Fake Love (For Now) by Penny Wylder (great novels .txt) 📗

fit him perfectly and make me wonder how delicious he looks walking away.

As he brushes past me, I realize that I didn’t turn on any lights other than the fireplace. The whole atmosphere is much more romantic than I intended. I’m not exactly mad about it. But I wonder what he’s thinking right now.

Hudson has a bottle of whiskey and two glasses that he puts on the coffee table. “Sorry,” he says, that rich as chocolate voice brushing across my skin. “This was all I had.”

“That’s okay.” I clear my throat, trying to make my voice less breathy. “I like whiskey just fine.”

He chuckles. “Woman after my own heart.”

I curl into the corner of the couch, somehow comfortable enough to do that, and he pours us each a glass. The warmth of the whiskey is comforting. He pours himself one too, leaning back on the couch and slinging his arm over the back of it like he was born to be there.

Silence.

It’s both awkward and not. I feel like I should say something, but at the same time the quiet with the crackling fire is nice. We both sip our whiskey.

“So you pretended that you were having a great time here?” He asks softly.

“I did.”

“Is it everything you hoped for, now that you’re really here?”

I smile. “I was thinking while I was waiting that this would really be the best place to get away for a while. When I’m not here with my parents, of course.”

“Well, maybe you’ll be able to take the time to come back.”

“Maybe.” Another sip. “Though I really am sorry about them. I had no idea that they would end up…like that.”

“Don’t worry,” he says. “They’re definitely not the worst that we’ve had. Though I have to say that when you showed up with them yesterday, I was surprised. Doesn’t seem like your crowd.”

“It’s not really.” I hesitate. I already told him the truth once earlier. Should I tell him again? Hudson—basically a stranger—didn’t sign up to hear all of my drama when he asked me to have a drink with him. But the way that he’s looking at me right now makes my tongue loosen a bit. Though that could be the alcohol, too.

Fuck it. I do work too hard. And I don’t have anyone to talk to about it besides my parents, and if I did talk to them about it, I would only get scolded for keeping things from them. But they were also so disgustingly supportive of me in every aspect that I can’t vent to them. I can’t bitch or let anything out. Not really.

Hudson raises one eyebrow, questioning my hesitation.

“You don’t want to hear about that,” I say softly.

“Why not?”

I laugh quietly. “Why would you want to listen to a stranger’s problems?”

My glass is empty. Hudson leans forward and pours me a glass. “I’ll make a deal with you.”

“Oh?” I ask. “And what is that?”

“I will trade you. A problem for a problem. You tell me one of yours, I’ll tell you one of mine, and we’ll go back and forth until we can’t think of any more problems or we’re too drunk to talk.”

“Why would you do that?”

Hudson shrugs. “Everyone needs someone to listen to them. I’m not an exception to that rule.” He grins at me. “So, are you in?”

4

Hudson

I cannot stop looking at this woman in front of me. The firelight is painting her like a fucking masterpiece, catching the reds in her hair and making her practically glow. There’s not a time in my recent memory that I can remember being this captivated by anyone. Everything about her is intriguing. From the way she’s curled into the corner of the couch to the way that she’s clinging to that glass of whiskey like it’s a lifeline.

She believes what she’s saying—that I wouldn’t be interested in what she has to say or listening to her at all.

Nothing could be further from the truth. I want to dig into who she is and find out what it is that’s drawing me like a moth to a flame. I’ll listen to anything that she has to say purely for the chance to hear her talk. Erin’s voice is musical and lovely.

“Okay,” she finally nods after thinking about my offer for a bit. “A problem for a problem.”

“So tell me why you’re really here then?”

She sighs. “I’m here because my parents thought it would be good for me. They worried that I would just sit on the couch all weekend and watch Netflix, and they’re not wrong. Though before doing this,” she gestures to the two of us, the drinks, and the fire, “I was seriously regretting the decision to come.”

“Glad I could make it more bearable,” I say with a smile.

“You’re the only part that’s been bearable,” Erin says quietly, though she doesn’t meet my eyes when she says it.

I take a drink of whiskey and focus hard on not getting hard. “Okay, my first problem. I don’t know where I fit in at Blue Mountain anymore. I love it here, but things have changed a lot since my best friends—the other owners—have both fallen in love and are about to get married. Not that I’m not happy for them…” I trail off.

“But things are different.”

“They are,” I say. “Different isn’t always bad. It’s just hard to get used to.”

Erin takes a sharp sip of her whiskey and turns more fully to face me with her legs crossed. “The reason I’m working at the clinic, and my parents think that I’m working too hard, is that I applied to veterinary school and…I didn’t get in. There wasn’t any alternate plan in my mind than getting in. And now I feel so fucking lost. I thought I’d worked hard enough, and I didn’t. Now I need all the extra experience I can get so that when I apply again, I can actually get accepted.”

All the words rush out of her like she just burst a bubble. She’s breathing a