“And with all the winning I’m always doin’, I figured you’d be tired of counting all those chickens before they hatch. Alas, here we are again…” She shrugged and turned away, shooting a smile at the next person in line. She had their pies to them and their money tucked away in the cashbox before Hudson could even tell her they were on.
“I hope you know that doesn’t count.”
She glanced at him over her shoulder, eyebrow raised. “I didn’t realize you were so worried about winning that you’d start off cheatin’.”
He stepped up behind her until he was close enough to feel the heat coming off her. He glanced down at the freckles dusting her shoulders and had to curl his hands into fists at his sides just to stop himself from reaching up and running his finger along them. After years of suppressing the urge, it was second nature to him by now. Still, he couldn’t stop himself from leaning down so his mouth was right next to her ear. “I never cheat.”
She startled—or was that a shiver? She looked back at him, their eyes connecting. And it was in moments like these—when her lips were parted and her eyes were locked on his—that he wondered if this attraction wasn’t just one-sided. If maybe she felt it too. But as quickly as it came, it vanished.
She cleared her throat and broke eye contact. “Don’t think for a minute you can eat half a dozen cookies like last time and have it count toward your sales.”
He stepped alongside her and smiled at the next person in line. To Kenna, he said, “I’d never do such a thing, and I’m offended you’d even suggest it.”
Her answering hum said she wasn’t buying it. “Just don’t get any wild ideas, ’cause I’ll be watchin’ you.”
Yeah, he’d be watching her too, but not for the same reason at all.
For the next forty minutes, it was all his momma could do to keep restocking as he and Kenna worked their asses off, playfully goading each other as they tried to outdo the other. When the only thing left was the box they’d bet on, they called time and started tallying up their sales.
“If y’all wanna do one of those silly bets at the shop, by all means, come on over,” his momma said as she counted the cash they’d collected for the evening. “I wouldn’t turn down a little hustle in there. And you two hustle best when it’s against each other.”
“Speaking of silly bets,” Kenna said with a falsely bright smile as she batted her eyelashes at him. “Your nineteen doesn’t stand up to my twenty-two. Looks like some chump—” she pressed her hand against his chest and pushed “—is gonna be watching the movie without any delicious cobbler, pie, or cupcakes. Sucks to be you.”
Shit, he was going to miss this. He was going to miss her. And that fact had been the single most frequent one spinning over and over in his mind for the past year as he’d weighed the pros and cons of doing what he felt in his heart he needed to do against what he knew the three women in his life would want him to do.
After his momma had squashed his dreams of following in his late father’s footsteps and pushed him to go the college route instead, he and Kenna had made plans. Plans that most certainly didn’t involve him half a country—or half a world—away. But he’d tried the whole college thing—he really had. He’d given it a year of his life, and everything about it had felt…wrong. Like he was trying to be something he wasn’t. Like he was being less than the person he knew he could be.
He’d tried reconciling the two—being the man of the house for his widowed momma and baby sister, while at the same time being the man he knew his father would’ve wanted him to be…would’ve expected him to be. Turned out, there was no reconciling. He couldn’t be one while attempting the other. Not when his momma’s greatest wish was for her son to be safe, above all else.
The trouble was, Hudson’s proclivities didn’t lend themselves to safety. His having suffered a total of six broken bones—the first at only five years old—and more concussions than he could count was proof enough of that. He liked adventure. He liked action. He liked doing something other than studying and getting good grades and visiting home once a month to make sure everything was okay. And not doing anything but that made him itch. Like his insides were too big, too bold, to be contained by his skin.
Like he was meant for something else.
“I know you can do the takedown on autopilot, but you haven’t said a word since I won.” Kenna slid him a glance as she helped them get everything packed away. “Don’t tell me you’re mad ’cause of it. I won fair and square, and you know it.”
Dammit. He couldn’t keep this up. It’d happened so much over the summer, pretty soon she was going to get a complex that the issue was her. He hated keeping this secret—from everyone, but especially from his best friend.
