Page 134 of None Of Your Business

Mom recoils, her hands clutching her napkin. “That is completely unfair. We brought her to doctors, Madison. We took her to specialists when she was young. They told us there was nothing physically wrong with her.”

Noah steps up beside Madison. “Did you ask her? She’s sitting right there!”

For some reason, instead of looking at me, Mom’s frantic gaze darts straight to Hudson. Because she trusts him, because he’s the doctor, because old habits run so deep, she looks to him for the answers about her own daughter.

“Hudson?” Mom pleads, her voice tight.

“Rowan is sitting right here, Donna,” Hudson says, his voice dangerously even. “She can speak for herself.”

The room spins. A sickening wave of nausea hits me so hard I can barely keep my balance. Even now—even with the truth laid out on the table—they fall right back into the old script. Talking around me. Looking past me. Treating me like an invisible variable in my own life.

“I can’t do this,” I whisper.

I push my chair back and turn on my heel. I bolt out of the dining room, down the hallway, and slam through the front door into the cool evening air.

I make it halfway down the gravel path before I hear heavy, fast footsteps behind me.

“Rowan!”

I turn around, wiping tears from my face as Hudson catches up to me near the hedges.

“You need to go back in there,” he says, his breathing steady despite his quick pace.

“I can’t. I can’t do it, Hudson. They won’t believe me. They’ve never believed me.”

Hudson blows out a frustrated breath and steps into my space. He grabs my upper arms, anchoring me to the spot.

“I’m going to need you to do something for me,” he pleads.

“Okay,” I whisper, my eyes wide as I search his face.

“I’m going to need you to pretend that I don’t love you for a minute, because I’m about to say some shit that’s going to sound like I’m being your doctor.”

The world stops. My breath catches in my throat.

I love you.

“Hudson?”

“Yes, I love you, but right now, you need to listen to me.”

I nod numbly, tears blurring my vision.

“Right now, you’re acting like a scared kid hiding behind the furniture,” he says, his tone razor-sharp. “You’re twenty-six years old. You run a business, you paint your soul onto six-foot canvases, and you live on your own. But the second you step through that front door, you regress into a fifteen-year-old girl who thinks she needs to ask permission to be sick.”

My mouth opens, a gasping breath catching in my chest.

“It’s comfortable, isn’t it?” he asks, holding my gaze without a single flicker of apology. “It’s terrifying, but it’s safe. Being the misunderstood victim means you never have to demand what you deserve. It means you can stay resentful because it’s easier to be angry at them for not noticing than it is to stand in front of them, look them in the eye, and force them to see you.”

“Hudson—”

“No,” he cuts in firmly, his fingers tightening just enough on my arms to command my full attention. “You listen to me. If you walk away now, you give up your right to be mad at them. You reinforce the exact dynamic you hate. They will keep talking around you because you let them. They will keep treating you like glass because you hide the breaks.”

The truth of it cuts straight through the defensive walls I’ve built over a lifetime.

“You want them to stop seeing you as a dramatic kid?” he asks. “Then stop acting like one. Walk back into that room. You don’t need to shout, and you don’t need to defend your diagnosis. You just need to claim your own voice.”

His thumbs smooth over the sleeves of my sweater.