Copyright © 2026 Nuno R.F.C.R. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher or author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles, reviews, and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by applicable copyright law.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, organizations, events, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons (living or dead), actual events, or real locales is entirely coincidental.
"I Know You're In There"
The restaurant moved like a living thing, snapping at its own tail, and lunch rush had bled into late afternoon without anyone noticing.
Hudson moved through it. He wove between tables with trays balanced on one hand, not because he wasn't tired, but because being busy kept him from thinking.
If he stopped, even for a second, his mind did what minds did when they weren't being held down by work: it wandered straight toward a house on a hill and a man with chestnut eyes.
So Hudson didn't stop.
He refilled water glasses. He took orders. He laughed at jokes that weren't funny. He apologized for the kitchen being behind, as if the kitchen's chaos was somehow his moral failing.
And Elliot seemed to have developed a new hobby over the past two weeks: hovering within a five-foot radius of Hudson at all times, as if Hudson was a fire hazard and Elliot's job was to make sure he didn't combust.
"Table seven's waving," Elliot muttered, sliding in behind Hudson as he carried a tray. His breath smelled like black coffee and resentment.
Hudson kept his smile on, eyes forward. "Maybe they're waving at you."
Elliot's mouth tightened.
Hudson delivered plates to table seven and stepped back just in time to avoid a woman's flailing arm as she gestured dramatically at her friend. He nodded, smiled, and backed away.
Elliot was there when he turned. "Table twelve's waiting on their check," he said.
Hudson didn't miss the way Elliot said 'waiting,' as if it were Hudson's personal failing. "I'll get it."
Elliot leaned in closer, voice low enough that it could masquerade as guidance while still being venomous. "You keep forgetting things lately."
Hudson's smile remained in place, but his jaw clenched. "I'm juggling six tables."
Elliot's eyes flicked over Hudson's face, searching for fatigue, for weakness, for anything he could press. "You used to juggle twelve," he said softly.
There it was again.
That insinuation.
That night.
The rumor that refused to die.
Elliot had been squeezing it like a stress ball for days, taking it out whenever he felt like reminding Hudson who had power here.
Hudson's hands steadied the tray in his grip. "Anything else?"
Elliot's smile was thin. "Just do your fucking job."
Hudson walked away before he said something that would get him fired. He slipped behind the swinging kitchen door and inhaled the chaos back there. It was loud enough to drown out thoughts. Orders were being barked. A cook yelled "behind!" as Hudson pivoted, barely missing a collision.
Hudson kept moving until he found a sliver of quiet: the walk-in fridge door, fogged glass, handle cold and inviting.
He yanked it open and stepped inside.
The temperature hit him like a slap, stealing the heat from his skin. Hudson didn't go far. He slid along the wall and crouched behind a stack of produce crates, tucking himself into the shadowed corner like a kid hiding during hide-and-seek. His back pressed against the cold paneling. Chest rising and falling way too fast. For a second, he just stayed there, eyes closed, forehead tipped forward, trying to let the cold numb the ache.
It didn't.
So he did the thing he told himself he wouldn't do.
He took his phone out.
His thumb moved before his mind could stop it, opening the message thread that had become both comfort and poison. Still there on Liam's phone, he'd bet. Still there at Hudson's.
Two weeks since the last message. Two weeks since he'd walked out of that house and told himself he was doing the right thing. Two weeks of silence that had started as discipline and slowly turned into despair.
Hudson scrolled.
Their words were ordinary on the surface, dumb jokes, late-night check-ins, teasing about music, ridiculous little observations. But underneath it, the thread pulsed with a warmth Hudson hadn't been ready to lose. Not yet. Hudson's mouth twitched into a smile he couldn't control.
There.
A voice note Hudson had sent, his own voice, laughing. He didn't play it. He didn't trust himself.
His eyes burned anyway.
He swiped at them angrily. "Fuck," he whispered to himself. "Fuck, fuck, fuck..."
But the tears came. He brushed them away with the heel of his hand, furious at his own body for betraying him. He stared at the messages again, as if repetition could change the outcome. As if reading 'I wanted to' enough times could make it true in the present.
The fridge door slammed open.
Hudson jerked, wiping his face quickly, blinking hard. Marisol stormed in, expression perpetually unimpressed by life. She didn't even glance at Hudson's hiding spot at first. She went straight for a shelf and yanked out a container. Then she turned. She saw Hudson crouched behind the crates, eyes glassy, phone in his hand, and stared at him for exactly one second.
Then she said, flat as a cutting board, "Table twelve is asking where their check is. Again."
Hudson opened his mouth.
Marisol cut him off, already moving. "And don't do that thing where you pretend you didn't hear me because you're having an emotional breakdown in the fridge."
Hudson blinked. "I'm not..."
Marisol lifted the container like evidence. "You are literally crying next to the arugula."
Hudson's face burned. He scrubbed his cheeks. "I'm not crying."
Marisol rolled her eyes. "Okay, sure. You're sweating from the cold. Whatever." She shoved past him, pulling the door open. Before she left, she glanced back, tone unchanged but somehow less cruel for its honesty. "If you're going to fall apart, do it somewhere I don't have to climb over you to get the avocados."
The door swung shut behind her, sealing Hudson back into the cold. He stared at the floor for a beat, swallowing hard, forcing air into his lungs until his chest stopped stuttering. He put the phone away, then stood up slowly, joints stiff from crouching, and squared his shoulders like a man putting armor back on.
He opened the fridge door and stepped out, walking back toward the floor.
Elliot appeared like a bad thought the moment Hudson pushed through the swinging door.
"There you are," Elliot said, too sweet. "Thought you froze to death back there."
Hudson kept his face blank. "What's up?"
Elliot's eyes flicked over him, searching again for weakness. He found only Hudson's forced calm and seemed disappointed.
"There's someone in the cage," Elliot said.
Hudson's stomach dropped. "Someone...?"
"A customer," Elliot clarified, as if Hudson were stupid. "Requesting you."
Hudson's mouth went dry. "Requesting me?"
Elliot's smile widened, and Hudson hated him for it. "A woman," Elliot added with relish.
Hudson felt his body react before his mind could, an instinctive shudder, not fear exactly, more like dread.
Elliot leaned in slightly, voice low, a veiled threat wrapped in polite management. "Be charming," he murmured. "Don't make this weird. The last thing you need is another...incident."
Hudson's hands tightened at his sides.
Elliot straightened, satisfied, and walked away.
Hudson stood still for a moment, fighting the urge to turn around and run, back into the fridge, out the back door, out of his life.
But instead, he took a deep breath.
He forced his shoulders back.
He put on a smile.
Then he walked toward the cage.
He reached it with the smile already welded onto his face. It was his work-smile, bright enough to soothe, empty enough to protect him. The kind that made strangers feel seen while letting Hudson remain safely behind glass.
He rounded the corner and saw her.
Marina sat alone. Sunglasses on. Of course. Coat draped over the bench beside her, a designer bag resting upright with its straps arranged precisely. Her posture was impeccable, spine straight, legs crossed, chin lifted as if the room had personally offended her by existing.
Hudson stopped for half a beat. Heat rushed to his face. The memory of her voice by the pool hit him like a cold hand.
Then his training took over.
He stepped forward, shoulders back. "Hi. Welcome in. Can I get you started with something to drink?"
Marina didn't look up right away. She let the awkwardness stretch, a small cruelty disguised as thoughtfulness. Then, finally, she lifted her head and angled her sunglasses just enough that Hudson could see her eyes, sharp, unblinking, already bored.
"This place," she said slowly, glancing around as if she were surveying a cheap motel, "could use some...improvement."
Hudson's smile held. "We're always working on it."
Marina hummed, skeptical. She picked up the menu with two fingers like it might stain her. "The typography is atrocious," she said. "And the lighting is doing no favors."
Hudson nodded politely. "I'll pass that along."
Marina's mouth twitched, not quite a smile. "Please don't."
Hudson remained standing, pen poised over his notepad. "Still or sparkling?"
Marina looked at him for a moment longer than necessary. "Neither."
Hudson blinked once. "We also have..."
"Look...Hudson." Marina said his name gently, like she was petting something she planned to kill.
Hudson's pen stilled.
There it was.
The rupture.
The confirmation that this wasn't about service. That Elliot hadn't sent him here for tips.
Hudson kept his expression neutral. "Yes."
Marina placed the menu down, perfectly aligned with the edge of the table. Her manicured fingers rested lightly on top of it, as if pinning something in place.
Marina tilted her head. "You know who I am."
"I do," Hudson replied carefully.
"Good," she said, and her tone changed, still calm, but sharpened now. "Then you also know why I'm here." Hudson didn't answer. Marina let out a small, almost appreciative breath. "Very polite," she murmured.
