Would we work side by side?
Would we have lunch together?
Would we share longing looks?
Would we talk about the kiss?
Would we kiss about the talk?
In a perfect world the answers to those questions would be; Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Unfortunately Destiny’s Child answered those questions best with their 1998 smash hit: No. No. No. No. No.
Hudson had spent the entire week doing a great impression of a cereal box on the top shelf of the kitchen counter. If I got on my tippy toes I could feel my fingertips grazing him, metaphorically, but I just couldn’t quite grasp him. He was just out of reach. He was no longer ghosting me, but it wasn’t like he was actually spending any time with me, either. If I was working outside, he was working inside. And vice versa. He was friendly, but distant. Always around but not really there.
All week I kept thinking he would say something. Anything. He didn’t. By the time I drove away from the ranch on Thursday I was starting to think that I may have just imagined the kiss, the talk, the chemistry that felt like it’d been in a pot for years, simmering beneath the lid and now the burner had been flipped to high and it was boiling over.
Monday morning I’d arrived to find that I was back on landscaping duty, but this time the task was much more reasonable and I actually had a lot of fun working on it. I planted an organic garden that the kids were going to take care of in order for them to learn about sustainable living. Hudson had stopped by a few times, told me I was doing a good job, even smiled, but then he’d go right back to work inside the house.
Then on Wednesday and Thursday I’d worked inside the main house and he’d been out repairing my shoddy irrigation installation. The days weren’t a total loss though because I’d gotten to spy on him through the windows as he worked shirtless. Plus I’d been tasked with painting, which I loved. Painting had always been very therapeutic for me. It represented a new start. A clean slate.
Shifting the leg that was falling asleep under the weight of my companion’s head, I sighed. “That’s what I want for my birthday, Romeo. A clean slate.”
Living in a small town those were hard to come by. Not that I was complaining, I loved Wishing Well, But, I was Harmony Briggs. Only daughter to Dolly and Walker Briggs. Youngest of nine. People thought they knew me.
In reality, the circle of people that actually knew me was a small one. The card carrying members being Destiny, Cara and my parents. Oh, and Romeo.
“You know me, huh, handsome boy?” I scratched behind his ear.
He opened one eye and I took that as agreement.
“And Hud sees me,” I whispered, mainly because I was still in disbelief.
When he’d said those words to me, instinctually I’d recognized them as the truth. Not because he’d proven his claim by backing up his assessment that I was a romantic with such personal examples. The thing I responded to was the look in his eyes.
All my life I hadn’t really felt seen. Not the way he saw me. When he looked at me it was like I saw myself, the real me reflected in his eyes. It scared the shit out of me.
It had been the moment I’d been waiting for my entire life, and I just wasn’t prepared for it. I didn’t know whether to cry, kiss him, or run. I chose run.
The second I made it into the house, I’d regretted my decision. I should’ve stayed. I should’ve told him what I saw when he looked at me. I should’ve let him take the lead when he’d told me that we needed to talk. I’d let my fear, pride, and control issues drive me to avoid something real. I knew better. When you do that, even the most important moment just…
“Passes you by,” voices from the television eerily finished my thoughts.
I sniffed as my eyes flicked to the screen just in time to see Julia and Dermot Mulroney emerging from under a bridge. I watched as Julia closed her eyes against the realization it was exactly what had happened. The moment had passed her by.