I gasp. “I’ve never told anyone about Miss Velma’s oatmeal cookies.”
His eyes meet mine. “You told me.”
I haven’t thought of Miss Velma in months. I used to visit her at least once a week when I lived in San Diego, but then my parents died, and I just fell apart and never went back. Not even to say goodbye before I left for Alaska.
We were friends, which sounds silly considering she was just some lady who sold me cookies, but we were. Some days, I would hang around her little shop and talk to her for hours. She was the grandmother I never had, and I was a good stand-in for her grandkids, who lived halfway across the country. And then one day, I just disappeared. My stomach sinks thinking about it—thinking about her, wondering where I went.
Because I’ve had more than enough sadness lately, I force down my regrets and ask, “What else do you remember?”
For a second, I think he’s going to push—or worse, start reciting some story I told him about my parents that I don’t think I can handle tonight. But, typical of Hudson, he sees more than he should. Definitely more than I want him to.
And instead of bringing up something sentimental or sweet or sad, he rolls his eyes and says, “I remember the way you used to stand over me every morning at seven a.m. and demand that I wake up and get moving. You used to insist that we do something even when there was nothing to do.”
I grin a little at the slight aggravation in his words.
“So what did we do? Besides swap stories, I mean.”
There’s a long pause, and then he says, “Jumping jacks.”
So not the answer I was expecting. “Jumping jacks?” I ask. “Seriously?”
“Thousands upon thousands upon thousands of jumping jacks.” If his expression got any more bored, he’d be comatose.
“But how is that even possible? I mean, we didn’t actually have bodies, right?”
“You shook the whole realm when you jumped. It was completely embarrassing, but—”
“Oh my God, tell me I was not stone the whole time, was I?” I interrupt.
“You absolutely were. I tried to convince you to pick up a quieter hobby—skeet shooting, for example, or wooden clog dancing—but you were insistent. It was all about the jumping jacks.” He gives a what-could-I-do? shrug before the laugh that had been trying to force its way out finally escapes. “No, you were in your normal human body, but the marathon jumping jacks…” He winks.
“But I hate jumping jacks.”
“Yeah, me too. Now. But you know what they say about hate, right, Grace?” He leans back in his chair and gives me a look so hot that it curls my toes and straightens my hair at the same time. “It’s just the other side of—”
“I don’t believe that.” I cut him off before he can finish the old saying about hate being only one side of a coin with love. Not because I don’t actually believe it, like I told him, but because there’s a part of me that does. And I can’t deal with that right now.
Hudson doesn’t call me on my bluff, for which I am intensely grateful. But he doesn’t just move past it, either. Instead, he stays where he is—arm draped over the back of the chair beside him and long legs splayed in front of him under the table—and watches me as the seconds tick by.
I should go—I want to go—but there’s something in his gaze that keeps me right where I am, pinned to my chair, with my stomach turning flips deep inside me.
I grow more and more uncomfortable with each second that passes, though, and finally I can’t take it anymore. I’m not ready to deal with this. With any of it. I push my chair back from the table and say, “I need to get going—”
“You want to know what else I remember?” Hudson cuts me off.
Yes. I want to know everything he remembers, want to know everything I told him so I can make sure it wasn’t too much, so I can make sure I didn’t give him the power to destroy me. But even more than that, I want to know everything he told me.
I want to know about the little boy whose brother was ripped away from him. I want to know about the father who treated him like a trained seal and used him like a weapon. I want to know about the mother who looked the other way at all the terrible things that were done to her son, but who then so easily scarred Jaxon for destroying him.
“‘Oh, what tangled webs we weave…’”
“Stay out of my head!” I command, glaring at him. “How can you—”
“It doesn’t take mind-reading powers to know what you’re thinking, Grace. It’s written all over your face.”
“Yeah, well, I need to go.”
“And here I was, just getting warmed up.” He stands when I do, and the mocking tone is back in his voice when he says, “Aww, come on, Grace. Don’t you want to know what I thought of your red prom dress? Or that bathing suit you wore to Mission Beach that one time?”
“Bathing suit?” I squeak out, my cheeks on fire as I realize which one he’s talking about. A teeny tiny little bikini. Heather had bought it on sale at a local surf shop, then dared me to wear it. Normally, I wouldn’t have taken that dare for anything, but she’d also accused me of being staid, stuck in my comfort zone, and flat-out chicken.
“You remember,” Hudson prompts. “The purple one with all the strings. It was very”—he draws a couple of tiny little triangles in the air—“geometric.”
He’s teasing me, I know he is, but there’s something more than just a few laughs kindling in his eyes. Something dark and dangerous and just a little bit hot.
I lick my suddenly dry lips as I struggle to get words past the giant lump in my throat. “I really did tell you everything, didn’t I?”
He raises a brow. “How exactly am I supposed to know the answer to that question?”
He makes a good point, but I’m too far gone to acknowledge it now. “If you saw the bathing suit, then you saw…”
He doesn’t say anything else, and he certainly doesn’t fill in the blanks for me. I don’t know if that’s a kindness, though, or just another way to torture me. Because there’s no mistaking the heat in his eyes now, and all of a sudden, it feels like my blood is freezing and boiling at the same time. I don’t know what to do, what to say—may even have forgotten how to breathe for a couple of oxygen-deprived moments—but then Hudson blinks, and the heat is gone as easily as it came.
So easily, in fact, that I wonder if I imagined it.
Especially when he smirks at me and says, “Don’t worry, Grace. I’m sure you still have plenty of secrets left.”