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“I know,” Hudson replies. “She lied about her age.” My fingers find his forearms wrapped around my waist and I dig my fingernails into them. “But she’s pretty badass. She works her butt off and has decent taste in music.”
Norah quirks a disbelieving brow. “You listen to One Direction and BTS?”
“Who?”
“Don’t bother,” I tell him because Norah is just trying to downplay how bomb I really am. “She’s just listing off who she listened to when she was a teenybopper. I was listening to Deftones and Loveless.”
“You listen to Deftone?—”
“I just don’t know how you guys have anything in common,” my sister presses on. “She’s a child.”
My stomach drops because, I swear, it’s like no matter what age I become, it’s how I’m going to be perceived in everyone’s eyes.
“Not from where I’m standing.” His deep voice licks up my skin and I’m so freaking glad he’s standing behind me because my whole body just flushed a nice shade of red.
And there’s no way I can pass that up as being hot from standing over a stove or the AC not being on.
Norah drops her knife, making it clank against the marble countertop, and I know she’s had enough. She’s probably going to go find our mother and bitch about how she could allow this to happen. How she doesn’t kick him out of our family vacation because this is wrong and taboo. Looked down upon by society.
But when she doesn’t move, I already know what she’s geared up to do.
She’s about to lay all my drama down on the table to see if Hudson is man enough to stick around.
“Do you want kids, Hudson?”
I freeze at her question while the man behind me doesn’t seem affected by the question at all.
“Depends.”
Norah quirks a quizzing brow. “On?”
“If Liv wants them or not.”
Norah’s eyes squint. “Olive already has?—”
“Sis, why don’t you go ask Mom if she can make that carrot cake tonight? She promised me.” Norah stares at me like I’ve lost my damn mind at changing such an important subject to food, but Hudson is not going to know about my damn daughter.
Thankfully, she takes the opportunity to go have a five-minute complaining session with Mom instead and leaves the room, leaving Summer with us and creeping me out a bit by the way she’s staring.
“I’ll leave you two love birds to it then,” she finally says, strutting out toward the back patio and leaving me alone with my fake boyfriend.
“Let me guess…” Hudson transmits the moment the sliding door closes. “You’re not cool with your sister either.”
The more Hudson notices things, the more of an asshole I feel. Why my family couldn’t be normal and supportive is beyond me but I don’t wish for him to feel sorry for me either.
“What gave that away?”
“The fact that you couldn’t wait to get her out of the room.”
I notice that Hudson’s thick arm is still wrapped around my middle and I spin around, getting him to drop it because I don’t think it’s such a good idea. “And why wouldn’t you think it was because I wanted to get you alone?”
“Because you can’t stand me.”
My brows pinch a bit because it was the last thing I thought I’d hear him say or care about. “Why would you assume that?”
“Because I’m so out of your league you couldn’t even try if you wanted to.”
And we’re back.
