“I think so. I’m still gettin’ the full story.”
Kenna nodded before ducking her head, her brows drawn in as she focused once again on the stack of papers in front of her.
Hudson brought his attention back to his phone and typed out a response.Basically what you’re saying is she smelled like shit?
A text from each of them came in at the same time.
Yes.
No!
The bubbles appeared, and then another message from Caleb popped up.
Your sister just punched me and told me to apologize to the dog. So that’s where we’re at.
His sister was a lot of things, but a delicate petal wasn’t one of them. If anyone could hold their own with his XO, it was her.
He typed back,Sounds about right.
What Caleb MEANT to say was that she’s an angel and we love having her.
Wait, we? The two of them had been together when he’d dropped CB off that morning, but he’d assumed since Lilah was on duty at The Sweet Spot, Caleb would take the dog to the cabin with him while he continued working on the place.
Hudson only managed to feel a tinge of guilt at the fact that his buddy had been doing as much—if not more—work on the cabin than he’d been doing himself. But then he reminded himself that this was exactly what Caleb had needed and why he’d come home with Hudson in the first place instead of going to his empty apartment.
We?He sent the text and then waited for several minutes before a reply came in—the dancing dots would appear and then disappear before reappearing again. Someone was working up quite a story.
The message came from his sister, when it finally arrived.I went to the cabin with Caleb so he could finish up the shingles like y’all talked about. Nash had to repair damage from a leaky pipe, so I needed to be gone anyway.
And yet she didn’t just keep CB at her apartment…
Like the freaky little sister she was, it was as if she had heard his thoughts, because it took only a couple seconds for another text to come in from her.
The noise has been driving me crazy, so I needed a little peace.
Something was going on, and Hudson would bet his pocketknife collection it had to do with his partner and his baby sister getting together right under his nose.
He poised his phone to begin typing out a response to ask just that when Kenna blew through the outer office where the assistant’s desk sat, a stack of papers in her hand and her hair all askew.
They’d spent two days in the wilderness and then half a day stuck in a hospital, and yet her hair hadn’t looked crazier than it did right then.
“Everything all right?” he asked, standing and slipping his phone into his back pocket.
She barked out a humorless laugh. “No. No, everything is absolutely not all right. I don’t know what the fuck I’m doin’, Hud, but I still have to do it, right? I still have to figure out what the hell is needed because I’m the only one here to do it, and everyone’s countin’ on me.” Her voice rose with each word until she was really on a roll, yelling into the room empty save for the two of them. “Doesn’t matter that me doin’ this job was a complete afterthought—it’s not like I’m not used to that. And besides, it’s the least I can do since I so epically failed at bein’ a good daughter by runnin’ off to a freakin’ mountain while my family went through hell.”
“Hey…” Hudson gently took the stack of papers out of her arms—a stack she’d managed to wrangle into an orderly pile, he noted—and set them on the already cluttered desk. Then he propped his ass against the edge and tugged her between his spread knees. “You’re not a failure because you were gone, Kenna. I mean, what’s your solution to that? Never leave town? Walk around wearin’ a walkie-talkie so you’re available 24/7/365?”
“So what if I do?”
“C’mon, you know that’s not realistic.”
“What do you know about it, anyway?” she snapped, yanking her hand out of his grasp. “You weren’t here when your family went through their own hell while your momma was in the hospital. You didn’t see what happened to them. But I did, and now I’m doin’ the same damn thing to my family.”
Ouch. Her words were meant to cut deep, and they did, though he tried not to take it personally. He knew the only reason she was lashing out at him—had ever lashed out at him—was because she felt so comfortable with him. More comfortable than with her family. She felt secure in their relationship, and that was something at least.
It took a lot for Kenna to get to this stage, but he’d borne the brunt of her wrath a time or two during their twenty-year friendship. Like when Will had started dating Finn back in high school and pulled away from Kenna, leaving her behind without a second thought.
Instead of getting defensive—because, really, she was right. Whatdidhe know about it? She’d seen whatever devastation had happened to his family because he’d been a continent away—he gripped her hips and tugged her even closer. Squeezed her a little tighter, just to remind her he wasn’t going anywhere.
