“Adventure?”
“Depends on your definition.”
“Does it involve jumping off anything?”
“No.”
I relax.
He adds, “Probably.”
My eyes narrow. “Hudson.”
His smile deepens, and there are the younger edges of him again. Not immaturity or carelessness. Just that quick flash of mischief beneath all the competence. Enough to remind me he is twenty-eight, and I am old enough to know better, and apparently neither fact is saving me.
“You can say no,” he says.
“I know.”
“But?”
I grip the handle of the ice bucket. But I want to say yes. But I like how I feel when I’m near him. But his life sounds impossible and free, and mine has been possible and suffocating. But he almost kissed me, and I have spent the entire morning trying not to imagine what would have happened if no one had interrupted.
“But I’ll come,” I say.
His expression shifts. Not triumph. Not surprise exactly. Something quieter.
“Four,” he says.
“Four.”
Someone calls his name again. He looks toward the dock, then back at me. “I’ll meet you at your cabin.”
“My cabin?”
“You want to meet at the office so Kelsey can stare at us?”
I glance toward the porch, where Kelsey is absolutely pretending not to stare.
“No.”
“Then your cabin.”
The way he says it should not feel intimate. It does.
I nod. “Okay.”
Hudson turns and walks back toward the dock, leaving me beside the ice machine like a woman who has just agreed to something much bigger than a waterfall. Because I have. I know I have. By the time I make it back to cabin six, my phone is buzzing on the counter again.
Marla: You cannot text “HE” and then disappear. Details. Immediately.
Me: His name is Hudson.
Marla: Is he hot?
I glance toward the lake through the window. Hudson is back on the dock, kneeling beside a little girl whose paddle appears to be stuck under a kayak strap. He is patient again. Broad-shouldered. Dark-haired. Younger. Strong. Safe in ways that are not safe at all.
Me: Unfortunately.