Hudson kept his gaze on her, steady. "Can I get you anything?"
Marina's eyes narrowed, amused by the attempt. "Yes," she said softly. "I'd like you to stop pretending you don't understand what's happening."
Hudson's throat tightened.
Marina leaned back slightly and crossed her legs again. She glanced toward the front windows, as if expecting to see something. "Seems you have a fan," she said.
Hudson's jaw flexed. "I don't know what you mean."
Marina smiled. Not warmly. More like a blade catching light. "Yes, you do," she said. "Liam has been driving by here every night for the past week."
Hudson's chest tightened so sharply it almost hurt. His instincts screamed to deny, to feign confusion, to become invisible again.
Marina's gaze stayed fixed on him. "He thinks he's being subtle."
Hudson swallowed. "I don't know..."
Marina lifted a hand, silencing him without touching him. "Don't," she said. Then she paused, and something surprising flickered through her expression, not kindness, but a brief, cold respect. "It's almost charming," she added, as if the thought annoyed her. "That you've managed to make him act like a human being."
Hudson's heart hammered. He kept his face blank.
Marina leaned forward slightly. "Look," she said quietly, "you have absolutely no idea what you've wandered into."
Hudson's voice came out soft, controlled. "I'm not wandering into anything."
Marina's smile widened. "A relationship," Marina cut in smoothly, "with Liam...is not a possibility."
The word possibility made it sound like she was discussing weather forecasts, not two people.
Hudson's eyes held hers. "That's not your decision."
Marina laughed once, the sound quiet and terrifyingly casual. "It is," she replied. "Because Liam's life is a machine. His image is a product. His contracts are..." she waved a hand vaguely, "...fragile ecosystems held together by expectations."
Hudson's jaw tightened. "And his feelings?"
Marina stared at him as if he'd said something naïve and vulgar. "Feelings are a luxury," she said. "One that disappears when careers implode."
Hudson felt heat climb his neck. "So you came here to...what? Scare me?"
Marina's expression didn't change, but her voice hardened. "I came here to end this."
Hudson's smile finally slipped. "End what?"
Marina's gaze flicked over him from head to toe as if he were lint on a coat. "This fantasy," she said. "This little daydream you've let him have."
Hudson's hands clenched at his sides, out of sight beneath the apron.
Marina continued, voice calm and lethal. "You're a complication. One I can remove." Hudson's eyes narrowed. Marina's smile returned, bright and false. "Easily."
She leaned in.
"I can have you fired," Marina said softly. "Today, if I want. I can also make sure you don't get hired anywhere else in this city. I can make your life here so uncomfortable you'll do what you should've done the moment you stepped off that bus from..." she paused, savoring it, "...Arizona."
Hudson's stomach dropped. His skin went cold.
Marina watched the reaction like a scientist observing a specimen. "You'll go back," she continued, voice smooth, "to wherever you crawled out from. Somewhere dusty. Somewhere you belong."
Hudson forced a breath through his nose. "You don't know anything about me."
Marina's eyes gleamed.
She reached for her bag.
The leather sighed as she opened it, theatrically calm. She pulled out a slim folder and set it on the table like a check.
Hudson stared at it.
Marina flipped it open. There were pages inside. Printed. Highlighted. Tabs.
Hudson felt something sour rise in his throat. The violation of it hit first. Someone had gone digging through his life like it was public property.
Marina didn't rush. She took her time, eyes scanning, then lifting to meet Hudson's. "Hudson Smith..." she began.
Hudson hated hearing his full name. Especially coming from her mouth.
Marina's voice remained even, almost bored. "Born in Winkelman. Father, Raymond, worked construction when he could keep a job." She glanced up. "Which, according to your school records, wasn't often."
Hudson's fingers tightened until his nails bit his palm.
Marina continued, flipping a page. "Mother, Celia. Waitressed. Talent runs in the family, I guess. Also tried to sell essential oils online for a while." A faint smirk. "Very ambitious."
Hudson didn't react. He wouldn't give her the satisfaction.
Marina's tone sharpened subtly. "Multiple addresses. Multiple schools. Eventually settled in a small town outside Phoenix. A few...incident reports." She tapped a highlighted line with her nail. Marina flipped another page. "A short stint in community college. Dropped out." She looked at him like she was taking his measure. "Left home at eighteen. No contact with your parents for years."
Hudson's jaw flexed. His stomach roiled.
Marina's voice grew almost conversational, the cruelty disguised as curiosity. "Tell me...did you run from them? Or did you run from what happened there?"
Hudson's breath hitched, just once.
Marina caught it, her smile sharpening. She leaned forward, lowering her voice. "I know trauma when I see it," she said softly. "And I know what boys like you do when you find someone who makes you feel safe. You cling."
Hudson's hands were shaking now, slightly, beneath the apron.
Marina's gaze remained fixed on him. "So here's what you're going to do," she said. "You're going to block his number. You're going to stop being available. You're going to disappear quietly from his life. And you're going to do it now...because if you don't, I will do it for you. And I promise you, I'll be far less gentle."
At first, Hudson stayed still, waiter posture, polite face, the reflex to endure.
But something began to shift inside him. The kind of resolve that came from having already survived worse than a woman with a folder and a threat.
His voice, when it came, was quiet. "Are you done?"
Marina blinked, surprised by the calm.
Then Hudson stepped forward.
His hands stayed by his sides, relaxed. His posture was polite, almost gentle, like he was still a waiter and she was still a customer.
But his eyes?
His eyes didn't flinch.
"I'm going to say this once," Hudson began softly, the words calm as a hand on a fevered forehead.
Marina's mouth twitched, amused, as if waiting for him to stumble.
Hudson didn't.
He glanced down at the file on the table, then back at her face, and something in his expression shifted. Something like clarity.
"You've been with him since he was a kid," Hudson said. "That's what you said. You raised him into stardom."
Marina's eyes narrowed. She didn't correct him.
Hudson nodded faintly, as if confirming something for himself. "And I believe you. I think you did it. I think you worked hard. I think you probably did things no one else would've done for him."
He paused. His tone stayed steady.
"But you didn't raise a person," Hudson continued. "You raised a product."
There was the slightest change in Marina's posture, barely perceptible. Her shoulders tightened by a fraction, like a muscle reacting before the mind could.
Hudson noticed. He didn't pounce on it. He kept speaking, gentle and firm, explaining something inevitable.
"You talk about him like he belongs to the sky," Hudson said quietly. "Like he's something you can point at, schedule, sell. Like his body is a billboard and his loneliness is just...bad branding."
Marina's smile held, but the edges stiffened.
Hudson's gaze didn't waver. "You don't even hear how you sound," he added softly. "You say you've protected him, but everything you call protection sounds like control."
A slow, quiet beat passed. And in that beat, the restaurant noise seemed to fade. The cage felt sealed from the rest of the room. Hudson continued, voice still calm, but something sharper lived underneath now, veiled disgust, restrained and clean.
"You come in here, and you threaten me with my job," he said. "With my life." He let out a small breath, not quite a laugh. "But you know what's funny to me?"
Marina's chin lifted a touch. She waited.
Hudson tilted his head. "Is that you actually think that scares me."
His eyes flicked to the folder. "You dug up my past, hoping that, what? You could rattle me with some addresses, school notes...police reports?"
He leaned in slightly, not looming, just close enough that his words landed with their actual weight.
"I'm a nobody," Hudson said, and his mouth softened briefly, the truth of it almost tender. "You're right. I don't have a publicist. I don't have a team. I don't have anything to lose that can't be replaced."
Then his expression steadied again, turquoise eyes bright and unwavering.
"But I'm a nobody who has seen the worst in people," Hudson continued. "The kind of worst you can't fix with a contract or a fucking headline." He paused. "And I'm telling you right now...you don't scare me."
For the first time, Marina's poise shifted.
Not much.
Just the smallest dent.
A flicker of something, irritation, surprise, maybe even uncertainty, passed behind her eyes before she smoothed it away.
She didn't respond. She watched him, as if she'd never seen a person talk to her like this without begging.
Hudson exhaled slowly.
His gaze softened. "I feel sorry for him," Hudson said quietly. Marina's eyes narrowed. "Because he actually thinks he owes you."
Marina's jaw shifted, tightening slightly.
But Hudson just kept going, gentle as a scalpel. "And maybe he does owe you. I'm not here to argue what you did for him when he was twelve and sitting alone somewhere." Hudson's eyes flicked briefly, as if he could see that boy in the cafeteria without trying. "But whatever he owes you? It doesn't include his heart."
Marina's eyes remained fixed on Hudson's face. Her expression didn't change, but something in her attention did, sharpened, drawn in despite herself.
