I pull my shoulders back. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Your toes.”
“Do we have to keep revisiting this topic?”
“Yes.”
“No, we don’t.”
“They helped you jump. The toes did the work.”
“You’re weirdly passionate about foot mechanics.”
“I’m passionate about useful things.”
“You called them pretty sandals yesterday,” I say.
“They were pretty sandals.”
“Not pretty feet.”
“I wasn’t looking at your feet because they were pretty.”
My stomach dips.
“Then why were you looking?”
His eyes meet mine. For a second, I think he might say something flirtatious. Something easy. Something I can laugh off.
He says, “Because you were trying to hide them.”
I swallow.
Hudson turns more fully toward me. “You do that a lot?”
“Hide my toes?”
“Hide things you think people won’t like.”
The statement is too direct. And accurate. I’m learning that’s Hudson.
I look away across the cove. “You really don’t believe in small talk, do you?”
“Not when something better is sitting right there.”
My cheeks warm again.
He huffs out a quiet breath. “I meant the truth, Layla.”
“I know what you meant.”
With him, everything feels like it could be about one thing and another thing at the same time. Toes and truth. Cliffs and choices. Safety and desire.
I rub my palms over my damp shorts. “I guess everybody hides things.”
“Not everybody.”
Hudson leans back on his hands, water still sliding down the hard planes of his chest. The movement makes the muscles in his arms shift. I should look away. I do not.
