We’d had two fights our entire lives, and they’d both happened at the cabin. The first had been almost twenty years ago, when Hudson had been playing with the marble my grandfather had given me before he’d died and then managed to drop it in the lake. He’d spent hours looking for it until his skin was wrinkled and pruny, but it’d been lost forever.
He’d made it his mission from that point forward to atone for his mistake, using his allowance to buy me a new marble whenever he could. Even now, all these years later, I ignored the flip of my stomach when I received a package from Hudson, sent from wherever he was stationed around the world and filledwith two things—a short note and a marble. I had every color of the rainbow now, not to mention about two dozen tiger’s-eye marbles like the one from my granddad.
And if I happened to keep every one of the notes tucked away in a box in the back of my closet, well… No one ever had to know.
Our second fight had been the weekend when everything had changed. When he’d told me he’d been keeping a secret from me for months and that he was enlisting. When all my plans shifted and my entire life’s trajectory went off course.
The cabin also held the not-so-innocent memories—our first kiss. Rounding the bases. Losing our virginity to each other. And then the weekend of our last fight, when we’d made up by getting lost in each other’s bodies.
This was the last place I should be now. Especially with Hudson’s kiss fresh on my mind and my lips.
I opened my mouth to tell Edna we needed to turn around. That I had an appointment I’d forgotten about or that I was about to pee my pants and needed a bathroom, stat. Something—anything—to get me the hell out of there.
But before I could say anything, the car sputtered and then died.
Directly in front of Hudson’s cabin.
CHAPTER EIGHT
HUDSON
I drovethe familiar path down winding back roads, surrounded by trees lit on fire with their orange and yellow and red leaves. I’d only been back in Havenbrook for three days, but I’d already fallen so easily right back into a rhythm that hadn’t ever quite left me.
I’d thought about traveling this path a thousand times while I’d been deployed. I loved flying my bird, loved the rush of returning to base with a mission complete, but I’d missed meandering through the back roads of Havenbrook in my beat-up truck, knowing exactly where I was going without even trying.
I’d missed home, plain and simple.
And more than that, I’d missed Kenna.
After she’d hightailed it out of my place yesterday like her ass was on fire, I figured I’d give her some time to get used to the idea that this attraction between us still burned as hot as a Mississippi summer, and it wasn’t going anywhere. Because there was no way I was stepping back. Not now that my memories of her taste had been refreshed and were currently taking up ninety-seven percent of my thinking ability.
“You’re really not gonna talk about this, huh?” Caleb said from the passenger’s seat, his gaze focused out the side window.Just because his attention was pointed elsewhere didn’t mean he wasn’t totally and completely in tune with every move I made.
Which meant there was only one way to play this. “Talk about what?”
As if he had all the time in the world, he turned his head and locked eyes with me, one eyebrow raised.
Yeah, so, I’d avoided all talk of Kenna since she’d left yesterday. Since the only thing that had saved us from fucking right there amidst all the piecrusts was Caleb interrupting. If my friend weren’t like a brother to me, I’d hate him a little bit for it. Okay, I still hated him a little bit for it, brother-bond or not.
I’d managed to distract and divert Caleb’s attention almost immediately yesterday and figured that was that. No talks to be had, no answers to come up with. I should’ve known better. Caleb was one of the most astute people I’d ever met—nothing got past him.
“I didn’t sleep with her,” I said.
“I didn’t ask if you did.”
I blew out a heavy sigh. “What do you wanna know? I’m not gonna give you a play-by-play.”
“Never asked you to. But considering how much I knew about Kenna before even meeting her, I figured you’d have a few things to say.” he shrugged. “Maybe not.”
Silence hung in the cab, which was nothing new with us. If Caleb said fifty words over a three-hour span, he was running his mouth. But today it wore on me, and I finally shook my head, gripping the steering wheel.
“I want her. Badly. And if I had any illusions that I’d somehow want her less while being here, those were all eviscerated yesterday in my momma’s kitchen just before you walked in.”
“And is Kenna on board with that?”
I barked out a laugh. “Not even a little bit. She runs from things that are risky, and I’m the biggest risk of all.”
He was quiet for long moments. That was it? He wasn’t going to impart some kind of magical wisdom that would show me exactly how I should proceed? True, he wasn’t much for talking, but when he did, I had learned to listen.