Hudson's lips parted.
He hesitated.
And then, as if saying it aloud finally made it real enough to hurt properly, Hudson finally admitted, "I love him."
His voice didn't shake.
His eyes did.
He looked away for half a second, just a blink, a breath, then looked back at Marina with the steadiness of someone who'd made a decision that would break him.
"But I'm not gonna fight you on this," Hudson continued quietly, "So... I'm stepping aside."
Marina's gaze flickered.
Hudson went on, words measured, controlled. "I won't seek him out. I won't contact him. I won't go to the press. I won't be the reason his life gets turned into a circus again." His jaw clenched. "If you want me to sign something, I will." He gestured toward the file with a small, resigned motion. "An NDA. Whatever. You can have it."
Marina didn't speak.
She watched him, transfixed in an almost unsettling way, like she was seeing a species she didn't believe existed. Then her eyes narrowed slightly, as if she'd expected bargaining. For a moment, Marina's face betrayed her. Just a flicker of something foreign to her. Admiration, perhaps?
Then she finally spoke, smooth again, but quieter than before. "I'll have the lawyers draft something."
Hudson nodded once. "Fine."
Marina reached into her bag, pulled out a small card case, and slid a business card.
"We could also offer you some compensation," she added, almost casually. "You know, for your...cooperation."
Hudson didn't even look at the card. "No."
Marina's mouth twitched, annoyance, then, oddly, respect. She studied him for another beat. Then she leaned back, gathered the file with neat precision, and stood.
"You made a wise decision," she said, voice cool. "For what it's worth."
Hudson's eyes stayed steady. "For what it's worth," he echoed quietly, but the phrase sounded different on his tongue, like a lament.
Marina adjusted her bag on her shoulder. She looked at Hudson once more, then she turned and walked out of the cage without another word, heels stabbing the floor as she crossed the restaurant.
Hudson stayed rooted near the cage entrance, watching her go with his apron strings tight around his waist and his heart somewhere else entirely.
Seconds later, his phone buzzed in his pocket.
Once.
Then again.
Hudson's breath caught. For a half-second, his mind betrayed him. Could it be? A flare of stupid hope that rose so fast it almost hurt. He glanced down.
Mateo.
He swallowed, shoved the hope down like it had burned his tongue, and slipped away toward the back hallway, toward the bathroom, before anyone could see the shift in his face.
Hudson locked himself into the farthest stall, leaned his forehead against the partition for one beat, then answered.
"Hey," he said, voice carefully neutral.
Mateo's voice blasted through the speaker like a parade. Hudson didn't hear the words at first so much as the energy, bright, nosy, impossible to ignore.
Hudson sighed. "Mateo, I'm at work."
"And you're alive," Mateo said, like that was the point. "Praise be. I thought you'd died and reincarnated as a haunted salt shaker."
Hudson huffed a laugh despite himself. "What do you want?"
"What I want," Mateo replied, "is for you to stop marinating in whatever sad little soup you've been making out of your feelings."
Hudson closed his eyes. "I'm not..."
"Yes, you are," Mateo cut in cheerfully. "Anyway. New club opening tonight. Like...actually new. It's supposed to be the hottest fucking place in town. Not one of those that claims it's new but still has sticky floors and the same DJ since 2014."
Hudson stared at the stall door. "I'm really not in the mood."
Mateo made a noise of exaggerated offense. "No. Absolutely not. I'm not having it."
Hudson rubbed his eyes, already tired. "Mateo."
"Hudson," Mateo mimicked in a perfect impression, voice suddenly deep and dramatic. "'I'm not in the mood.' Babe, listen. The mood is not a bus you have to wait for. The mood is a choice."
"The mood is also me being exhausted," Hudson said.
Mateo barreled on, relentless. "It's opening night. There's gonna be a photographer wall and free drinks and..."
"I don't drink," Hudson said.
"Yes, you do, when you're sad," Mateo replied instantly. "It's your whole thing. You're like a Victorian widow but in a tight T-shirt."
Hudson's mouth twitched. "I'm not going."
Mateo suddenly lowered his voice to a conspiratorial, sincere tone. "Okay. Then don't go for you. Go for me."
Hudson hesitated.
Mateo pounced. "Because I need you there," Mateo said. "And because I already told my friends you're coming, and I've built you up as this mysterious hot Arizona hot dude who's emotionally unavailable but secretly a cinnamon roll."
Hudson blinked. "What the fuck..."
Mateo giggled. "Also, one of them has a cousin who works in film. Not saying anything. Just saying...you might enjoy a normal conversation that doesn't involve menus or existential despair."
Hudson swallowed, throat tightening at the word film. He hated how everything circled back to it.
Mateo sensed the hesitation immediately and softened, just a fraction. "Babe," he said, less joking now, "you can show up and be quiet. You can show up and leave early. You can show up and...stand near me like a lamp. I don't care. I don't want you alone tonight."
Hudson stared at the stall door, at the little metal latch, at the graffiti someone had scratched into it, 'call me', as if the universe had a sense of humor.
"I'm...not good company," Hudson murmured.
Mateo scoffed. "You're excellent company. You're just in pain." Then, lighter again: "And we're not letting pain win. Not on a Thursday."
Hudson let out a slow breath. The idea of music, lights, and strangers felt achingly unbearable. But the idea of going home and sitting in silence, with Liam's name still burning in his phone thread, felt worse.
"Fine," Hudson said.
Mateo's triumphant squeal made Hudson pull the phone away from his ear. "YES. Okay. Okay. Wear something slutty but emotionally responsible."
Hudson snorted. "Those two things don't go together."
"They absolutely do," Mateo said. "Text me when you're off. We're picking you up. No excuses."
Hudson shook his head, smiling despite the ache. "Okay."
"Okay," Mateo echoed, satisfied. "Now go be a functioning adult."
"Right," Hudson said softly, and ended the call.
He stayed in the stall for a beat longer, wiped at the corners of his eyes with the back of his hand, cleared his throat, and forced his shoulders back into place like he was resetting his body. Then he unlocked the stall, washed his hands, and stared at himself in the mirror.
Then, Hudson took a breath, practiced his smile, just enough, and went back out.
He was halfway to table twelve with a refill pitcher when Elliot appeared out of nowhere, sniffing the air like a bloodhound.
"What was that?" Elliot asked, eyes narrowed. "Who was she?"
Hudson blinked innocently. "A customer."
Elliot scoffed. "Don't play dumb. Her. Sunglasses. Expensive handbag. Walking around like she owned the place."
Hudson smiled brightly. "Oh. Yeah."
Elliot leaned in, breath coffee-bitter. "What did she want?"
Hudson kept his voice light, almost cheerful. "Nothing on the menu, apparently."
Elliot frowned. "What?"
Hudson shrugged, deadpan. "Didn't like anything. Called it...too ambitious." He offered Elliot a sweet smile that didn't reach his eyes. "So sad."
Elliot stared at him, suspicious.
Hudson stepped around him smoothly. "Anyway, table twelve's check."
Elliot turned as Hudson walked away. "Hudson!"
Hudson didn't stop. He lifted a hand in a lazy wave over his shoulder like he was dismissing a mosquito.
And he kept working, smiling, refilling, moving, while inside, something quiet and determined settled into place.
*
The line outside the club was a social experiment.
On one side, theirs, there was the queue for unknowns: a long, serpentine ribbon of bodies, shivering under the Los Angeles night as if the cold was an insult. People checked their phones, checked their faces in their front cameras, and checked who was watching. A few laughed too loudly on purpose. A few argued softly with their own reflection. Somewhere behind Hudson, someone practiced a smile. Depressing.
On the other side, near the driveway, the world had been split open.
A red carpet ran along the entrance like an artery. Velvet ropes held back nothing, because nothing needed to be held back. Cameras lined the curb in a glittering pack, flashes popping like tiny lightning strikes. Every few minutes, a limo glided in, door opening like a portal, and a famous person stepped out to pose.
No waiting.
No wristbands.
No pleading with a bouncer.
Just access.
Mateo stood with Hudson and four other gay guys in the line reserved for mortals. His shirt was sheer, brave, and spiteful. His hair was perfect. His expression was a masterpiece of resentment. He watched a limo pull in and scoffed so loud it felt like part of the soundtrack.
"Oh my God," Mateo said, loud enough for at least six strangers to hear. "Do you see this? Do you see how the red carpet people just...glide?"
One of the guys behind him, Jasper, tall, pretty, with the kind of stubble that looked curated, laughed. “Teo, c'mon.”
"I'm serious," Mateo continued, gesturing dramatically at the driveway. "We're over here like peasants waiting for bread, and they're over there arriving like they invented penicillin."
Another guy, Nico, compact and muscular, wearing a leather harness under his blazer, snorted. "They probably did."
