She wasn’t going to focus on the fact that he’d been checking up on her or what that meant. Right now, she was only going to focus on the competition, so she could escape this impromptu meeting with her sanity intact. She’d tuck those pieces of information away, shove them into the huge padlocked box inside her heart labeledHudsonand dissect them later, when she was alone.
“Name your terms,” she said.
The grin on his face grew, and sweet sparkling Moses riding a unicorn… Where only the slight upturn of his lips sent a jolt of awareness to her breasts, his smile set her entire body ablaze. Oh, this was bad. So very, very bad.
“If I win, you have supper with me.”
Mac swallowed down her apprehension. “And if I win?”
“Name it, Kenna.”
“Kenna?” Avery whispered. “Who the hell is Kenna?”
“That’s what he’s called her since they were kids,” Will whispered back. “Now, shut up.”
Mac had been so lost in Hudson, she’d completely forgotten it wasn’t just the two of them out there. She glanced around, noticing the eyes of at least three dozen people volleying back and forth between her and Hudson. At least she knew what was going to be on the gossip circuit for the foreseeable future.
“You stock my freezer with homemade pies,” Mac called to him.
“Done.”
“Not homemade by Marianne or Lilah. Homemade byyou.”
“Fuck me running, hebakes, too?” Avery whisper-yelled.
He dipped his head in a nod. “Homemade by me. When’s the clock start?”
“You want to greet your adoring fans first?” She gestured to the crowd around them, and he did exactly what she’d hoped. He dropped his eyes from hers for a second and glanced around. And she took her chance.
She sprinted east in the direction of Havenbrook High, not looking back when the whoops and cheers went up behind her. Didn’t turn around even when Rory said, “For heaven’s sake, you’d think they were ten years old again.”
Mac wasn’t an idiot—there was no way she could beat Hudson in a physical race. Not when he had at least half a foot on her. Not when it was his job to be a finely honed machine. So she used his long absence to her advantage.
She didn’t take the obvious route the two of them had taken hundreds of times before, instead cutting through lawns and side streets. Her feet pounded over the grass of the park that had taken the place of the set of crumbling buildings from their teens, and she ran toward the back of the stands rather than the front. She didn’t want to dodge any students outside for gym class, not to mention she’d probably collapse if she tried to run up the length of the bleachers after flat out sprinting this whole way.
Instead, she’d climb.
Her blood was thrumming too loudly in her ears to hear anything as she bounded toward the field and the looming silver bleachers. She used her speed to propel her up a ways, leaping onto the first horizontal bar she could get good purchase on. She didn’t focus on how close Hud was, if he was already up there, or what it’d mean if he were. All she thought about was getting to the top of these bleachers as fast as humanly possible.
And if she lost and had to have supper with Hudson…well, there were worse things in the world.
She wrapped her hands around the railing at the top, heaving herself up. She kicked first one leg over and then the other, her feet thumping on the top stair, Hudson a single step below her.
“Beat ya,” she said through panting breaths.
He pointed an accusatory finger at her and narrowed his eyes. “Cheater.”
She shrugged, still attempting to catch her breath but trying not to show it. The dude didn’t even have the decency to be winded. “You never specified a route. Besides, I’m not stupid. You’re a soldier in peak physical condition. And while I’m no slouch, you’d have squashed me.” She sucked in a huge lungful of air and blew it out slowly. “Sometimes the challenges are as much up here—” she tapped her temple “—as anything.”
He cracked a grin. “You think I’m in peak physical condition, huh?”
She blinked at him. “That’s really all you got from that?”
“It’s been a while, forgive me.” And then he reached out, grabbed the hem of her shirt, and tugged her straight to him.
She didn’t even try to put up a fight because…well, because she was tired. Tired of waiting and wanting and dreaming about him. Tired of aching to hold him and not even being able to remember what it’d felt like the last time she had. Without conscious thought, she wrapped her arms around him while he squeezed her, his nose in the crook of her neck.
“Missed you,” he murmured, his breath ghosting across her skin and making her knees weak.
