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“What whole spiel?” I asked, knowing damn well exactly what she told them but wanting to hear it from her mouth.
She hesitated, clearing her throat, and the hum in the background stopped. Must be sewing. “You know, the whole thing about knowing each other for two years and that we love each other, yada yada.”
I nodded to myself, unwilling to show how her flippant use of the word love struck a chord in me. “Listen,” I sighed, resting the back of my head against the hard concrete wall. “I won’t be home until tomorrow night, now. I was thinking maybe, if you’re up for it, you could come over when I get back and we can tell Jamey together. I know we’re still in the danger zone but I just… I want to tell him. You’re almost out of it anyway.”
“Yeah,” she said softly, bringing herself closer to the phone. “Yeah, Hudson, we can do that. Are you sure you’re ready for him to know?”
“I’m sure. I’ve been thinking about it a lot the past few days, among other things. I’m ready for him to know.”
“Okay.” Silence, again. I wished I could settle myself into it, I wished it was comfortable, but with the amount running through my head and the intense noise of the hustle and bustle around me, I couldn’t. “I hope he’s not upset by it.”
“He won’t be,” I reassured her. If she were in front of me, I’d take her face in my hands, kiss her forehead, her lips. Make her less nervous. “If you only knew how many times he’s asked for a sibling, you wouldn’t be worried in the slightest. He’ll be over the moon, Sophie. He loves you.”
“And you?”
My words caught in my throat. What is she asking me?
“Are you excited?”
My god, Sophia, you couldn’t have been clearer? “Of course I am.”
“Okay,” she breathed. “Then yeah. Tomorrow night. Text me when you land?”
The way my chest clenched at the idea of her being at all nervous about my flight was foreign to me. “Yeah. I’ll text you when I land. See you tomorrow.”
“Bye, Hudson.”
She hung up before I did, leaving me alone on the too-hot ground of West Forty-Eighth Street. I gripped the lanyard around my neck, giving it one swift tug and breaking it. I couldn’t stand to be at the conference for another second.
I needed a drink, and I needed to think. I had to plan how I was going to tell her. It had to be tomorrow, no chickening out this time. I knew what I felt but all of it meant fucking nothing if Sophie didn’t love me too.
Chapter 36
Sophie
Friday
The ‘will he, won’t he’ was starting to get on my damn nerves.
I picked at my food as Hudson sat across the table from me. Takeout, again. I made a mental note to teach him some easy recipes if he was at all interested in cooking. I knew damn well he could afford takeout every night, could afford private chefs and charter jets and whatever the hell else he wanted. A private chef could be a great idea.
He’d rewarded Jamey’s good behavior at his grandparent’s with pizza. The food itself was great, so good that I could understand Jamey’s intense excitement over it every time it was so much as mentioned, but it was so hard to concentrate when all I could think of was Sunday night and our phone call. He had to have feelings for me. Somewhere down inside that ice-cold exterior of his there had to be some warmth. I just didn’t know when, or if, he would tell me.
Hudson met my gaze, a smile on his face from something Jamey had said that I hadn’t heard in my daydreaming. “You alright with that, Sophie?”
I blinked at him, wondering what the hell the correct answer could be, noting Jamey’s slack-jawed mouth. “Please, Sophie?”
“I’m sorry, I missed that. What?”
“Ice cream,” Hudson chuckled, plucking another slice of pizza from the open box on the table. “I was thinking we could take Jamey down to Debbie's after we finish up dinner and do the thing.”
Debbie's. He’d mentioned it so absurdly casually. Debbie's was a little ice cream shop down by the harbor, a mom-and-pop kind of place that had been running since well before either of us had been born. My parents used to take me and Aaron when we were kids whenever we had stellar report cards or even when we’d simply lost a tooth.
“Yeah, I’m definitely up for that.”
Hudson grinned softly at me, his eyes fixed on mine. Jamey shouted something in excitement but I didn’t hear it, and judging by the way Hudson watched me, he didn’t either. It made those mindless butterflies take off again. Did he want to tell me something there, too?
“Perfect.”