Mateo gasped, clutching his chest. "Don't say that. I will fucking spiral."
Hudson stood slightly behind them, hands in his jacket pockets, shoulders hunched. He tried to smile at Mateo's theatrics, and it worked for half a second, until the flashes by the carpet lit up the street like paparazzi fireworks, and something in his chest tightened.
Mateo leaned toward Hudson, still talking, still performing outrage. "Do you think they have to show ID?"
Hudson blinked. "No."
Mateo nodded solemnly. "Exactly."
Jasper laughed again. "You'd be famous if you stopped threatening to bite people."
Mateo smiled sweetly. "I don't threaten. I promise."
The group cackled.
Hudson's laughter came late, faint, like it had to travel through miles of exhaustion to reach his throat. He was present, technically. He was standing there, nodding, making eye contact at the right times. But his mind kept slipping.
Every time a limo arrived, Hudson's stomach did the stupid little flip it had learned to do. Every time a flash went off, his body remembered being in a house with glass walls and a gate that only opened for certain people.
He tried to focus on the group.
Theo stood closest to him. Theo, as in the "cousin," the one Mateo had described as film-adjacent, like it was a medical condition. Theo was cute in a soft way: sandy hair, kind eyes, slightly anxious energy. He wore a blazer over a graphic tee featuring an obscure director's face. He had that eager glow of someone who genuinely loved talking about what he loved.
And he was talking. A lot.
"So yeah," Theo said, animated, "my cousin's in post on this indie, super small, shot on sixteen-millimeter, like, real texture, you know? It's giving off early Safdie vibes, but with a more European pacing. The director is obsessed with negative space, like silence as a narrative tool."
Hudson nodded carefully. "That's cool."
Theo lit up, encouraged. "Right? And I'm more into, like, the process. Like how they build performances. I'm a huge...okay, don't judge me, huge Fincher guy."
Hudson's smile twitched. "No judgment."
Theo leaned in, earnest. "You're into movies too, right? Mateo said you grew up sneaking into theaters."
Hudson nodded. "Yeah. I...watched a lot."
Theo's eyes shone. "What's your thing? Like, what do you love? What makes you feel something?"
Hudson's mouth opened.
The answer that wanted to come out was not Bette Davis. Not All About Eve. Not old classics in a dusty Arizona theater.
It was a man in a pool, floating close enough to make the world disappear.
It was a voice saying, 'Don't go'.
It was a text thread he hadn't opened in days because he was afraid it would destroy him.
Hudson swallowed and reached for the safer truth. "I like...old stuff," he said. "Classic. Character-driven. A little...dramatic."
Theo grinned. "Yes! Okay! Like what? Hitchcock? Kubrick?"
Hudson shook his head faintly. "More...Bette Davis? Old Hollywood?"
Theo blinked. "Oh. Fair. Bette is...iconic."
Hudson nodded, relieved. "Yeah."
Theo continued anyway, eager. "Okay, but modern stuff. Have you watched any of the new A24 things? Or, like, festival circuit stuff? There's this one film, it's, like, a four-hour meditation on grief in rural Latvia..."
Hudson's brain fuzzed.
He kept nodding, kept smiling, kept producing the right reactions at the right time, but Theo's words blurred into a soundscape behind Hudson's thoughts.
Because across the street, another limo rolled up.
Longer.
Larger.
The crowd near the carpet shifted, cameras lifting in unison. The bouncer straightened. People in line craned their necks.
Mateo stopped mid-sentence and squinted toward the driveway. "Oh," he whispered, suddenly reverent in the way only spectacle could make him. "That's a real limo."
Hudson's breath caught.
Theo was still talking until he noticed Hudson's face. "Huh," Theo said, following Hudson's gaze. "Who's that?"
The limo door clicked.
And the world held its breath.
Mateo's voice detonated over the line before Hudson's brain even fully understood what his eyes were seeing.
"NO!" Mateo shrieked, grabbing Hudson's sleeve so hard he nearly tore the fabric. “NO, NO, NO...BITCH, LOOK. LOOK!"
Hudson turned his head.
And time, actual time, did that strange, cruel thing where it slowed down not to be kind, but to make sure you felt everything.
The limo door opened.
Then Liam appeared.
First, a foot in a polished black shoe. Then a long leg, the hem of tailored trousers, the clean line of a suit that looked like it had been explicitly designed to frame a body like his. He rose out of the limo with that impossible, effortless grace Hudson had felt even in private, except now it was weaponized, sharpened for public consumption.
Liam Hart stepped into the night.
He wore a black suit. The fabric drank light rather than reflecting it. A white shirt beneath, collar open just enough to suggest casualness while still screaming money. No tie. None of that nonsense.
His hair, cut and styled in that careful mess that looked as if he'd just run a hand through it, except Hudson knew how many hands had touched it before he stepped out. A strand fell slightly over his forehead anyway, catching a flash and turning pale gold for a second.
His face. God. Exactly as Hudson remembered it and also completely different.
In the restaurant, Liam had been beautiful in a quiet, human way, like the light happened to find him. Here, under flashes, he looked like he'd been built to survive them. Chestnut eyes catching the glare without blinking. Jawline clean and hard. Lips set in that faint, controlled line that always suggested he was holding something back, like the real Liam lived somewhere behind his expression and only emerged in rare moments.
Hudson felt his chest tighten so sharply he almost coughed.
He didn't, though.
He just stared, transfixed, like his body had forgotten it was supposed to move.
A small smile tugged at the corner of Hudson's mouth, uninvited, helpless. Not joy exactly. More like seeing a constellation you'd once traced with your finger and thinking, 'There you are'.
Then it died.
Because someone else stepped out behind Liam.
A young woman.
She emerged from the limo. Sleek, glossy, impossibly put-together. Dark hair, perfect blowout, dress clinging to her like liquid, skin catching flashbulbs as if it loved being photographed. She slipped her hand into Liam's arm, and the crowd responded like they'd been fed.
Mateo made a sound that was half scream, half prayer. "OH MY GOD, NO WAY... THAT'S... THAT'S SIENNA FUCKING VALE!"
The guys around them craned their necks. Someone behind Hudson gasped. Phones lifted like a field of periscopes. Mateo's commentary kept pouring out, loud and gleeful, because Mateo had never met a spectacle he didn't want to narrate.
"Babe," Mateo hissed, eyes huge, gripping Hudson like an anchor, "do you understand? That is Sienna Vale. She was in that vampire show that made everyone bisexual for a summer..."
Hudson didn't answer.
His throat was shut tight at this point. His stomach turned over slowly, like something inside him had been flipped.
He watched the woman angle her face toward the cameras, smile bright and effortless. He watched Liam shift his posture, pulling his shoulders back slightly, becoming Liam Hart.
Hudson's heart cracked. Splintered, quiet, as if it had been waiting for the blow.
Heat rose behind Hudson's eyes, sudden and fierce. Tears boiled up so fast he barely had time to register them. He bit his lip hard, hard enough to feel the sting, trying to keep his face neutral, trying to keep his body from doing anything embarrassing. But his eyes blurred anyway.
Liam posed for the photographers.
It was chaos, flashes, shouting, a hundred voices calling his name like they were entitled to his attention.
"LIAM! OVER HERE!"
"LIAM, LOOK RIGHT!"
"LIAM! SMILE!"
"SIENNA! SIENNA!"
Hudson watched it all from behind the velvet rope with the stunned horror of someone watching a fire that used to be a fireplace in his own living room. This was Liam's world: loud, hungry, bright enough to burn.
Hudson remembered Liam in the showroom, bare-faced, telling him he hated all of this. And yet, even hating it, Liam commanded it.
He didn't cower.
He didn't shrink.
He didn't look trapped.
He gave them angles. He gave them a faint smile, just enough. He offered them a version of himself that was smooth, controlled, untouchable. His chestnut eyes moved across the cameras like he was counting them.
So you can do that, Hudson's mind whispered. You can stand there and look like nothing touches you.
Mateo was still talking, oblivious to Hudson's implosion. "I can't believe she's dating Liam Hart," Mateo said, voice dropping to scandalized awe. "I heard he's got a huge dick. I mean, good for her, but also, respectfully, she looks like she'd bully me in a Sephora."
Jasper laughed. Nico snorted. Theo, poor Theo, looked dizzy with excitement.
Hudson barely heard them.
The woman, Sienna, moved closer to Liam. She slid her arm around his waist and lifted her chin. Liam placed a hand lightly on her back, fingers spread with casual familiarity.
They posed together.
The cameras went feral.
Hudson's mouth went dry. His stomach turned. A cold sweat broke along his spine.
The photo they created together, perfect and glossy, looked like a headline forming in real time.
