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“Then why are you still teaching yoga at the gym?” he pushes.
“Why not? I’m young, and I enjoy it. And not all of us were born with savings accounts big enough to buy small island nations, Kingston.” I arch my brow.
“Touché.” He nudges my foot again. “I gotcha. Okay, am I allowed to ask why it’s just you and Dixon?”
I let my eyes trail over the hard planes of his face, buying myself a minute to get my thoughts together. “That’s a long story.”
Hudson lounges in the chair. “We’ve got time.”
“This isn’t something I really talk about,” I admit.
“You don’t have to,” he offers.
But he’s wrong.
I need to share this with him if anything is ever going to happen between us. And I’ve come to realize, I dowant something between us. “Brandon and I don’t have the same father. Neither of us actually knows who our dads are. But Mom... When my mom was sober, she was the best mom in the world. She was beautiful, and she was fun. She used to hold me on her hip and dance with me in the kitchen and do yoga with me in the backyard. But when she wasn’t... well, I didn’t know what it meant back then. I didn’t know sober. I just knew she wasn’t nice to be around.”
I think back to those days. I’m not sure why they’re still crystal clear in my mind, but it’s like it was yesterday instead of twenty years ago. “Brandon and I shared a room, and even at nine years old, he used to sleep on the floor in front of our bedroom door. She used to have men over all the time.Uncles, she’d call them. I didn’t understand it back then. He just said he didn’t want anyone coming in our room.” I figured it out years later, the first time he did it in one of our foster homes. He had a bad feeling, and that night, when the doorknob turned and the door creaked open, it hit Brandon and then shut again.
Hudson’s fists white knuckle the arms of the chair.
“I didn’t know back then she was an addict.” I trail off, remembering how good it used to feel when she smiled down at me.
“Did the state take you and Dix away?” Hud asks as he moves to sit on the ottoman, facing me. He picks up my feet and puts them in his lap as his strong fingers rub my sore arches.
“She died.”
Hudson’s hands stop, and his eyes find mine. “Mads...”
“She died, and she broke me with her.” I pull my feet away from him and tuck them under myself. Worry is written all over Hudson’s face. He’s not sure what to do or what to say, but the hole in the dam that popped open earlier is now a full-blown chasm with raging water pushing against it now.
“Brandon was in third grade, and I was home with Mom because I wasn’t starting school until the following fall. I had just turned five.I thought I was such a big girl.I had just poured my own cereal.” The memory is so clear, it’s frightening because I no longer see it through the rose-colored glasses of a five-year-old. I see it for what it was. “When I tried to find her, she was lying on the floor of the bathroom with a needle sticking out of her arm. Her eyes were closed, and I thought she was sleeping... but I guess I knew something was wrong because I moved her arm and tucked it around myself, so I could lie down with her.”
Hudson sucks in a harsh breath, but I don’t look up. I can’t. Not now.
“I remember how cold the tile was, and the chemical smell of the bathroom. It was early when I tucked myself against her. After a while, I tried to wake her up. She was supposed to take me to the library, and I wanted to go. But she wouldn’t move. Wouldn’t open her eyes.” It’s funny the pieces that are still crystal clear all these years later.
The way her hair tickled my face.
The smudges of mascara giving the illusion of two black eyes.
“I’m not sure how long I was in there before I finally pulled the needle from her arm, thinking she’d wake up then, but she didn’t. I think something inside me broke, and that’s when I realized she wasn’t sleeping. That she wasn’t going to come back.” I still remember how heavy her body felt against mine. I cried for hours, refusing to move. Tears fill my eyes now, even after all these years, remembering those final moments. “She had aspirated at some point. Then later, after she’d been dead a few hours... well, I was lying in my dead mother’s arms. In her fluids. And I was scared to move.” She was so cold, and so heavy.
“I remember thinking I should have taken the needle out sooner. That maybe that would have helped. By the time Brandon got home from his baseball practice after school, it was five o’clock. I had been with her for something close to nine hours.” When I look up at Hud, it’s like all the oxygen has been sucked from the room. He looks horrified.
“Brandon and I were placed in our first foster home that night. It was just a temporary placement, but it was the first of so many.”
“Sunshine...” Hudson stands, then bends down to me. He slides one arm under my legs and the other behind my back, then waits to see what I do.
I guess he’s giving me time to tell him no.
To flinch away.
But I don’t have any fight left in me.
I wrap my arms around his neck and press my face against his chest as he picks me up and carries me to his bed, like I’m something precious.
“Sleep, Maddie. No one will ever hurt you again.”
