Speechless (Pier 70 #3) (25 page)

Thirty-Eight

Monday, September 12
th

“IS TEAGUE STILL scheduled to come home on Friday?” Roan asked as the four of them sat on the pier at the end of the day.

Although it was after Labor Day and the summer was officially coming to an end, the lake had been unusually busy today, so they’d decided to relax for a bit once the marina closed. Hudson didn’t mind, because if he wasn’t there, he would be in his apartment pacing the floor, wondering about Teague.

Hudson nodded.
That’s the plan. When I talked to him yesterday, he said everything was still a go. He sounds so much better.

“That’s great to hear, man,” Dare chimed in.

Hudson knew something was up when Dare turned to look at him more fully.

“So, what’s the deal between you and Teague? Y’all serious now?”

Hudson shook his head in disbelief. He should’ve known Dare would call him out like this. In fact, he was surprised it hadn’t happened sooner. For the past four weeks, he’d been waiting for one of them to bust his balls about his relationship with Teague. Which was why he’d talked to Teague about whether he wanted them to know. When Teague told him he didn’t care if Hudson told them, he’d been elated.

We’re serious.

“Well, fuck me stupid. That’s fantastic,” Dare announced. “Any wedding bells in the near future?”

Cam interrupted. “Wedding bells? We’re still waiting for you to announce
your
wedding date.”

A round of laughter ensued.

“What? We’re getting there.”

“Well, I suggest you don’t go pushing other people to the altar before you make that trip down the aisle.”

“Fine.” Dare glanced at Hudson again. “So, y’all gonna move in together?”

We’re gonna take things slow.

Dare nodded as though he understood.

Hudson could’ve told them that he was hoping to move in with Teague. That he was scared to leave Teague alone. That he never wanted to spend another night away from him, but he didn’t. He had to take this at Teague’s pace. He wasn’t sure how things would go when he got out on Friday. They still had another month of intensive outpatient care, which involved Teague spending several hours a week at the hospital to undergo therapy. After that, they would have to seek counseling on their own. They weren’t out of the woods yet, and Hudson damn sure wasn’t going to push himself on Teague.

He’d learned what happened the last time he’d tried to manipulate the situation to get what he wanted.

It had backfired in the worst possible way.

“Well, the good thing is, y’all live across the hall. Just leave the doors open and it’s like you’re sharing a place,” Dare mused, staring out at the water.

“You seem awfully worried about Hudson and Teague all of a sudden. Something we should know about?” Roan inquired.

Dare smirked. “Unless you want to hear about all the slap and tickle Noah and I are engaging in, no, probably not.”

“Spare us the details of that,” Roan snorted.

“Speaking of Noah,” Cam inserted. “Where is he?”

“At home. Probably waiting for me. Naked.”

Hudson laughed with the others. That was Dare for you.

“What about Gannon?” Dare countered. “Where is he?”

“He’s having dinner with Milly,” Cam said, his tone less playful. “Something’s going on with her.”

Is she okay?
Hudson signed.

“Yeah. She said she needed to talk, so he took her to dinner.” Cam lifted an eyebrow as he focused on Hudson. “Do you know if AJ’s talked to her?”

Last he’d heard from his brother, AJ had given up on trying to get in touch with Milly. They had talked briefly at the hospital when Teague had his incident, but according to AJ, it hadn’t been good. He said he couldn’t be that guy who spent all his time chasing after a woman who didn’t want him. Rather than tell Cam all that, Hudson shook his head.

“What about you?” Dare asked Roan, clearly not finished being nosy. “How’s your sister?”

Roan frowned, then looked out at the water. “I really don’t want to talk about it.”

“Y’all have another fight?” Cam questioned, clearly not taking the hint.

“Yeah. Big one this time. She’s gone off the deep end again.”

When Roan looked back, Hudson signed:
You really need to get her admitted.

“It’s not that easy. If she’s not willing to do it, they won’t take her. And she’s definitely not willing.”

Hudson hated to hear that. From what he’d heard Roan say lately, his sister was on a downhill slide. Considering she was already at rock bottom, he knew that couldn’t be good at all.

“Well,” Dare announced, standing up and stretching, “I think I’m gonna head home. Got a man waiting naked for me.”

Hudson shook his head again.

“I’ll see y’all in the mornin’, yeah?”

“We’ll be here,” Roan replied.

Hudson watched Dare trot off toward the parking lot. He envied the man getting to go home to Noah. It made him think of Teague. He couldn’t wait for him to come home on Friday. Although he was excited, he was also terrified. He wasn’t sure how this would work, and the last thing he wanted to do was make it worse. Everyone kept telling him to treat Teague the same as before, only to keep an eye open for signs of problems.

Now that he knew how bad things could get, he would certainly be doing that.

As for treating him the same…

Fuck, he hoped the kid was up for some serious fucking, because it’d been thirty-two days (yes, he’d counted) since he’d had his hands on Teague, and Hudson’s balls were about to shrivel up and die.