Hudson swallowed hard, forcing himself to breathe through the ache.
Sienna stepped toward the entrance, smiling at someone, waving before she finally disappeared inside the club.
Liam remained on the carpet a moment longer. He turned slightly, offered the press another angle, lifted a hand in a brief, polite salute.
Hudson watched him do it, the perfect performance of gratitude.
Then Liam's gaze shifted.
He turned.
And right there, through a turbulent sea of almost three hundred people, his eyes found Hudson.
It happened so fast that Hudson almost missed it. He nearly believed it was his imagination. But no. Liam's gaze locked on him.
The world narrowed.
The noise softened at the edges, as if someone had turned the volume down. Hudson's breath stopped. He felt suddenly exposed, standing there in the line for unknowns with his heart in pieces and tears threatening to spill.
That's when Liam's expression changed, just a fraction. The public mask remained, but underneath it, a faint softness, something private breaking through like sunlight through clouds. His lips curved into the smallest smile, restrained but unmistakable.
Not for the cameras.
For Hudson.
Mateo, utterly unaware of the emotional apocalypse happening beside him, leaned in and whispered loudly, "Oh my God, he's looking over here. Babe, is my hair okay? Do I look like a person who deserves rights?"
Hudson didn't answer.
He physically couldn't.
Liam held Hudson's gaze for one more beat, one impossible beat, then the smile faded. The guardrails snapped back into place so cleanly that it was almost brutal.
Liam turned.
And he walked inside.
The music thumped louder as they opened and closed the doors behind him. And the moment Liam disappeared, the line for unknowns didn't just move.
It mutated.
People who had been pretending to be chill suddenly remembered they were animals. Everyone started leaning forward at once, bodies compressing, voices rising, like the mere sight of Liam had turned the air into something scarce, and they all needed to breathe him before he ran out.
"Did you see him?" someone squealed behind Hudson.
"I literally just saw his jawline," someone else said, trembling like they'd witnessed a religious event.
A girl in front of them lifted her phone and started filming the back of the bouncer's head as if that might count as content.
Mateo braced himself like a soldier. "Gurl, what the fuck," he said, eyes wide, hair immaculate, voice pitched between outrage and entertainment. "Everyone just got ten percent more annoying."
The group laughed weakly, but the energy around them was too charged for laughter to fully land. The velvet rope wasn't just a barrier anymore. It was a border. On one side: music, access, lights. On the other: the herd.
Hudson stood quietly, hands in his pockets, trying to keep his face neutral while his insides shattered like glass. He could still see Liam's faint smile in his mind, private and brief, like a touch that had happened only in his imagination.
The line crept forward, inch by inch, like the club was feeding on people slowly.
The boys finally reached the base of the stairs.
Two security guards stood there like statues, broad shoulders, earpieces, hands clasped in front of them. Their faces were the same blank expression of men trained to say no without words.
Then she arrived.
The gatekeeper.
A woman with a clipboard aura, mid-thirties, tight ponytail, contour sharp enough to cut. Her face had that specific look of someone who woke up annoyed and stayed that way. She wore all black, of course, and an expression that suggested the world owed her an apology.
Her eyes landed on Mateo first.
They traveled up and down him slowly, thoroughly, like she was scanning a barcode.
Mateo gave her a dazzling smile. "Hi! Love your vibe. Very funeral chic."
She didn't react.
Her gaze moved to Jasper, to Nico, to Theo, brief assessments, quick judgments, and then, finally, it slid to Hudson.
And there, it lingered.
Hudson felt it like a hand. The pause wasn't friendly. It was evaluative. A silent calculation. The kind of look that said: 'You're cute enough to be useful'. The woman's mouth twisted slightly, with a hint of reluctant admiration and a hint of irritation.
Then she said, flatly, "Not tonight."
Mateo blinked. "Sorry?" She tilted her head, bored. Mateo's smile stayed bright, but his eyes sharpened. "We've been waiting for over an hour."
She stared at him like he'd just told her he had emotions. "Yeah. So has everyone."
Mateo gestured around. "So what is this, like, only celebrities and their emotional support stylists?"
The woman's eyes narrowed. "You can go."
Mateo's jaw dropped. "Oh my God, you're..."
"Next," she said, already done. She lifted one finger and crooked it lazily, summoning two hot girls in tiny dresses from farther back in the line like she was ordering cocktails.
The girls giggled, stepped forward, and were waved in without a word.
Mateo stared, scandalized. "Are you fucking serious?" The woman didn't answer. She didn't even look at him again. Mateo turned, threw his middle finger up with theatrical precision, and said loudly, "Hope your eyeliner smudges and you have no Q-tips!"
Then he grabbed Hudson's sleeve and dragged the group out of the line and onto the sidewalk like they were retreating from an enemy front.
Mateo immediately began spiraling in full color. "That was discrimination," he ranted, pacing. "That was hate crime energy. That was..."
Jasper laughed. "Teo, relax."
"No," Mateo insisted. "I want her to trip on those stairs and fall into a pool."
Theo looked dazed. "I thought we looked good…"
Nico shrugged. "We do."
Hudson, still in the aftershock of seeing Liam, felt something unexpected: relief. Actual relief. Being turned away felt like being spared.
He cleared his throat gently. "There's a bar down the street," he said. "It's not...this." He gestured vaguely at the club. "But we could get drinks there."
Mateo sniffed, dramatic. "Fine. I guess I'll go somewhere inferior and be adored by normal people."
They started moving.
A few steps in, Hudson glanced back without meaning to.
He noticed the gatekeeper woman had lifted her phone to her ear. Her posture shifted, suddenly attentive. She nodded once, then twice. Rolled her eyes as if the person speaking to her had said something she would rather not deal with.
Then she lowered the phone. And called out, sharp and commanding. "Hey!" The group stopped. Turned. The woman pointed with two fingers. Straight at Hudson. "You," she said. "Come here."
Hudson's stomach dipped. Mateo's head whipped toward him. Hudson hesitated, then walked back toward the entrance, the others trailing behind out of instinct. Mateo stayed close, like a small, furious bodyguard. At the base of the stairs, the woman's eyes flicked over Hudson again. She didn't apologize.
She said. "You. You can go inside."
Hudson blinked. "What?"
Mateo's eyes widened like a child hearing the word cake. "Oh my God."
Hudson's gaze slid to Mateo, then back to the woman. "Why?"
She shrugged as if it didn't matter. "Just...come in."
Hudson took a slow breath. "My friends..."
"No," she cut in immediately. "Only you."
Mateo made a choking sound. "Excuse..."
Hudson lifted a hand slightly, not to silence Mateo, but to steady him. Then he looked at the woman and said, without hesitation, "Then no."
The woman blinked, taken aback by the immediate refusal.
Hudson's voice stayed calm. "I'm not going in unless they go in too."
For a moment, the woman looked genuinely annoyed, as if Hudson had failed to understand how power worked. She narrowed her eyes, then lifted her phone again, stepping aside to murmur into it.
Mateo leaned in, whispering, "Babe, who are you right now? Rosa Parks?"
Hudson shot him a look. Mateo's grin only widened. The woman spoke into the phone for a few seconds, expression sour, then lowered it with a sharp exhale. She stared at Hudson like he'd personally inconvenienced her entire night.
Then she jerked her chin toward the stairs. "Fine." Mateo's jaw dropped so hard it looked like it might unhinge. The woman rolled her eyes. "All of you. Go."
Mateo made a strangled sound of victory, grabbed Hudson's shoulder, and practically sprinted up the steps. Halfway up, he turned toward the line, toward the crowd of hopeful faces still waiting, and called out loudly, dripping with smug delight.
"Sorry, babes! Turns out friendship is hot!"
The line groaned. Someone cursed. Mateo blew a kiss anyway.
Hudson followed, Theo and the others behind him. As Hudson crossed the threshold, he felt Mateo's fingers tighten around his arm.
Mateo stared at him, eyes wide with awe and disbelief. "Who," he whispered, "are you?"
Hudson didn't answer.
Because deep down, he already suspected.
Bass rolled through the walls inside in thick waves that didn't just vibrate the air. They vibrated bone. It invaded the rib cage, teeth, and the soft parts behind the eyes. Every beat felt like a hand on the sternum, pushing, insisting, rearranging his heartbeat until it matched the rhythm, whether he wanted it to or not.
The place was packed.
A massive dancefloor spread out in the center. Strobes slashed through the crowd in white bursts, freezing strangers into little snapshots: open mouths laughing, hands thrown up, tongues out, eyes closed. Above it all, a DJ booth perched like a throne, moving like a god nobody worshipped sober.
