Love Is Beautiful (Chelsea & Max) (3 page)

D
espite my initial
misgivings about going out with Hudson, I’m actually excited. We’re going to Aura, a club in downtown Cincy that’s known for its long lines and swanky clientele. This, coupled with the fact that I haven’t done something outside of my routine in a long,
long
time has given me just the excuse I need to go all out on the getting ready portion of my day. Normally, I straighten the heck out of my hair, leaving it shiny and sleek. Today I went for a little volume, blowing it out and teasing it up. I’m sure it’s still tame by most standards, but for me, I’m feeling a little dangerous. Add the short little body-hugging blue dress, the high rise heels, and the smoky eye makeup and I barely recognize the woman in the mirror.

I twist to get a better view of my backside and can’t help but smile. I look good. A little slutty, sure, but good nonetheless. You know who wouldn’t believe that I’m going out like this? My sisters. I snap a picture and send it to them, grinning while I wait for the responses. I don’t wait long and the shock and awe coming from Maya and Dakota does not disappoint. I spend the rest of the time giggling as they blow up my phone with questions about where I’m going and with whom and why didn’t they know sooner.

That’s Dakota, my youngest sister.

I send her a smiley face in response as my doorbell rings. The phone buzzes in my hand as I race downstairs, but Dakota will just have to wait. I’ve got better things to do right now, you know, like open the door for my mildly famous, hot as hell, built like Hercules date. When I get to the bottom of the stairs, I take a beat. Smooth my dress. Fluff my hair. Put on a smile and calm the butterflies in my stomach.

And then I swing open the door and totally lose my composure.

Hudson is dressed to the nines. Gorgeous pants that fit him more than perfectly. An expensive white button down, untucked, the cuffs rolled up to show his strong forearms and one damn fine watch. The top few buttons undone and showing off just a hint of what has to be a brick wall of a chest. My mouth is open and I close it quickly.

“Damn, London,” says the Grecian statue on my front porch. “You look almost edible.”

I’m sure another woman would have the perfect response to that statement but I’m busy blushing from head to toe as I imagine being eaten by this man. I quiver a little. Needless to say, it’s been awhile since anyone’s been … err …
down there.

“Ditto,” I say and cringe at my total lack of game and hope he doesn’t take it the wrong way. As in, I look edible and he looks edible and we will be enjoying each other’s edibility before the end of the evening.

Hudson’s eyes light up and I know in a heartbeat that he totally took my response the wrong way. “Alright then. It’s gonna be
that
kind of night,” he says with a look that is a little more creepy rapist than Greek god.

I take the time to get myself under control while I lock up and follow him to his car. It is most definitely not going to be that kind of night. I’m here for the company, the conversation, the drinks, and the dancing. There will be no eating of anyone for any reason. The sooner Hudson understands that, the better. I do my best to keep the conversation light during the trip downtown and then again as he leads me right into Aura—bypassing all the people stuck in line, whispering to each other about us—but Hudson is not having it. He keeps leading the conversation right back to inappropriate.

When we run into one of his friends, another football player with one of those douchebag athlete names I can’t remember right now, things just get worse by the minute. There’s too much drinking, too much innuendo, too much of Hudson’s hands on my body. June, the douchebag’s date just drinks it all in and it doesn’t take long for me to realize she’s a vapid moron, taken in by the muscles, the fame, and the dollar signs.

And good lord the dollar signs. Hudson and Douchebag throw money around like it’s no big thing, ordering alcohol by the bottle, pushing tips into the waitress’s bra as she leans over to gather up empty glasses. June just giggles her stupid little head off, but I’m really starting to wish I had stayed home. If I knew I was going to waste looking this hot on a totally immature experience like this, I would have declined.

“Come on, Chelsea,” slurs Hudson. “Lighten up. Smile a little. I mean, that pout is sexy as hell. What I wouldn’t do to that mouth, am I right?” He turns to Douchebag and actually high fives the guy. “But you’re sitting in the hottest club, with the hottest guys, drinking the hottest drinks, looking mighty fine yourself. Relax. Have some fun.”