Thirty-Nine

Friday, September 16
th

“WHERE ARE WE going?” Teague asked Hudson as they were leaving the hospital.

Technically,
he
was leaving the hospital and Hudson was his ride.

And holy fuck, he was glad to be out of there. Sure, they might’ve helped him, and he knew he would be going back for a while, but spending every day and night in that place for weeks on end… It’d been a whole lot harder than Teague had anticipated.

Which only made today that much sweeter.

Teague had checked himself into the inpatient care program after being assessed by one of their doctors. It wasn’t necessarily because he’d wanted to, but he had seen the look on his friends’ faces when they’d come to see him in the emergency room, and he’d known he had to do something. He’d put them through hell, and Teague had trusted that Hudson knew what he was talking about when he’d said the doctors could help him cope with his depression.

Almost five weeks later, he would have to agree.

Not that it had been easy. Nor was he anywhere close to being done.

Hell, it had been a nightmare in the beginning, but he had decided to go all in. The medication they’d started him on had fucked him up, and it’d taken nearly a week before they’d gotten him settled. The therapy sessions were the worst because talking about himself was not something he opted to do. Being that he could share the information confidentially, it wasn’t so bad. He’d attended group therapy sessions, but he kept his mouth shut during those. They might’ve helped him focus and to understand what was wrong with him, but they couldn’t change the fact that he didn’t want to share the details of his life with complete strangers.

But it wasn’t over, and they’d made sure to remind him that as his release date neared. Due to the headway he’d made, he and his doctor had decided he could progress to the intensive outpatient program. He would still be going to the hospital three days a week for four hours a day, but it was better than being there all the time.

For one, he was horny as fuck. And watching as Hudson steered the truck out of the parking lot, the muscles in his arms bulging from the movement … well, it wasn’t helping at all. He needed to get laid. And there was only one person he wanted to be with. The same guy driving the truck in the opposite direction of the marina.

“You didn’t answer my question,” Teague told him.

Hudson merely smirked.

Asshole.

Hudson signed:
Detour.

Well, okay then.

Rather than ask a million questions, Teague relaxed. Or tried to. He could smell Hudson’s cologne, and it was making his dick harder by the second. Although he didn’t quite know where he and Hudson stood with their arrangement—or with a relationship, which they seemed to have veered into— Teague hoped like hell they could get back on course.

And soon.

They passed a huge sign with an arrow, but Teague didn’t catch the name. It wouldn’t have seemed important, except Hudson steered off the main road and down a winding dirt drive that dipped and swerved through a thick grouping of trees.

Hudson parked the truck in front of what appeared to be a log cabin with a huge front porch. There was a big white rocking chair on one end and a dog bed on the other. The front door was painted red and had a glass insert that was covered with what looked like blinds.

When Hudson got out of the truck, Teague had no choice but to follow. When they walked to the door, Teague noticed there was an open sign on it. Clearly a business, then.

Hudson turned the knob and pushed it open, waiting for Teague to go in first. He was leery, but he stepped inside. An older woman with gray hair pulled back in a sloppy ponytail came out from somewhere in the back, alerted by either the barking dog or the bell chiming.

“Hudson,” she greeted kindly, a warm smile on her face. “So glad to see you again. And you must be Teague. My name is Tina.”

Teague nodded, shaking the woman’s hand when she held it out.

“We’re all ready for you,” Tina said kindly, peering past Teague to Hudson again.

Hudson nudged Teague forward when the woman pivoted and walked away.

Over his shoulder, Teague muttered, “What are we doing here?”

“Teague, we’d like you to meet Charger,” Tina called from around the corner.

Teague turned in time to see a yellow Labrador mix staring back at him from across a small room. The dog didn’t move from where he sat, but his tail instantly started thumping on the wood floor.

“Why do I need to meet him?” Teague asked, glancing from Tina to Hudson, then back.

Tina smiled widely. “Because Hudson picked him out for you.”

Okay, now he was thoroughly confused, and apparently Tina picked up on it. She glanced to Hudson and Teague noticed when he nodded.

“Charger is a trained psychiatric service dog,” she explained, and it was clearly something she’d done often. “Our dogs, which are all rescues, are trained to perform highly specialized tasks for people who suffer from psychiatric illnesses such as depression and PTSD.”

Okay, Teague really wasn’t liking where this was headed. Hudson had out-and-out told this woman that Teague had a mental problem?

“Now before you get upset,” Tina said, obviously interpreting his expression correctly, “which Hudson warned us you might do, I want you to know, he has provided me with limited details about you. We needed to know in order to accurately pair you with the right animal. But before we get too far into it, please greet Charger. He’s anxious to meet you.”

Hesitantly, Teague turned around and stepped into the room with the dog. Charger was sitting still, staring up at him as though waiting for a command. And okay, maybe he was cute.