At the heart of the room, a circular bar glowed, a ring that drew people in, shoulder-to-shoulder, elbows bumping, bracelets flashing. Bartenders worked like machines, sliding drinks along the slick surface with impossible precision.
And around the edges, strategically tucked into shadows and velvet and angles designed to be seen but not touched, were the VIP corners. Little nests of private air. Booths stacked with the new faces in Hollywood: actors with perfect hair, women with sleek dresses. People who laughed in clusters. The kind who did not wait in lines.
Hudson's instinct kicked in immediately.
Stay out of sight.
He moved, shoulders slightly hunched, head angled down, weaving behind Mateo and the others.
Mateo, on the other hand, became unstoppable the moment they stepped inside. He turned to the nearest group of strangers, voice loud over the music, and proclaimed. "We were rejected and then summoned."
Jasper laughed, throwing his head back. Nico looked delighted. Theo's eyes widened, like he couldn't believe they were actually in.
Mateo grabbed Hudson by the shoulders and pulled him in, face shining with triumph. "You're my lucky charm, you weird little desert angel." Before Hudson could respond, Mateo planted a kiss on his cheek, loud, smacking, embarrassing, and yelled, "I LOVE YOU!"
Hudson's face heated. "I know..."
Mateo was already gone. He sprinted toward the dancefloor like he'd been released into his natural habitat. Jasper and Nico followed, laughing, arms already up in the air, swallowed by strobes and bodies.
Hudson was left at the edge of the crowd with Theo hovering beside him, still talking. "So like, the lighting here is actually kind of insane," Theo said, gesturing upward. "They're using these rotating heads with..."
Hudson nodded, but the words immediately became muffled the moment Hudson turned his head.
Because the room shifted. Like an invisible hand had grabbed the back of his neck. Hudson's gaze drifted toward the VIP corners almost against his will.
And there, tucked into the largest booth, Liam sat.
His posture was loose, almost languid, but his eyes were locked on Hudson with a frightening steadiness. Chestnut turned near-black. Focused.
Sienna was sitting next to him, leg draped over his lap, casual and possessive. She leaned into him, lips sunk into his neck, teeth grazing skin. A photographer stood just beyond the booth, capturing the angle. Liam didn't even tilt his head to meet her. He didn't respond beyond allowing it, as if it were a contract being fulfilled.
He couldn't care less, Hudson realized, as long as the shot existed. His hand lifted a glass. Liam drank the whole thing in one long pull, throat working, jaw flexing.
The glass lowered.
He snapped his fingers.
Someone, an assistant, a server, a ghost, appeared and placed another drink in his hand.
And through it all, Liam's eyes never left Hudson.
Not once.
Hudson's stomach turned, hot and cold at the same time. The ache that had been dull all day sharpened. He felt exposed, suddenly too visible, suddenly too aware of his own body in a room full of bodies.
Theo continued talking beside him, blissfully oblivious. "And like, the VIP situation is wild. You see that booth? That's..."
Hudson didn't hear the name Theo said. He forced himself to blink, to move, to do anything other than stand there like prey in a spotlight.
He turned toward Theo, voice forced into brightness. "Hey."
Theo paused mid-sentence. "Yeah?"
Hudson gestured lightly toward the dancefloor. "Go have fun with them."
Theo blinked. "I'm fine here."
Hudson tried again, gentler. "Seriously. You came out for a good time."
Theo smiled. "I'm having a good time."
Hudson's chest twitched with an odd, complicated annoyance, at Theo's earnestness, at his persistence, at the way Theo's kindness felt like pressure.
Theo leaned in slightly, shouting over the music. "I can get you a drink."
Hudson hesitated. He didn't want to be taken care of right now. He didn't want to be anyone's project. But the truth was, he didn't have the energy to argue. So he went and did what he always did. He smiled. He nodded. He let it happen.
"Sure," Hudson said. "Okay."
Theo's face lit up, pleased. "Cool. Come on."
They moved toward the circular bar, pushing through the crowd. Hudson kept his head down, trying to make himself smaller, trying to ignore the sensation of Liam's gaze burning into his back.
They reached the bar and claimed two stools near the edge. Theo leaned in to shout an order at the bartender. Hudson rested his elbows on the counter and stared at the glowing bottles behind the bar.
Behind them, in the VIP booth, Liam shifted.
Something changed in his posture, sudden and sharp. He pulled forward, elbows dropping onto his knees. Sienna's leg slid awkwardly, displaced by the movement. She made a small sound, annoyed, surprised, and repositioned herself, but Liam didn't even look at her.
His eyes were fixed on Hudson.
Black and hungry under the strobes.
Like a shark scenting blood.
And as Hudson sat at the bar with Theo, offering a drink, a harmless kindness, Liam watched him move away, watched him be with someone else, and something in Liam's face tightened into a quiet, dangerous kind of rage.
An hour bled into the next the way time did in clubs, sticky and distorted.
Hudson stayed on his stool at the bar like it was a life raft. He kept his back turned to the dancefloor, to the VIP booths, to the glossy chaos. He'd been facing the bar's mirrored wall instead, the bottles, the reflections, the blur of bartenders moving like surgeons.
Theo talked. God, Theo talked.
His words were a constant stream. Directors, camera lenses, festival gossip, an anecdote about a boom mic falling into frame on a shoot, and how "nobody noticed but I noticed." Hudson nodded politely, inserted a "no way," a "that's wild," a delayed "yeah, I get that," like he was answering from underwater.
Every so often, he managed a genuine "thanks," because Theo really was trying. Theo had bought him drinks. Theo's presence had made the night less sharp.
But Hudson's mind wasn't in Theo's sentences.
It was in the gap between them. It was in the empty space where Liam's voice used to exist. It was in the feeling of being watched, even when he refused to look.
Then, out of nowhere, Mateo returned like a small, drunken comet.
He barreled through the crowd, cheeks flushed, eyes glossy with joy and alcohol, hair now slightly ruined. He slammed both hands on the bar and yelled, "I HAVE ASCENDED!"
Theo blinked. "Hi."
Mateo stared at Theo like Theo was a new toy. "Oh my God, you're still here. You poor thing." He grabbed Theo's arm. "Come dance. I'm saving your life."
Theo laughed, startled. "I'm... I'm fine."
Mateo pulled him off the stool with the joyful brutality of someone who believed consent was implied by friendship. "No, you're not. You're talking about Latvian grief again, and Hudson's eyes are doing the thousand-yard stare."
Hudson snorted despite himself.
Mateo turned his attention to Hudson next, hands already reaching. "And you...come on. You need to move your body."
Hudson shook his head quickly. "I'm good."
Mateo frowned dramatically. "No, you're not."
Hudson leaned in, voice low enough that only Mateo could hear. "Please."
Something in the word, please, made Mateo's expression change. The ecstatic gleam softened. The secret language between them, quiet and immediate, clicked into place. Mateo understood in a single beat: Hudson didn't need saving. He needed space.
Mateo straightened and did a theatrical salute. "Copy that."
He hooked his arm around Theo's shoulders. "Theo, baby, you're with me now. And you're about to have a religious experience."
Theo laughed helplessly. "Hudson..."
Hudson smiled, grateful and faint. "Have fun."
Mateo dragged Theo away, already yelling something about "main character behavior," disappearing into the dancefloor like they'd been swallowed by light.
Hudson exhaled and turned back toward the bar. His fingers rested on the counter, loose around the rim of his glass.
He closes his eyes.
And that's when he felt it.
That unmistakable shift in the air when someone stepped close enough to alter your gravity.
Heat at his shoulder. A scent, clean and expensive, layered. The faint brush of fabric moving beside him.
Hudson didn't have to look.
He knew.
Liam.
Hudson's spine went rigid, then forced itself to relax. His heartbeat did something stupid and fast. Liam slid onto the stool beside him. As if the last two weeks hadn't happened. Hudson kept his gaze fixed straight ahead, at the bottles, at the bartender's hands, at anything that wasn't Liam's face.
Liam leaned in slightly, voice pitched low to survive the music. "Arizona."
Hudson's stomach clenched.
He didn't answer.
Liam waited a beat. Then he spoke again, softer, rougher. "You look good."
Hudson's mouth twitched into a humorless, almost-smile. Still no answer.
Liam exhaled through his nose, the sound close to a laugh that had died before it was born. He turned toward the bartender.
"Whiskey," Liam said. "Neat."
Hudson's fingers tightened around his glass. Liam's elbow rested on the bar, close enough that their sleeves nearly touched. His presence was loud even when he wasn't speaking. Hudson could feel him watching without having to meet his eyes.
The bartender slid the glass over.
Liam reached for it, and on purpose, he brushed his fingers against Hudson's hand.
Just a graze.
A deliberate accident.