He had to tell her. And there was no time like the present.
After they’d packed everything away in the bed of his ancient truck, Hudson and Kenna strolled back toward the field. Even the movie already flickering to life couldn’t distract him from the mountain range residing in his stomach over the thought of finally telling her…everything.
“Oh, hey,” she said and looked over at him. “I was thinkin’, maybe we wanna go to State a day early? So you can show me around a bit. I know I already got the tour but…” She shrugged and elbowed him in the side as she shot him a smile. “It’s not the same. You’ll be able to tell me where to get mac and cheese exactly how I like it.”
Momma Sally’s on Jefferson—creamy and cheesy and a little crunchy from the breadcrumbs on top…just how Kenna loved it. And yeah, it should’ve been him showing her around, guiding her to all the places he knew she’d love because he knew her so damn well. But it wasn’t going to be, and he no longer had the option or the ability to change that.
“Maybe,” he said noncommittally. He’d been doing a lot of that lately—being evasive as hell—and he hated every minute of it. From the narrowed-eyed look Kenna shot him, she did too.
“What’s your deal?” She backhanded him in the stomach, a little more force behind it than her usual playful jabs. “You’ve been acting all squirrelly any time I bring up Starkville. You afraid I’m gonna ruin your street cred or something when we’re both at State?” She laughed, but the sound came out tense and stilted.
They’d been friends long enough that he could sense the frisson of unease running through her at the thought that this might be something that could come between them. He hoped like hell it didn’t, because if them finding a rhythm at the same school put them on shaky ground, they didn’t stand a chance against what was actually coming.
He looked over at her, saw the apprehension in her eyes, and hated that he’d been the one to put that emotion there. He wanted to set her mind at ease, but he feared the answer he gave her wouldn’t just crack her foundation, but make the whole thing crumble to the ground.
Which meant he was right back where he started… And round and round he went.
Enough.
He cleared his throat and wrapped his fingers around her elbow, tugging her toward him. “C’mere with me for a minute.” He pulled her under the bleachers and away from prying eyes…and ears.
Kenna cast a suspicious glance around their surroundings. And for good reason. People came down here to do one of three things: get drunk, get high, or get fucked. Even now, he could hear the sounds of two people going at it on the other end of the stands, hidden from their eyes thanks to the darkness.
“Ummm…” She lifted her gaze, looking up at him with confusion written all over her face. “You’re kinda freakin’ me out. What’s goin’ on, Hud?”
“I just…” He ran a hand through his hair and over his face. Pacing in front of her, he tried to find the right words. Words that had evaded him for months. “I’ve been wantin’ to talk to you for a while, tryin’ to find the right way to say it. But I realized there’s no good way, and I just need to do it already.”
Kenna’s brows drew down, her forehead creased as she watched him. There was trepidation and something el
se he couldn’t quite identify in her gaze. “It can’t be any worse than the time you lost my tiger’s-eye marble at the bottom of the lake.”
Oh, it was infinitely worse than that, and that marble had been given to her by her granddad shortly before he died of a heart attack. The only reason she didn’t still hate him for losing it was because he’d searched for that fucker for days—sunup to sundown—until his skin had become shriveled and clammy. When they’d had to leave the cabin—still without her beloved marble—she’d punched him in the stomach and told him the next marble he found belonged to her.
He’d lost count of how many he’d given her over the years since.
When he didn’t even crack a smile at the reminder of their one and only true fight, the grin on her face fell. “Hud…”
He stepped closer to her and placed his hands on her shoulders, his thumbs brushing along her collarbone. A friendly touch bordering on something more—riding that line he’d perfected over the years. “You know you’re my best friend.”
She nodded, even though he didn’t need an answer. Their friendship was something neither of them had ever questioned. Even when it’d been tested to the limits—by outside forces and their own stupid, fucked-up ideas—it was never something fragile or uncertain.