I smile while June giggles and wonder how long I have to stay in order to not jeopardize our relationship at work. This was such a mistake. What kind of idiot dates her own patient? Especially when she knew from the get go that he wasn’t her type…

This kind of idiot,
I think with a sigh.

“Dance with me?” I ask Hudson, trying not to show my irritation.

June actually bounces in her seat and claps her hands. “Oooh. Yes. Let’s dance, Sloan.” She bites her lip and bats her eyelashes.

Sloan, that’s the douchebag’s name. Sloan Anderson.

“I’m a fighter, not a dancer, baby girl.” Sloan crosses his massive arms over his chest and leans back while June melts into a puddle beside me.

I turn to Hudson and raise my eyebrows. “What about you? Fighter? Dancer? Little of both?” If I could just get him away from Douchebag and Vapid Moron, maybe we could start having some fun.

A grin slides across his face and for some reason it makes me recoil. “Me?” he asks with a little twist of his head. “I’m all about the ladies.” He stands and offers me his hand and I get the feeling that I’m supposed to cover my mouth and titter, but I just can’t bring myself to do it. I knew Hudson was a player, I just didn’t realize the ramifications of spending an evening with this kind of guy.

It’s lame.

He’s lame.

I regret everything.

We work our way through the crowded club and I catch more than one person recognize Hudson. I also catch more than one person size me up, try to figure out who I am and how I warrant such prestigious company. Part of me wants to throw up my hands and let everyone know the experience isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, but I think there are plenty of people here who would beg to differ. They see the hot guy, the dimpled smile, the expensive clothes and total disregard of the cost of anything, and that all just seems like the best life has to offer.

Me? I see tired pickup lines and tedious affectations. I see shallow people being impressed by shallow things. This just isn’t me. But I’m here, so I’ll make the best of it and for me, that means dancing.

Hudson is a little too drunk to call what he’s doing dancing. For a guy who makes a living with his body, he’s being completely uncoordinated, jerking his hips and hands in some weird spastic seizure that I’m pretty sure he thinks is sexy. And, true to form, no matter how many times I push him away, he comes right on back, invading my personal space like he has already decided he owns me. He pulls on my hips, runs his hands up my back, even goes so far as to grab me by the back of my neck and lean down until our foreheads are almost touching.

“You’re so fucking hot,” he slurs, his tequila tainted breath slapping me in the face. “You’re gonna be famous after tonight. You looking like that, with me looking like this.” He steps back and flares his hands down his body, eyeing me like he thinks he’s setting me on fire. “Your face is gonna be plastered on all the tabloids.”

Sure. Because the tabloids care enough about an injured rookie in a club in downtown Cincinnati to make him front page news. “You think?” I ask.

“Uh-huh.” Hudson nods and steps back into my space grinding his hips into me until I back up. “Fast track to fame, London. I’m on it.”

I’ve pretty much hit my limit of sleazy asshole for the evening. I pick his hand off my shoulder and drop it before holding out my palm in a gesture that clearly means stop. I take a deep breath and shake my head, swallow hard and wait for his eyes to focus on me. “Fast track to fame?” I ask and raise my brows. “Not if you don’t start leading more with that heel.”

And with that, I do my best about-face and make a beeline for the bathroom. My heart is racing and I can’t quite catch my breath. I can’t believe I just said that. I’m never rude. Like, never ever. And that was pretty much the rudest thing I’ve ever said to anyone. Ever. But I tried getting my point across delicately and he was way too drunk for delicate. So much for not affecting our work relationship.

I am so dumb. What was I thinking?

I push through the bathroom door, intent on getting to the sink and splashing some cool water on my face before I figure out how the hell I’m going to get myself home. As the door swings shut behind me, I can’t make sense of what I’m seeing.

There’s a man. A big man. And a little woman. Struggling.