Hudson's entire body lit up like a wire struck by current. His fingers twitched. He didn't pull away. He hated himself for not pulling away. Liam's hand lingered a fraction longer than necessary.
Then he withdrew, brought the whiskey to his mouth, and took a slow sip. "Finally," Liam said, voice quiet. "Been waiting for him to leave."
Hudson stared at the bar. "Who?"
Liam's mouth curved. "The guy who was talking to you."
Hudson swallowed. "He was being nice."
Liam's gaze stayed on Hudson like a hand at his throat. "So was I."
Hudson's jaw tightened.
Liam leaned closer, and Hudson felt his breath for the first time in weeks, warm, familiar, intoxicating. Fuck, he missed it.
"You saw me," Liam said.
Hudson's fingers tightened around the glass. "Hard not to." Liam's mouth twitched. "You came in with a girl."
There it was, the first punch thrown, small but loaded.
Liam stared at the whiskey as if it might offer him the correct response. "I came in with a picture."
Hudson's laugh turned hollow. "Same thing."
Liam's jaw flexed. "No."
Hudson finally turned his head just enough to look at Liam's shoulder, not his face. Fuck, that's a nice shoulder, Hudson thought. "She had her leg on you."
Liam's voice went tight. "I didn't touch her."
Hudson's mouth pressed into a line.
For a beat, Liam didn't speak. The music hit a drop behind them. People screamed with joy as if nothing in the world could ever hurt.
Liam took another sip, then set the glass down. He leaned in, closer now, voice low, controlled, desperate in the way he tried hardest to hide. "Say something," he murmured. "Anything."
Hudson's chest rose.
Fell.
He still didn't look at Liam.
But when he finally spoke, his voice was steady only because steadiness was the only way he knew how to survive what he was about to do.
"We can't do this anymore," Hudson said.
The sentence landed like a shove. Liam's breath hitched almost imperceptibly. But he didn't interrupt. Hudson stared at the bar, at the reflection of his own face in the mirror, trying not to crack.
"Whatever this is," Hudson went on, voice rougher now, "it won't last. It can't. Not with your life. Not with..." he swallowed, the word her burning in his throat, "...everything." Liam's hand tightened around his glass. Hudson saw it in the corner of his vision. Hudson kept going anyway. He had to. If he stopped, he'd fall into Liam's orbit again. "And I'm not built for this," Hudson said quietly. "I'm not built to be a secret. I'm not built to be...managed."
His throat tightened. His eyes burned again, but he refused to blink too long.
"You're..." Hudson exhaled shakily, as if even saying Liam's existence hurt. "Too big. Everything around you is too big. It eats people."
Liam's voice came low and strained. "Hudson..."
Hudson cut him off gently, because gentleness was all he had left. "I'm not mad," he lied, fingers trembling against the glass. Every word felt like it was being torn from him. "It was...fun," Hudson said, and the word tasted like blood. "A weird story I can tell myself later."
Liam's jaw clenched hard at that. Hudson forced the following sentence out, as if it were blades spewing out of his mouth.
"But I'm done. And I don't want to see you again."
A beat of silence opened between them, wide, black, swallowing. Hudson still didn't look at Liam. He couldn't. If he looked, he would break. If he looked, the lie would show.
So he pushed his stool back.
The legs scraped against the floor, loud in Hudson's ears even over the music. He stood, hands briefly braced on the bar, and steadied himself. Liam didn't move.
Hudson's voice was quieter now, almost lost to the beat. "Take care of yourself."
Then he turned and walked away from the bar, weaving through bodies, shoulder brushing strangers who didn't matter, forcing his legs to keep moving even as his chest felt like it was collapsing inward.
Behind him, the music thumped relentlessly, joyful, brutal, indifferent.
Hudson didn't look back.
He didn't need to.
He could feel Liam watching him go.
And as Hudson disappeared into the crowd, the lie he'd spoken, 'I don't want to see you again', followed him like a wraith, haunting every single step he took away from Liam.
*
The ride home was brutal.
Twenty minutes in the back of an Uber with the city smeared into streaks of light, Hudson's reflection ghosting in the window. Two blocks on foot afterward, walking fast, then slower, then too slow, trying to cool his mind the way you cooled a burn under running water, knowing it didn't undo the damage, only made it bearable.
By the time he reached the apartment, his body felt like it belonged to someone else.
He closed the door quietly behind him and stood in the entryway for a second, listening to the place breathe. Somewhere down the hall, a neighbor's TV murmured. Pipes ticked. The building settled like an old animal. Hudson walked to his bedroom as if he were moving through a dream he didn't remember falling into. He stripped down to his shirt and underwear and stopped in the middle of the room, defeated, caught between the reality of his small life and the enormous shadow of the life he'd touched and then thrown away.
It was finally over, he told himself.
The beautiful joy.
The deep suffering.
He walked to the iron rack in the corner, where he kept his few good things, hung neatly, like small attempts at control. His fingers found the familiar black hoodie on the hanger.
Liam's hoodie.
Hudson pulled it down carefully, almost respectfully, and the fabric fell against his hands. It still held the faintest trace of him, something warm underneath it. Hudson crossed the room and fell onto the bed. Not sat. Not lay down. Fell. He pulled the hoodie to his chest like a shield and pressed his face into it.
And that was when Hudson cried.
Not quietly at first.
It began with a broken, involuntary sound, half breath, half sob. Tears soaked the hoodie. He clutched it tighter, knuckles whitening, and cried alone in the dark.
He cried for his past, for the years that taught him to leave before he could be left, to swallow need like it was poison, to make himself small enough to survive.
He cried for the walls he'd built around his feelings, brick by careful brick, believing they were protection.
But mostly, he cried for what he and Liam could have been.
For the tenderness that had felt like a miracle.
For the stupid jokes.
For the way Liam had looked at him like no one had ever.
For the love that had almost found a place to live.
Hudson cried until his chest ached and his eyes burned, until his body became slack, grief devouring him the way sleep did when it came not as rest but as escape. And that's when the jolt came.
Followed by a loud knock on the door.
Hudson blinked into the darkness, disoriented, the hoodie still clutched to his chest.
Another knock.
Harder this time.
Hudson sat up, heart thudding.
He slid off the bed and moved through the room, bare feet silent on the floor. He tiptoed to the door and looked through the peephole. His stomach dropped so violently that it felt like falling.
Liam stood on the other side.
Hair disheveled and cheeks flushed, his eyes sparkled with reckless intensity. One hand pressed firmly against the wall next to the door, grasping for stability. Hudson recoiled from the peephole, heart racing, and pressed his palm against the door, desperately hoping that the sheer act of contact might somehow wipe away the image he had just witnessed.
But it was too late.
Liam's voice came through the wood, sharp and clean, somehow perfectly clear despite the hour and the alcohol. "I know you're in there."
Hudson's breath froze in his lungs. He sank down slowly, as if his knees had decided on their own. He crouched on the floor, back against the door, hoodie still in his arms. His head pressed against the wood.
On the other side, Liam stood close enough that Hudson could almost feel the heat of him through the door. He spoke again, quieter now, and that quietness was worse. The voice of a man with nowhere to put his feelings anymore.
"She went looking for you," Liam said, and his breath hit the door on the other side like a confession. "Didn't she?"
Hudson's eyes stung. He squeezed the hoodie tighter.
A pause.
Then, softly, as if saying it hurt. "And you listened."
Hudson's shoulders trembled.
Liam's hand slid against the door from the other side, a slow, searching touch, as if he could find Hudson through wood and paint.
"You don't know what it's like," Liam said, voice low. "To have people decide what you are before you even open your mouth. To have your life measured in headlines and risk assessments and..." he exhaled sharply, choking on the words, "...damage control."
Hudson's eyes squeezed shut. A tear slipped down his cheek and into the collar of the hoodie.
Liam's voice softened. "But you do know what it's like to run," he said. "I saw it in you. That first night. Like...life trained you to expect the worst."
Hudson's breath hitched.
Liam continued, and the drunkenness made him honest in the way sobriety never allowed, raw, unfiltered, a man finally saying what he'd been choking on for weeks.
"I've never..." Liam began, then stopped, swallowing hard. "I've never felt this." Silence. A shaky breath. "I've fucked around," Liam said, voice edged with a bitter laugh. "I've had people. I've had...noise. I've had girls on my arms and men in rooms where nobody could see. I've had fun. I've had distractions. I've had...things."
His voice broke slightly on the next word.
"But you," he said. "You were different. You were...light."
Hudson's eyes flooded. He pressed his mouth into the hoodie so the sound wouldn't escape.
Liam's voice grew soft, almost tender, as if he were speaking to Hudson's face the way he had in the pool, close enough to fog his skin with breath. "You were joy," Liam said, and there was wonder in the word, like he didn't trust it. "You were just...there. You looked at me like I was a person."