“We’re going to give you a few minutes,” Tina called out before pulling the door shut. Evidently, she wasn’t giving Teague a choice in the matter.

He turned his attention back to the dog.

“Charger, huh?”

Without an audience, it was easier for Teague to greet the dog. And it only took a few minutes for him to completely fall in love. Hudson must’ve known this would happen. Then again, everyone knew how Teague felt about Lulu, the marina’s retriever who resided with Dare most of the time.

“So, you’re gonna take care of me, huh?” Teague asked, kneeling down in front of Charger. “I guess that means I’m gonna take care of you, too? I hope you know how that’s gonna work, ’cause I haven’t done this before.”

He had never had an animal of his own. Oddly enough, he liked the idea of having someone with him all the time even if it was a four-legged someone. Then it dawned on him that was the reason Hudson had done this. So Teague wouldn’t have to be alone.

A smile tugged at the corners of his mouth and he couldn’t fight it.

He knew the guy was a great big softy underneath all that sexy dominance.

“What d’ya say, Charger? You wanna hang with me?”

Charger licked Teague’s face and something loosened in his chest. He wasn’t sure what it was—if anything—but he felt a little less anxious than when he’d left the hospital a short while ago.

But he couldn’t help but think that Hudson had done this for him.

Hudson.

Big, bad, sexy, tattooed Hudson Ballard.

The man Teague had evidently gone and fallen in love with.

It was clear Hudson cared.

Teague wasn’t sure what to think about that. He’d never had someone want to take care of him like this. Sure, he’d had foster parents who had graciously offered up their homes. They’d been generous, but he’d seen it differently. But now, his eyes were wide open.

And he knew that this sort of kindness came from love.

Hudson loved him.

Sometimes, even after all he’d been through, that was still hard to wrap his head around. But he was certainly trying.

HUDSON HADN’T KNOWN what to expect when he brought Teague here. He had talked to Cam, Dare, and Roan, and they’d all tried to come up with the best way for this to play out. Since nothing they’d come up with sounded easy, Hudson had opted for his original plan. He would surprise Teague by bringing him to meet Charger straight from the hospital.

Thankfully, it had worked out in his favor, and almost forty-five minutes later, after Tina had reviewed with Teague all of the commands that Charger knew, and after receiving all the paperwork on the service animal that they’d purchased to help Teague, they were piling in his truck and heading back to the marina. Charger had followed every single one of Teague’s instructions, including getting into the backseat of the truck, where he would be safe for the ride home.

“I’m not sure if I should be mad or happy right now,” Teague said when they pulled out on the main road. Hudson noticed that Teague continuously glanced into the backseat to ensure Charger was good. “It’s uncool that you told someone about my problems, but I think I understand why.”

In the past few weeks, Teague had made tremendous progress. The doctor had diagnosed him with major depressive disorder, and the team of clinicians and psychiatrists had worked to develop a treatment plan. Strangely, Teague had seemed committed to the program the entire way through. Not that that was a bad thing, it was simply unexpected, but Hudson knew that Teague was often extremely unpredictable.

Like now.

He was rattling on, which was very unlike him.

However, Hudson knew that the animal would be a good idea. After he’d contacted the place, they had put him in touch with some of their other clients. He’d then had Cam contact them to seek input on how well the animals were working out for each of them. They’d received nothing but positive feedback, which confirmed they were making the right decision. On top of that, Hudson had brought it up with Teague’s psychiatrist at the hospital, and she had agreed that service dogs were being used to help with mental illness. And in Teague’s case, the fact that being alone was the hardest part for him … well, it definitely made sense.

The place Hudson had contacted would’ve preferred that Teague be there in person to interact with Charger during the training process, but Hudson had explained that it was impossible and he didn’t want to wait to bring Charger home. Or rather for Teague to bring him home.

Although Hudson wasn’t sure how that was going to work at the moment.

The mere thought of leaving Teague alone by himself … it didn’t sit well, although the kid had clearly made some progress.

The thing about depression, it wasn’t curable. Even with the medication, there would still be times when Teague would be down. Hudson had to learn to cope with that and to help Teague through it without being overbearing or freaking out. He understood that. Didn’t mean he knew how it would play out.

“So, think you might fuck me when we get back to your place?”

Hudson’s head snapped over to Teague and he saw the kid smirking.

He turned his attention back to the road and tried to think of the fastest way home.

As excited as he’d been to bring Teague to meet Charger, he was certainly more excited about the prospect of sinking inside Teague’s body again. It had been a little over five weeks now, and his dick still remembered the feeling, his body still craved Teague’s closeness.

“I take the fact that your foot’s practically on the floor to mean that’s a yes.” Teague chuckled. “We could always pull off somewhere.”

Hudson shook his head in disbelief. That wasn’t a bad idea, but he needed a hell of a lot more room than the front seat of his truck. All the pent up sexual energy needed more than this small space could offer.

And if he was lucky, they wouldn’t leave the apartment until they had to be at work on Monday morning.