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Hudson looks at my mom again and I want to shove my fist down his throat. “Tate and I gowayback. We’re, like-” he stares pointedly at Tate “-reallyclose.”
Tate flexes his free hand, itching to put it to work, and he grits out, “Not by choice.”
There’s an uncomfortable palpable tension in the air and my earlier fears are resurfacing. What is not being said right now? What else don’t I know?
Hudson jerks his chin at me and it causes me to instinctively glance at him. I know he’s speaking to me but I look away anyway. “Wanna know how I came to be here tonight?” he taunts. “Albeit, I actually didn’t know thatyouwould be here. But word got back to me from town that you’d been together at the diner, so I thought, seeing as there was a party going on, it was the perfect opportunity to come and see. And lo and behold…” he trails off, a triumphant smile on his face. It looks sinister when juxtaposed to the blood drying on his cheeks.
I’m still standing behind Tate but my eyes are locked in with Mitch. He’s got that apprehensive worried-for-me look on his face that makes my intestines constrict. My face is so ashen you would think that I was dead.
How did Hudson know about the party at Mitch’s house tonight?
Sensing the secret dialogue happening between Mitch and me, Hudson turns to Mitch with renewed vigour. “Thanks for the invite by the way. Obviously Pam wasn’t gonna come, but it was real gentlemanly of you to ask.”
Pam?
Hudson’s eyes hone in on Tate, and I feel his entire form swell. My mom is looking between the two of them, unaware of the significance of the exchange but suspicious about the mounting testosterone levels. Mitch keeps his eyes on me the whole time, shaking his head slowly as the realisation finally punches through the surface.
The reason why Mitch knows Hudson. The reason why Mitch knows Hudson’sdad.
The reason why Tate and Hudson had to be friends at school. The reason why they sharedeverything.
The reason why Hudson left school at the exact same time that Tate did, when Tate was moving house with his mom.
I stumble one step backwards as it all falls into place.
Pamela is the name of Tate’s mom, and she just so happened to be dating a guy who was a cop three years ago.
It can only mean one thing.
Hudson is Tate’s step-brother.
Chapter 28
Present
The amount of information that has come to light in the darkness outside of Mitch’s house is too much, too quickly, and I’m struggling to process all of it. There’s a deadly tension mounting between Tate, Hudson, and Mitch, and even my mom can sense it, although she doesn’t quite have all of the pieces of this puzzle to facilitate her in understanding the significance of what Hudson just revealed.
If Hudson is Tate’s step-brother then that means that he is going to be in his lifeforever. And of all of the people in the world, Hudson is the last person who I ever, ever,everwant to be in the vicinity of again.
If I want to have Tate in my life, then I have to have Hudson in my life too.
And that is something that is simply impossible.
The driver’s door of Tate’s truck is still ajar from when he jumped out barely ten minutes ago, so I release Tate’s hand from my mine and turn around so that I can climb up on the step, kneel over his seat, and collect my glasses from the dashboard. I slip them on as I dismount from the car, my movements burdened with weightlessness as the paralysis of my distress spreads through my veins. When I get my feet back on the road Tate has turned one-eighty to look at me, but I don’t meet his eyes, too scared of my own reaction. I one hundred percentrefuse to cry in front of Hudson – I did it back then but I won’t be doing it now – so I can’t risk looking at Tate’s face.
I glance in the direction of my mom and fiddle with my frames as I say, “I just need one minute. I’ll be back… I just need…”
I clamp my lips together, turn on my heel, and then I begin to walk quickly down the street, crossing to the pavement on the other side of the road, eager to put as much distance between this whole situation and myself as possible.
I hear my mom shouting something about how dangerous it is to be out alone like this at night, but I keep on walking with no intentions of stopping. Little does she know that the biggest danger to me in this neighbourhood is standing right next to her.
By the time that I round the street corner I break into a full on run. It shoots a rush of adrenaline straight to the centre of my chest and in the next second three years’ worth of tears are gushing out of me. It’s ugly. I’m sobbing so hard that my sternum is burning and a rusty ache is scraping at the back of my throat. I wish I had my inhaler with me because I don’t know how long I can run like this without external aid to my lungs. My legs are shaking, but my horror-induced adrenaline is propelling me forward, hands swiping at my soaked cheeks and wet lashes leaving salty dots across my glasses lenses. An involuntary sob escapes my throat and I wish that I could just shut the fuck up. What if someone hears? I hope that no one sees me because this is the most embarrassing and heart-breaking moment of my life.
I only register the footsteps behind me when they’re one second away, but as I spin around, expecting whoever is there to try and stop me or bring me back, I’m met with Tate’s warm chest. He scoops me into his arms, enveloping me in his body, and he aids my escape without a word. His jacket is hanging over his forearm and he tries to drape it around me as he jogs us further away from Mitch’s house. My tears are still audible and Icringe into his neck as I think about how weak I look right now. But then again, if a life with Tate is now impossible, it shouldn’t matter if he thinks that I’m lame, because he won’t have to be around me for much longer anyway.
The thought makes me cry harder.
I don’t know where he’s taking me but the even confidence of his strides tells me that he does. I pull away slightly from his neck so that I can try and look up at him but the hand that was cradling my back strokes upwards, and he presses my head to his body again. My tears are silent now and I feel a little bit less pathetic knowing that he can’t hear them. I rub my fingertips around the thick base of his neck and press my cold nose against his skin, inhaling. His scent is masculine, comforting, warm. His entire ribcage swells sharply against my body, as if he felt a palpable physical extraction by my breathing him in.