“I just…I want you to know that before—”
“Mac!” Will yelled from around the corner, walking along the side of the bleachers. Then, quieter, just a grumble more to herself than anyone else, “Pain-in-the-ass baby sister won’t pick up her damn phone…”
“Shit.” Kenna looked from Hudson to where Will walked past, having no idea they were just out of sight. “Hold that thought, okay?”
She stepped out from under the bleachers, and Hudson followed. “What’s Nat done now, Will?” Kenna asked, arms crossed.
Willow whipped around, her eyes narrowing when she glanced behind the two of them to the bleachers. “Hope I didn’t interrupt anything.”
“You did, so hurry up and spit it out.”
Willow’s eyebrows lifted, and from the look she shot them, it was clear what she thought she’d interrupted. Instead of commenting on it, she said, “Two guesses as to where our troublemakin’ brat of a sister is headed.”
Kenna’s forehead creased before her eyebrows shot up. “It better not be the Prichetts’ barn.”
“Yeah, well, if there’s one thing she’s consistent with, it’s that she’ll get into the only thing she’s absolutely not supposed to.”
“Why the hell is she so obsessed with that run-down shack?”
“You and I both know tellin’ her no is like wavin’ a red flag in front of a bull. That girl hears the word and revs her engine. Tellin’ her no and that just walkin’ inside the pieced-together pile of rotted wood is a death sentence? Doin’ it gives her a hit of her favorite drug—adrenaline. Course she’s gonna do it. I’ve been callin’ her, but she’s not answerin’.”
Kenna huffed and rolled her eyes. “Those three are nothin’ but a six-legged menace.” She shot Hudson an apologetic look, then turned back to Will. “Well, c’mon then. Let’s go get the little shits.”
“About that…” Will said, the venom in her voice gone now that she was trying to sweet-talk Mac. “I was sorta hopin’ y’all’d go wrangle ’em and bring ’em back to the house.”
“Us? This isn’t Hud’s issue. He’s had to deal with her more times than he should have to, considering he’s not a Haven. And where the hell will you be?”
Will grabbed Kenna’s hand and gave it a tug, her eyes pleading. “Come on, Mac. I wanna hang out for a bit. I’m not gonna see my friends after next week when we leave for State. And we all know you and Hud’ll still be attached at the hip up there.”
At her words, the mountain range in Hudson’s stomach moved and shifted, grew to at least twice its size, its jagged peaks piercing a few organs along the way. He probably didn’t need them anyway.
Kenna sighed but shook off her sister and gave her a playful shove back toward the football field. “Yeah, yeah, fine. Go have your fun.”
“You’re the best! But hurry—you know what she can get up to in even ten minutes.”
“Don’t have much room for barkin’ orders, Will. And you owe us!” she yelled after her sister, but Willow was already jogging away.
Kenna turned back to Hudson, apology written all over her face. “I hate Nat.”
He slung an arm over her shoulder and guided her toward his truck, knowing she’d want to get there as fast as possible. If there was one thing he’d learned being a part of this crazy family was that sometimes seconds counted when it came to the youngest Haven. “Aw, come on now. You don’t.”
“I do. She’s a pain in my ass, and—”
“And you’ll miss her.”
Kenna’s shoulders slumped under his arm, and she leaned into his side. He always soaked up these moments with her, the stolen touches that weren’t supposed to mean anything between them but always did to him. But now? He inhaled them, attempting to stockpile them for the coming future. A future without her.
“Yeah, I will.” She reached over and pinched his side. “But I swear, if you tell her that, I’ll tell Lilah her date for homecoming didn’t have the flu so much as was scared off by an overbearing big brother.”
He grunted. “You and I both know that little shit had a lot more than dancin’ on his mind.”
“Well, he’s sixteen, so yeah.”
