Hudson’s momma pursed her lips and shook her head as she gestured to a box already filled with a variety of baked goods, peach cobbler included. She’d set it aside when they’d first arrived. “Y’all act like I’m an amateur, I swear…”
Hudson held up his hands. “I did nothin’ of the sort, Momma. But Kenna did mention something to that effect the other day.”
His momma slid him a glance out of the corner of her eye but otherwise ignored him.
Couldn’t say the same for Kenna. She shoved her elbow into his ribs and only grinned when a gust of air escaped him. “Liar. You’re gonna pay for that.”
“Oh yeah? Name it.”
She studied him, the wheels clearly spinning in her mind. “Whoever sells the most now till y’all close wins. Loser doesn’t get any of whatever deliciousness is in the box.”
He lowered his voice strictly as an excuse to get closer to her. “You know I can have any of this deliciousness anytime I want, right?”
Crossing her arms, she narrowed her eyes. “I don’t believe I asked for any of your sass as part of the bet. Accept or pass, chicken.”
God, he loved when she got like this. He loved everything about her, honestly, but this—this competitive spark that lit her up from the inside—drove him damn near out of his mind.
He leaned close enough that her citrus scent invaded his senses. He’d gotten his first hard-on thanks to that scent, and now it was like a Pavlovian response any time he smelled it. He shifted, trying his damnedest not to get hard while his momma was two feet away. “With only a few days left in town, I figured you wouldn’t wanna give up one of your last chances to have some of my momma’s treats, but it’s your loss.”
“And with all the winning I’m always doin’, I figured you’d be tired of counting all those chickens before they hatch. Alas, here we are again…” She shrugged and turned away, shooting a smile at the next person in line. She had their pies to them and their money tucked away in the cashbox before Hudson could even tell her they were on.
“I hope you know that doesn’t count.”
She glanced at him over her shoulder, eyebrow raised. “I didn’t realize you were so worried about winning that you’d start off cheatin’.”
He stepped up behind her until he was close enough to feel the heat coming off her. He glanced down at the freckles dusting her shoulders and had to curl his hands into fists at his sides just to stop himself from reaching up and running his finger along them. After years of suppressing the urge, it was second nature to him by now. Still, he couldn’t stop himself from leaning down so his mouth was right next to her ear. “I never cheat.”
She startled—or was that a shiver? She looked back at him, their eyes connecting. And it was in moments like these—when her lips were parted and her eyes were locked on his—that he wondered if this attraction wasn’t just one-sided. If maybe she felt it too. But as quickly as it came, it vanished.
She cleared her throat and broke eye contact. “Don’t think for a minute you can eat half a dozen cookies like last time and have it count toward your sales.”
He stepped alongside her and smiled at the next person in line. To Kenna, he said, “I’d never do such a thing, and I’m offended you’d even suggest it.”
Her answering hum said she wasn’t buying it. “Just don’t get any wild ideas, ’cause I’ll be watchin’ you.”
Yeah, he’d be watching her too, but not for the same reason at all.
For the next forty minutes, it was all his momma could do to keep restocking as he and Kenna worked their asses off, playfully goading each other as they tried to outdo the other. When the only thing left was the box they’d bet on, they called time and started tallying up their sales.
“If y’all wanna do one of those silly bets at the shop, by all means, come on over,” his momma said as she counted the cash they’d collected for the evening. “I wouldn’t turn down a little hustle in there. And you two hustle best when it’s against each other.”
“Speaking of silly bets,” Kenna said with a falsely bright smile as she batted her eyelashes at him. “Your nineteen doesn’t stand up to my twenty-two. Looks like some chump—” she pressed her hand against his chest and pushed “—is gonna be watching the movie without any delicious cobbler, pie, or cupcakes. Sucks to be you.”
Shit, he was going to miss this. He was going to missher. And that fact had been the single most frequent one spinning over and over in his mind for the past year as he’d weighed the pros and cons of doing what he felt in his heart he needed to do against what he knew the three women in his life would want him to do.
After his momma had squashed his dreams of following in his late father’s footsteps and pushed him to go the college route instead, he and Kenna had made plans. Plans that most certainly didn’t involve him half a country—or half a world—away. But he’d tried the whole college thing—he really had. He’d given it a year of his life, and everything about it had felt…wrong. Like he was trying to be something he wasn’t. Like he was being less than the person he knew he could be.
He’d tried reconciling the two—being the man of the house for his widowed momma and baby sister, while at the same time being the man he knew his father would’ve wanted him to be…would’veexpectedhim to be. Turned out, there was no reconciling. He couldn’t be one while attempting the other. Not when his momma’s greatest wish was for her son to be safe, above all else.
The trouble was, Hudson’s proclivities didn’t lend themselves to safety. His having suffered a total of six broken bones—the first at only five years old—and more concussions than he could count was proof enough of that. He liked adventure. He liked action. He likeddoingsomething other than studying and getting good grades and visiting home once a month to make sure everything was okay. And not doing anything but that made him itch. Like his insides were too big, too bold, to be contained by his skin.
Like he was meant for something else.
“I know you can do the takedown on autopilot, but you haven’t said a word since I won.” Kenna slid him a glance as she helped them get everything packed away. “Don’t tell me you’re mad ’cause of it. I won fair and square, and you know it.”
Dammit. He couldn’t keep this up. It’d happened so much over the summer, pretty soon she was going to get a complex that the issue washer. He hated keeping this secret—from everyone, but especially from his best friend.
He had to tell her. And there was no time like the present.
