Everyoneturned out to be his parents, two polite white people who shared their son’s smile and golden tan. His father asked her about her classes and laughed at her jokes. His mother straightened his hair when he returned from putting away her bags and encouraged them to head upstairs to enjoy the party. Ellory hadn’t even noticed that every guest on the main floor was much older than them until they went upstairs and she began to see people under thirty. She wondered if Hudson’s parents had been among the main-floor attendees. She wondered if she would recognize them if they were.
The speaker on the second floor was playing more modern Christmas covers. Someone she recognized from the lacrosse team grabbed Liam to “deal with an issue in the master bedroom,” leaving her to make her own way through the crowd. Tai was supposed to come with Cody as her date, but she hadn’t texted since that morning. Gaia-not-Greer Hammond and Kendall Rhodes were in one of the empty bedrooms, laughing over their wineglasses. David Chang Vargas was beating someone at cards in another empty room. Two men were kissing fervently in what Ellory hadn’t known was a closet until it was too late.
Without a drink, she thought the party had too much noise and too many strangers for her to enjoy herself. She found a den brimming with coolers and grabbed a light beer to nurse while she explored the rest of the floor. It took her five minutes to realize she was looking for an empty room or a quiet balcony—or, rather, for someone who tended to escape to those places—and groaned internally.
She was such a mess.
Ellory wandered back downstairs, dodging the small crowds talking about vacations she would never take and assets she would never attain, until she reached the kitchen, where she had met the Blackwoods. A sliding glass door let her out onto a covered patio that overlooked an empty pool. A black iron table surrounded by matching chairs with tan cushions beckoned her. Evergreen trees blocked the view beyond the pool, and the night hid her from the lit-up windows. With the music and chatter muffled, Ellory took her first real breath of the day.
She wassucha mess.
taiwo:omw. are you there yet?
Ellory replied in the affirmative and tipped her head back. The arched ceiling blocked the sky from view, but she could imagine that the stars cared little about her. It was oddly reassuring, how minuscule they all were in the grand scheme of the universe. How irrelevant.
She reached for her bottle and missed. It hit the floor instead, shattered glass and fizzing beer spreading before she could stop it. Ellory cursed, and then, because it felt good, she cursed again. She had nothing to clean the stones with, but she could at least pick up the glass before someone got hurt. She reached for a large jagged piece…
…and straightened, her body buzzing with anger and intoxication. She wished it were just the drinks—three, four, maybe five—that she’d had tonight, but she knew it was also him, his presence and the way it overshadowed everything until she could think about nothing and no one else. She held the glass shard like a weapon, and his eyes flashed.
“Are you going to hurt me, Morgan?” he said in a low voice,stepping forward. He bared the elegant line of his throat to her, all smooth brown skin. “Let me make it easy for you.”
She flicked the glass shard into the dark bushes. “I don’t need to hurt you to get you to shut up.” Now she was the one to step forward. She covered his Adam’s apple with one hand, her fingers poised to squeeze. “You think I don’t see how you look at me?”
He didn’t lower his head. His words were growled to the stars: “How do I look at you?”
Instead of pressing down, her hand slithered across his skin until it settled on the back of his neck. She forced him to stare down at her, burning gaze to burning gaze. His full lips were sneering; his dark eyes held a challenge. Ellory pushed his head down farther, until he was looking down her scoop neck.
“Like you want to fuck me,” she said. “Like you already have, and you’re aching for another round.”
He could have broken her grip so easily, could have put some distance between them, but he didn’t. Inside, a party raged, all drunken students and screeching music to dull the monotony of life, but, out here, Ellory had never felt more awake.
“As if I’m the only one aching.” He reached back, captured her wrist. Tugged her forward until she was pressed against him, the swell of his interest teasing her with dark promises that made heat pool between her legs. “As if I’m the only one who wants this.”
“—Morgan?”
Ellory gasped back into the present. Hudson knelt before her, gazing down at her hand, ignorant to the ghostly touches that had left her breathless. She followed his line of sight to see blood dripping from her palm; the pain caught up with her a moment later. She’d clenched her fist around the shard of glass she’d picked upwhile lost in her—what? Reverie? Memory?
It had been so vivid, socarnal. She could still hear herself moan as he entered her from behind, still feel his hungry kisses against the back of her neck. It was the first time she’d heard them, seen them, without Hudson already in front of her, and it was that more than anything that made her wonder if these flashes of memory could be real.
Could they really have…?
“Come inside so I can take a look,” said Hudson, extracting the glass shard from her hand and making a face at the mess she’d left behind. “Someone will deal with that later.”
Did we know each other before?Ellory wanted to ask.Sometimes, I—I see these things, or I hear these things, and they feel like things I’ve forgotten. And it’s always about you. It’s always you. Please. Please, it’s driving me mad.
Ellory didn’t realize she was swaying into him until Hudson’s breath hitched. She ached to feel his mouth on hers, his hands on her, even here on the back patio of Liam’s Christmas party. Between her vision and Hudson’s worshipful stare, she felt utterly licentious.
She moved closer. His eyes reflected the distant stars as they flicked down to her lips and up again. Otherwise, he held perfectly still, and she couldn’t tell if it was from shock or expectation. She tilted her head, and his eyelids lowered, and now he was the one moving toward her. Their lips were a hair’s breadth apart, and she felt hot all over, and he hadn’t even touched her yet.
It was irrational.
It was inevitable.
And Hudson pulled back, his expression shuttering. “Come inside, Morgan. You’re hurting yourself.”
He might as well have slapped her, because even that would havehurt less. Ellory swallowed all the things she wanted to say, settling for a simple nod instead. Without the warmth of her arousal, she felt hollow and cold. Her bloody hand still stung, but it was secondary to her bruised ego.
There was nothing she could say to explain or excuse herself—and he didn’t offer anything either. In the howling silence, all she could do was follow Hudson as he tugged her into the house, leaving the shards of her dignity behind.
