His mouth twitches. “Wouldn’t know.”
“Oh, please.”
“What?”
“You look like that, Hudson. You know.”
His smile fades slightly, but not in a wounded way. More like I have touched something he usually keeps turned away.
“Looking like something doesn’t mean people see you,” he says.
The words hit too close. I sit with them for a second. Then, because I cannot handle how intimate the silence feels, I say, “How old are you?”
He turns his head. My face goes instantly hot.
He watches me with those impossible eyes. “Twenty-eight.”
So there’s a nine-year difference. Not twelve or twenty. Not some scandal large enough to require pearl-clutching and group texts. Nine is still significant.
“That’s a good age. I’m thirty-seven.”
The cove goes quiet around us again. Nine years. I should make that matter more than it does. I should let it become a wall. I should let it protect me from wanting what is sitting beside me, wet and warm and younger and too dangerous to be wise.
But Harold was six years older than me, and all that safety still became a cage. Maybe age is not the thing that saves you. Maybe nothing saves you except telling the truth before your life goes quiet.
Hudson looks toward the ledge. “Want to go again?”
I stare at him. “Again?”
“You said you wanted to jump.”
“I did jump.”
“And now you know you can.”
I look up at the rock. The first time, it looked like a threat. My body remembers the fall. The shock of the cold water. The wild bursting laugh. Hudson’s hands at my waist.
Maybe that is the real problem. I do not only want the jump again. I want the afterward. I want the moment when I surface and he is there.
Something newer, quieter, and braver says, What if the wrong life taught you to be afraid of the right one?
I look back at the ledge.
“Okay,” I say.
Hudson’s eyes sharpen. “Okay?”
“I want to go again.”
He stands and offers me his hand.
I look at it for a millisecond and take it. His fingers close around mine. His hand is warm and feels so strong. This time, when he pulls me to my feet, I do not wobble. Well, not much. He notices but is kind enough not to comment.
Barefoot, we climb the path back to the ledge together. He walks behind me this time, not crowding, just near enough that I feel watched in a way that does not diminish me.
At the top, I step toward the edge before he tells me to. Hudson comes up beside me.
“Look at you,” he says quietly.