He exhaled shakily. "And I fucking hated it." A small laugh, pained. "I hated it because I wanted it," Liam admitted. "Because it scared me. Because it made me realize how empty everything was."
Hudson's tears came harder now. His shoulders shook. He stayed glued to the floor, as if moving would be betrayal.
On the other side of the door, Liam leaned closer. His voice lowered to an intimate, aching tone. "I don't...know how to do this," Liam said. "I don't know how to...keep someone."
A pause.
Then, gently, as if it were the softest possible dare, Liam said. "Open the door." Hudson's breath caught. Liam swallowed audibly. "Let me in."
Hudson pressed his head harder against the wood, tears slipping down his face freely now. His mouth opened, but no sound came out.
Liam's voice turned softer, pleading. "Please."
And then, because love and fear lived too close together inside Liam, something snapped. Liam's tone shifted abruptly, anger cracking through the need like lightning.
"Or maybe she was right," Liam spat, voice rising. "Maybe you were just..." he laughed, sharp and ugly, "...maybe you were just doing what everyone else does." Hudson flinched as if struck. "A kink, right?" Liam said louder. "Yeah, let's fuck the movie star. Get your little story. Tell all your fucking friends. Laugh about it later. 'Look what I did!'"
Hudson's sob caught in his throat like a gag. He shook his head, even though Liam couldn't see it.
Liam slammed his fist into the door. The impact made Hudson jump, a gasp escaping him before he could stop it.
"Open the fucking door!" Liam shouted. "Let me in!"
The building answered back.
A door down the hall opened violently, and a voice rang out through the stairwell, raw with sleep and fury. "SHUT THE HELL UP! SOME OF US WORK IN THE MORNING!"
Hudson froze, mortified even through tears.
On the other side, Liam snapped his head toward the stairwell like a man dragged back into reality. "Fuck you!" Liam roared back without hesitation. "Go to bed!"
The neighbor's door slammed.
For a beat, there was only the thud of Liam's breathing. Then Liam's voice dropped again, lower, closer, as if he'd pressed his forehead to the door. His anger collapsed into something almost unbearable.
"Hudson," Liam whispered. "Please," he pleaded. "Don't do this."
Hudson cried silently, shoulders shaking, hugging the hoodie like it could keep him from breaking apart completely.
Liam's voice turned ragged. "I'm not good at this," he admitted. "I'm not...I don't..." he exhaled. "I don't want to be outside this door."
Hudson's chest tightened so violently he thought he might actually vomit.
"I can hear you crying," Liam whispered, and the words were so soft they felt like a hand on Hudson's cheek through the wood.
Hudson pressed his lips harder into the hoodie, attempting to swallow the sound.
"Open up," Liam begged. "Just...just open up."
Hudson couldn't move. His body felt welded to the floor, as if his fear had turned to metal inside him. His mind screamed go, and his heart screamed don't let him leave, and his muscles obeyed neither.
There was a long, terrible silence.
Then Liam's voice returned, quieter, broken in a way Hudson had never heard from him. "Okay," Liam whispered. "Okay. I get it." Hudson's breath hitched. "I'll leave. If that's what you want," Liam said.
Hudson sobbed silently, the hoodie soaked beneath his chin. He still didn't move. He still couldn't.
A pause.
Liam's breath trembled on the other side of the door. "I'm sorry," he whispered, so soft Hudson almost didn't catch it.
Then footsteps.
Retreating.
Each step sounded like a nail being pulled from Hudson's ribs. He listened. The elevator down the hall dinged. The doors slid open. There was a brief hush, the soft rustle of fabric. Then the doors slid closed. And the elevator began to descend.
Hudson stayed pressed to the door long after the elevator had swallowed Liam's footsteps. His forehead rested against the wood now. Fingers curled in the fabric of the hoodie like it was the last solid thing in the world. He could still taste salt on his lips. His chest rose and fell in uneven, exhausted pulls.
And then something inside him, something older than fear, older than habit, twitched.
Not a thought.
More of a shudder.
A sudden, brutal clarity that cut through the fog of panic and shame like a match in a dark room.
This comes once, Hudson thought.
Not the sex.
Not the thrill.
Not the story.
The connection.
Hudson's mind started arguing with itself in frantic, overlapping fragments.
'He'll ruin you.
You'll ruin him.
She'll destroy everything.
You're nobody.
He's everything.
You'll end up hurt.
You already are.
What if he leaves and never comes back?
What if you wake up in ten years and the only thing you have left is regret?'
The image rose unbidden: himself older, sitting alone somewhere, staring at a phone that no longer buzzed, a life full of safe choices that never once made his heart do this. A lifetime of "what if" gnawing at his ribs like a small, caged animal.
All for what?
Fear?
Hudson's soul jolted again, harder this time, and his body reacted before his mind could stop it. He slung himself off the floor like a slingshot, palms skidding against the wall as he surged upright. His heart hammered, wild and decisive. He yanked the door open so fast the hinges complained.
"Wait...!"
The word burst out of him like a scream ripped from deep water.
But before his eyes could find the elevator, they snagged on the wall directly across from his door.
Liam was there.
Leaning against it.
Waiting.
One shoulder to the paint, hands loose at his sides, eyes still bright with the wreckage of feeling. He watched Hudson, and as Hudson stood there with tears on his face and breath in his throat, Liam's gaze followed the track of Hudson's tears.
Then he smiled.
Small.
Soft.
Devastating.
Like he'd been holding the world together by sheer will, and it had finally rewarded him.
Hudson didn't think.
He moved.
Two steps, only two, and then he launched himself forward with a sound that was half laugh, half sob. He jumped into Liam's lap, legs wrapping around Liam's waist like memory, like instinct, like home.
Hudson's favorite place.
Their mouths met instantly, no hesitation, no carefulness, just heat and hunger and relief colliding. The kiss was ferocious, desperate, reverent. Two weeks of absence poured into it, all the words they'd swallowed turning into breath and teeth and trembling hands.
Liam caught him effortlessly, arms locking around Hudson's thighs and lower back. Hudson clung to Liam's shoulders, fingers burying into his hair, kissing him like he was the answer to a question Hudson had been too afraid to ask.
Liam walked them inside without breaking the kiss, carrying Hudson down the narrow corridor with slow, determined steps. Hudson's laughter bubbled into Liam's mouth, broken, disbelieving, giddy. Liam answered with a low sound that wasn't quite a laugh but felt like relief.
The door swung shut behind them, nudged closed by Liam's leg.
They slammed against the wall at the end of the small corridor, the impact jarring, intimate, ridiculous. Hudson's back hit the paint. Liam's body pinned him there, hard, warm, real. Their kiss turned messy, laughing through it, mouths parting and colliding again like they couldn't decide whether to breathe or devour each other.
Hudson pulled back first, hands framing Liam's face, thumbs brushing Liam's cheekbones as if confirming he wasn't a hallucination.
Hudson's turquoise eyes were brighter than ever, wet and wild and alive.
Liam looked up at him with a softness that made Hudson's throat tighten all over again. He smiled, and his voice came out utterly unguarded. "Hey, beautiful."
Hudson's answering smile broke across his face like sunrise.
He leaned in and kissed Liam again, slow this time. Sensual. The kind of kiss that remembered every day of silence and turned each one into a stroke of the tongue, a gentle bite, a breath shared with intention. He kissed Liam like he was forgiving him. Like he was forgiving himself.
Hudson pulled back just enough to whisper, voice shaking. "Are you sure this is what you want...?"
Liam's smile didn't falter. And then he echoed Hudson's own words weeks before as if he'd carried them in his pocket like a talisman. "Well...this is not about what I want anymore. Remember?"
Hudson stilled, caught by the reflection of himself in Liam's lips.
Liam's eyes held his. "It's you and me now, Arizona."
Hudson giggled, an involuntary, adorable sound. He kissed Liam again. And through it, Hudson murmured, almost childlike in his fear. "What about...the rest?"
Liam pulled back, forehead nearly touching Hudson's, breath warm on his mouth. "Fuck it," Liam said.
Then he shifted his grip, tightened his arms around Hudson, and carried him toward the bedroom.
And as Hudson's apartment swallowed them, ordinary life trembling under the weight of something extraordinary, Hudson realized with a dizzy, aching certainty that love didn't arrive like a gentle solution.
It arrived exactly like this: reckless, inconvenient, undeniable.
A door flung open at the last possible second, two men choosing each other anyway, and the whole world outside reduced to a distant, irrelevant thump as Hudson let himself be carried into the only place that mattered.
Liam's arms.
(To be continued...)
Hudson and Liam’s story doesn’t end here. If you’re reading along, I’d love to hear from you.
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