Page 130 of None Of Your Business

“Listen to me,” Madison says. “You being sick does not take anything from me. My wedding doesn’t matter less because you’re sick. Mom’s illness doesn’t become less real because you’ve been hurting too.”

My eyes burn, tears finally spilling over my cheeks. “I know.”

“Do you?”

Noah comes up beside her, wraps an arm around my shoulders, and pulls me tight against his side. “She’s right, kid. You don’t hide this shit from us. Never again.”

Madison looks at me. “So Hudson knows everything?”

“Everything,” I say.

“I’m glad.”

“You’re really in love with the head doctor?” Noah asks.

A wet laugh bubbles out of me. “Yeah.”

“Does he know?”

“Dear God, no.”

My phone buzzes in my pocket. I pull it out.

Hudson: Are you okay? Do I need to come rescue you from your family?

A real, genuine smile breaks across my face.

Me: No rescue needed. They know.

His reply comes back in seconds.

Hudson: How are you?

I stare at the screen. The old instinct rises up—to type Fine, to sweep it under the rug, to pretend I’m invulnerable.

I delete it.

Me: A little wrecked. But okay.

Hudson: I’m outside.

Madison wipes her eyes one last time, a smirk tugging at the corner of her lips. “Well, go on then. Send him in so I can thank him for taking care of you, and then threaten him about the whole sleeping-with-my-sister thing.”

“I’m going to stand over here,” Noah says. “I’m too pretty for prison.”

Thirty-Nine

Hudson

“Yeah, it’s definitely a wok.”

I hold up the curved piece of carbon steel like it might magically transform into normal cookware if I stare at it long enough. “How do you not have a standard frying pan?”

Rowan doesn’t answer right away. She’s leaning against the opposite counter, crossing her arms beneath her chest in a way that pushes her breasts up against the low neckline of my gray T-shirt—the one she stole and has claimed as her own.

She shrugs, her green eyes bright with mischief. “I’m an artist. I work with what I have.”

My throat goes dry because I know that look in her eyes.