His hand is on her mouth. The other has her dress hiked up over her hips, fighting its way between her legs. Her eyes are wide, her mascara joining with her tears and running down her face. She sees me, and her eyes go even wider, the whites showing in fear and desperation.

If you believe the movies, things slow down in a situation like this. That’s not at all what happens for me. There’s no slow motion sequence where I get to see everything and makes sense of it all. Instead, I get flashes of information. Everything going too quick for me to understand it all at once. First, I recognize the woman as June.

The man turns and I recognize Sloan. Worse, I recognize the slow smile of a predator as he realizes he knows who I am, too. There’s a scuffle. June screams and he slaps her. Hard. Her head ricochets into the wall and her eyes go blank while somehow, some way, Sloan gets his hands on me. I struggle. His hand clamps on my throat and I rake my fingernails down his face.

“Dirty bitch,” he hisses as blood raises to the surface of the scratches glaring red and angry on his skin. He hits me. Pain explodes across my cheekbone, sending starbursts of color through my vision. My body betrays me, going limp, and all I can think is that I’ve never been hit before and that there’s a first time for everything.

Sloan’s hands are all over me. Pawing. Grabbing. I struggle but he’s just so big. He drags me over to the still recovering June and hauls her to her feet. I scream for help while he’s distracted and earn myself another explosion of pain.

Somewhere, far away, I hear my name. Someone calling for me. I call out as Sloan fiddles with his belt, the clank of the buckle coming free echoes through the bathroom and is the most ominous sound in the entire world.

No. I take that back. June’s words to me are the most ominous sound in the entire world.

“Stop struggling,” she says. “It’ll hurt less.”

There’s my name again. Hudson’s voice. Concerned. Questioning. “Chelsea?”

I struggle to make a sound, squealing against the hand pressed to my mouth and somehow,
somehow
, I manage to bring a knee up into Sloan’s balls. I slip as I do, skittering in my heels, but by some miracle, I manage enough contact to stagger him. He grunts and folds in on himself, letting me go.

“Hudson!” I scream “Help!”

The rest is just a blur of confusion. The bathroom is suddenly too crowded. There’s the low growl of men’s voices, threatening and heavy. I slump, my vision swirling with tears. June’s face, pale and bruised, an ever reddening reminder of Sloan’s hand standing out hard and angry across her mouth. Her eyes scare me, wide and glazed, rimmed in running black.

I curl into a ball on the floor while Hudson deals with Sloan. I know pain like I’ve never known it before. My face screams at me. A dozen little scrapes on my arms and hands burn like fire. And my shoulder, it hurts too.

But you know what? Pain or not, I am not the kind of woman that curls up and dies when things get hard and I’ll be damned if people find me bruised and sobbing on the bathroom floor in some stupid night club. I am not that girl. I swallow and push into a sitting position, wincing as I wipe my tears.

“Are you okay?” I ask June.

She nods, blinking rapidly. “He didn’t do anything to me.” I can’t stop staring at the red mark on her mouth, another on her throat, bruises forming on her neck and face. Remnants of Sloan’s hands on her body.

“Yes. He did,” I respond. “He most definitely did.”

I stand, both afraid to see myself in the mirror and desperate to assess the damage. My lip is bleeding and swollen. My right cheekbone is already bruising. My hair is a disaster, my eyes rimmed in black just like June’s. My dress is torn and I don’t even know how or when it happened.

A crowd has gathered outside the door, people ogling and staring and I can’t help but resent the fact that no one has come in to check on us yet. The sheer number of people who have their phones out, texting or tweeting or whatever the fuck they think is more important than calling the police makes me angry.

And then Hudson pushes his way through the crowd, apology and fear twisting his handsome face into one of the more gruesome parts of the evening. A face like that wasn’t designed for such tragedy. It was meant to smile and be admired, not bear the weight of something like this. “Fuck. I can’t even ask if you guys are okay because look at you. You’re not okay.”