Starstruck - Book Four by Gemma Brooks Page A

middle of the first ring, just like before.
     
    “Brynn,” he answered.
     
    “Hi,” I replied. I didn’t know where to begin.
     
    “So…” he said.  He must have been waiting for me to make the
first move.
     
    “I got your voicemail,” I said. I probably sounded like a
complete idiot. We’d never had such an awkward conversation before.
     
    “And?” he said.
     
    “I’m just a little confused,” I said.
     
    “About what?”
     
    “You want me to come back and you chased me down earlier
when you saw me, but you changed the code on your gate,” I said. “You locked me
out.”
     
    Hudson let out an indiscernible groan. “Brynn.”
     
    He was clearly frustrated with me.
     
    “What?”
     
    “I changed the code because I didn’t want Ava getting in,”
he said. “I have no idea how she got in the other night, but I wanted to take
all precautions, so I had the code changed to something else. Your birthdate
actually.”
     
    Was this man for real?
     
    “Oh,” I said. I was a total asshole.
     
    “Yeah,” he said, echoing me. “Oh.”
     
    “Why didn’t you tell me that?” I asked.
     
    “When did you give me a chance?” he replied. Match point.
“You get so worked up sometimes, Brynn. It’s like there’s no getting through to
you. Once you get an idea in your head, you’re convinced that it’s a fact when
most of the time it’s fiction.”
     
    “What about you going to Ava’s?” I asked. “I saw you there,
Hudson, with my own eyes. I saw it.”
     
    “Do you know why I went there?” he asked. “I went there to
put an end to all this insanity. I told her if she so much as bothered you one
more time or broke into my house or tried to contact me, she’d be sorry.”
     
    “Hudson,” I sighed. “You’re too nice. I’m sorry, but that
kind of a threat isn’t going to scare someone like her.”
     
    “She knows I could end her career if I wanted to,” he said.
“I have so much dirt on her. I know things. Horrible things. If she bothers you
one more time, she knows her career is over in this town.”
     
    “Doesn’t she have dirt on you too?” I asked, remembering her
words that night by the pool. “She mentioned your deep, dark secrets or
something.”
     
    Hudson laughed. “She’s so dramatic. That was just her trying
to get under your skin. I have no deep, dark secrets. I could run for office,
I’m so clean.”
     
    “Oh,” I said. “How did she know about the ring?”
     
    “That’s a good question,” he said. “Still trying to figure
that out.”
     
    As always, everything he said made perfect sense. We were
headed right back to where we came from.
     
    “Look,” he said. “I don’t want to keep going rounds with you
to prove to you that I really love you, Brynn. I’m not going to keep doing
this. Either you love me or you don’t. Either you want to be with me or you
don’t.”
     
    “I do love you,” I said. “I love you so much it’s scary.”
     
    “And that’s your problem,” Hudson said. “This whole time
you’ve been waiting for the other shoe to drop. Guess what? It’s not going to
drop. Stop running away when things get a little tough. It’s you and me, Brynn.
Us against the world.”
     
    My eyes burned hot. I loved him so much, and he was so
right. But he didn’t deserve me. I’d put him through the ringer and we’d only
been together barely a few months. I’d never understand why he fought so hard
for us. All I knew was that he made me feel like the luckiest girl in the
world. I had to stop fighting it and just accept it or we’d never work.
     
    “I’m leaving in a couple hours for New York,” he said. “I’ll
be back on Sunday. Brynn, come home.”
     
    Just like that, he’d reeled me in once again.
     
     
     
     
     

CHAPTER 19
 
     
     
     
     
    Coming back home to Hudson’s was bittersweet. Bitter because
I never should have left him the way I did and sweet because it was good to be
home again. The only