Page 4 of Deathless
Books were stacked neatly on a bedside table. Laundry was either hanging or folded in the open closet. The attached bathroom door was closed, which alleviated my worry at the silence in the room.
“Hey, you taking a shit?” I went inside to put the food down on the table with a single chair next to the window. “I’ll get you some coffee if you want.”
“Not a good time, Dev!” came the tense reply through the bathroom door.
I paused. “You okay in there?”
“Fine!”
I couldn’t place what it was, either just instinct or something in his voice, but I had a feeling he wasn’t working his way through his usual morning ritual. Keeping light on my feet, I moved closer to the door. “Hudson?”
“Go away, Devin!”
“If you’re really taking a shit, I will. Believe me, I have no desire to interrupt.”
He could have just said,Yes, fuck off.But he didn’t. Instead, a moan floated through the wood. The sound could have been pain or…the complete opposite of pain.
My pulse quickened and I held my breath, not wanting to miss another sound that came through that door. I wanted to make sure he was okay, and if he was, maybe, for stupid, selfish reasons, I wanted to hear that sound again.
“Hudson,” I said again, my throat feeling tighter. “What are you doing?”
“Nothing!”
“Are you hurting yourself?”
The silence from the other side of the door spurred me into action. “I’m coming in.”
“No, don’t—”
I swung the door open wide to find Hudson leaning against the sink’s counter, scrambling to tuck his erection back into his sweatpants. He was shirtless and breathing hard, skin flushed under all his tattoos.
“What the fuck, man?” he demanded, blue eyes seething with embarrassment.
I laughed, rubbing my face both with relief and as an excuse to not stare too blatantly. “You could have just said you wanted some privacy to jerk off.”
“I wasn’t!” The flush raced up his neck to his face.
I stopped laughing, taking in his body language like I was sizing up a target. “Dude, it’s okay. Nobody cares.”
“No, I was trying to make it go away! I don’t want to be waking up with this shit, feeling like…” He trailed off, shaking his head. “I don’twantthat. I mean, I don’t want to want it.”
It dawned on me what he was saying, and I had to fold my arms to resist giving the poor guy a hug. “Hudson.” I gentled my voice as if talking to a child. “It’s okay to feel, uh, aroused,” I said in an effort to not be crass. “That’s totally normal. And if you touch yourself because it feels good, that’s fine too. It’s your body, you get to have control of it now. No one is going to take that away from you again.”
“You don’t get it,” he hissed. “It reacts like clockwork every day. Like when I used to take cigarette breaks at work, the cravings always hit me at the same time.”
“Shit.” That was an aspect I hadn’t considered, the involuntary conditioning and habits instilled into him after all these years. “I’m sorry.”
“I’m losing my shit, Dev. Going through withdrawals for something I don’t even want.”
“We have a therapist coming out soon. A man,” I added. “He’ll be able to help you with this, I bet.”
Hudson tilted his head back and laughed mirthlessly. “A fucking head shrink. Whose idea was that?”
“Rori’s.”
His gaze returned to mine, expression going cold at the mention of her name. “And you trust…her?”
“With this, yeah.” It was a truth I could say confidently. In spite of the friction between Rori and me, I believed she was doing her best for all in this situation. If it were me who’d been shot by the guy we were trying to rescue, I might not be so forgiving. But she was actually compromising a lot, letting Hudson stay here and bringing out a professional to help him. Even I could admit that.