He opened the passenger door for her and waited until she climbed in, his nostrils flaring when her ass was eye level and practically delivered to him on a silver platter. He needed to focus tonight—if not to tell Kenna what he needed to, then to find her sister before Nat got into a world of trouble. Shaking his head to clear it, he shut Kenna’s door and walked around to his side, content to be distracted from the issues plaguing him, even if only for a little while.
BY THE TIME they had Nat’s two troublemaking best friends delivered to their doorsteps and were in front of the Havens’ sprawling home, it was just before their curfew.
“Bye, Hud, thanks for the ride!” Nat jumped out of the truck bed, barely waiting for the vehicle to stop moving before she took off. She ran up the front walk and scaled the steps in one giant leap before letting the front door bang shut with all the subtlety of a hurricane.
“Not an ounce of remorse in her body.” Kenna shook her head as she looked to where her sister had disappeared. “It’s like she doesn’t even understand that she’s being a shit. It’s a good thing she’s my sister. Otherwise, I really would hate her.”
She turned toward him, propping her leg up on the bench seat and tucking it beneath the other. Her face was cast in shadows, the only illumination coming from the porch light. “I’m sorry we got interrupted at the field. What’d you wanna talk about? I assume it wasn’t just to profess your undying friendship and loyalty to me.” She smiled at him, her grin brightening her features more than any light ever could.
Friendship and loyalty. Two things he was betraying by this new path he’d chosen. He loved her. Had loved her for as long as he could remember—that was never in question. But he’d learned that sometimes love wasn’t enough.
In the year he’d spent away at college, trying—for himself, for his momma, and for Kenna—he’d realized if he stayed there, if he went the route his momma wanted him to, the one Kenna assumed he would, he wouldn’t be living up to his potential. And if he was ever to be with Kenna the way he wanted to, how was that fair to her? Giving her a partner who was only half the man he could be? She deserved someone strong and competent. Someone who wasn’t a shell of himself.
He opened his mouth to say something—what, he had no idea—when a shadow fell over the porch light, and there stood Kenna’s daddy, arms crossed over his chest, eyes fixed on them.
She glanced over her shoulder toward the house, then twisted back to face Hudson. “Shit. I gotta go.” Reaching out, she pressed her hand to his chest, a light touch but one that burned even
through his shirt. “Can you tell me quick?”
He knew, no matter in how few words he used to tell her, it wouldn’t change her response. There’d be anger and hurt and frustration—an ocean of conversation to be had, and something they couldn’t do with only minutes in front of them.
Instead, he rested his arm across the back of the bench seat, his fingers close enough to touch her ponytail. He let the silky strands brush through his fingers, and when she noticed, he held on and tugged. “Come to the cabin with me this weekend.”
Kenna blinked up at him in surprise. “What?”
“Cash in on that favor from Will and make it seem like y’all are goin’ up early. Then come to the cabin with me instead.”
“But what about what I said earlier? Showin’ me around…”
“Come on, Kenna. One last weekend together before—” He cut himself off, not able to say the words that were really going through his head. Turned out it didn’t matter, because she was nodding, her bottom lip caught between her teeth, and shit, he wanted her to be his. Wanted to reach up and pluck her lip from those confines, then lean in and suck it into his mouth. He wanted so much from her, but he couldn’t focus on that. Not when one thought echoed in his mind, even as he watched her stroll up the front walk, tossing a wave over her shoulder before she escaped inside.
One last weekend together before everything changes.
A few days later, Mac tossed things into a couple boxes with no rhyme or reason as to which one they landed in. All the necessities she’d need for the dorm had already been purchased and were stowed away in the closet, ready to be transferred to the back of Will’s car when it was time to head to Starkville. They’d agreed that leaving on Monday morning would be enough time. It’d give them a couple days on campus before classes officially started on Wednesday.
But now, after Hudson’s plea to Mac the other night, she wanted to leave…tomorrow. And she still hadn’t approached Will with the idea.
Pact with a Heartbreaker: A Best Friends to Lovers Summer Romance (Havenbrook Book 3) Page 2