Before she could make a single sound of protest, Liam went to get baskets, and Boone wandered toward the drinks. She and Hudson were left hovering by the entrance like awkward children whose parents were late to pick them up from kindergarten.
He still wasn’t looking at her, so she studied him from the corner of her eye, trying to figure out what he and Liam could possibly find to talk about. Despite growing up together in Darien,Liam and Hudson had turned into two different people—and not just because they occupied such viscerally opposite ends of her occipital lobe. Liam was all summer, warm as sunshine, a golden boy in every sense of the word, while Hudson was deep winter, human permafrost, who smothered all signs of life beneath an icy exterior. There were some similarities—they were, after all, both popular brown-eyed athletes—but even in that they differed. Liam welcomed people close to the bonfire of his personality, while Hudson’s mysterious-loner routine made them desperate to impress him. Liam was an active captain of the lacrosse team, while Hudson played soccer like he couldn’t avoid it. Liam’s eyes were the brown of a toasted marshmallow, while Hudson’s were the brown of graveyard dirt.
“I forgot that you’d be here,” said Hudson, piercing the uncomfortable silence. “I can head home if—”
“And leave it to me to explain to your roommates that you left because of me? Absolutely not. You’ll pick some damn apples, and you’ll like it.”
Hudson’s lips curved upward. “Will I?”
“No, you don’t get to do that right now,” Ellory said, her tone barely shy of waspish. “You didn’t answer my texts. I was attacked, and you couldn’t even be bothered to ask if I was all right.”
“You werewhat?”
“We’re notfriends, Graves,” she hissed. He had turned to face her, and their height difference rankled when her fury crackled between them like an electric storm. She wanted it to strike him down until he was beneath her, where he belonged. “If I’m texting youat all, you should assume it’s actually important.”
Hudson ran a hand over his face. “Boone took my phone. When he gets mad at one of us, he hides our phones, and—thisis irrelevant. I assure you my dislike of you isn’t murderous in nature.” His hand dropped back to his side. The regret in his eyes made her anger wither. “I didn’t get your texts, Morgan. I swear I didn’t. What do you mean you wereattacked?”
Ellory frowned suspiciously. “Do you know about the Old Masters?”
“Ready to go?” Boone said, shoving a basket between them. Ellory caught it before it hit the ground, her heart composing a blast beat in her chest. In that moment of uninterrupted eye contact, she had seen something flash in Hudson’s dark eyes. Something that looked like fear. “If we focus,” Boone continued, “we can be done before nightfall.”
Hudson’s silent intensity snuffed out like a candle flame. He took a basket from Liam and headed outside without another word, Boone trailing behind him.
Liam passed Ellory a disposable cup of hot chocolate, heavy with whipped cream and rainbow marshmallows. “I hope you like sweets, because that’s all Boone got.”
“Yeah, this is great,” Ellory said, staring after the two men. “Thanks.”
The cup warmed her hands, but her skin prickled with nerves. What did Hudson Graves know that she didn’t?
***
The Tucker Farm orchard was a sprawling maze of apple trees and browning grass. Narrow trunks and feathered branches spilled clouds of leaves into the air, apples of all colors weighing them down. They ranged from four feet to eight feet, crowded together to block Ellory’s view of even the nearest rows. Once Boone andHudson disappeared down another path, she and Liam swiftly lost sight of them. The orchard even swallowed their footsteps, until it was so quiet Ellory felt like they were sharing space with ghosts.
She had spent far too much of the walk trying to figure out a way to get Hudson alone, to demand everything he knew about the Old Masters, but she hadn’t been able to think of a thing. They weren’t friends. He wasn’t even supposed tobehere. While she was mollified that he hadn’t been ignoring her intentionally, she was still on a date, and how would it look to abandon Liam Blackwood to drag Hudson Graves deeper into the trees for a whispered conversation?
Ellory shot one more glance in the direction Boone and Hudson had gone before forcing herself to let this go. For now.
She and Liam picked apples in a companionable silence, pausing only to do the occasional taste test. After the third time Liam managed to find the one sour apple in the bunch, she started calling him a jinx. He lobbed a half-eaten apple at her, which she dodged easily, and chased her laughing form through the trees. Apples spilled from their baskets, but neither of them stopped to notice. There were apples everywhere, after all.
Ellory let Liam press her against the trunk of an apple tree, still giggling. Fine golden hair dusted his arms as he trapped her between them, his palms against the bark. His hair flopped over his damp forehead, loose from its artful style. He looked like a Botticelli painting.
His gaze dropped to her mouth, pupils expanding with palpable desire. Ellory nodded her assent, her hands gliding over his strong shoulders.
Liam kissed her, a soft brush that deepened into curious exploration. He tasted like coffee and mint. Sunlight fell through the trees, warming her face and making her lids glow a fiery red. Heleaned closer—his chest against her chest, his hips against her hips—and she slid her arms around his neck to hold him there as one kiss bled into another and another. She’d forgotten how much she liked kissing as a destination, rather than a rushed journey to the bedroom. She could feel him hard against her, but there was no urgency to any of it. This was nice. He was nice.
Everything was so…nice.
They were swathed in sunshine and birdsong, so it took Ellory a moment to notice the dissonant chord in the sonata. Her eyes opened, briefly studying the messy curl of Liam’s eyelashes before moving beyond the curve of his golden cheek. A crow sat on the branch of a nearby apple tree, watching them with beady black voids.Eyesseemed like the wrong word for those fathomless holes, trapped in shadow despite the brightness of the day. Its knifelike beak pointed to the right, and its wings were pulled close to its skeletal body. The crow did not blink, and neither did Ellory. Unease rippled through her chest until she yanked back from Liam’s abruptly claustrophobic kisses.
“What?” he asked, breathless and distracted.
Ellory, whose breathing was even, swallowed past the lump in her throat. “Nothing. Nothing, I—we should keep moving.” She didn’t have to feign her shiver. “It’s kind of cold.”
Liam’s gloved finger traced the line of her jaw before he pulled away completely. “More of that later.”
“Definitely,” she promised.
Her basket was in the grass, apples trickling out in a waterfall of red and gold. More crows had gathered there, prodding at the fruit in a way that seemed more menacing than curious. One lifted its wings and squawked when she reached for the basket handle, and no fewer than six birds dropped from the trees to surround it. A murder of crows stared her down, daring her to try her luck.
