Page 39 of When the Time Is Right
I shook my head, a sense of unease settling in my stomach. “I honestly don’t know.”
But she couldn’t stay in that water forever.
Something was definitely up with her, but if history had taught me anything, it was that she wasn’t going to talk until she was ready. Whatever was on her mind, it stung that she couldn’t talk to me about it, because for the rest of the night, she avoided me. Even when I asked her if she wanted to have a nightcap on the porch, she turned me down and went to bed.
I stood in the dark dining room, two beers in my hand by the sliding deck door. “Are you sure?”
She glanced down the hall toward the room she always stayed in and then back at me as if she were warring with herself over one lousy beer. “Not tonight, Hud. I’m tired. Good night.”
Hell, without her joining me, I didn’t even want the drink. I’d only used them as an excuse for her to maybe tell me what was up. Striking out, I put them back in the fridge and went to bed too.At home, I wasn’t a stranger to sleeping in on my days off, but at the beach, the sunrise called to me. The real me.
It was still dark out when I threw on a pair of shorts and a hoodie, grabbed a blanket off the back of the couch, and slipped my feet into my flip-flops by the back door. The warm air blew across my skin in silent invitation, and the lights along the wooden path illuminated my way down to the water. The sounds of the morning birds and the lapping waves harmonized my every step.
This tiny spot on Earth had always calmed my mind, clearing the noise and stripping my emotions down to a level that allowed me to actually process them.
By nature, I’d always been wild. I liked getting a reaction or making people laugh, and in my younger years, it was probably how I’d gotten attention from the older kids. Lauren had always been lovely and sweet and perfect, but trying to be that hadn’t worked for me. Therefore, I used humor and sarcasm to differentiate myself. Also, having a thick skin had saved me more than once from the constant onslaught of being Calvin’s younger redheaded sister. It got me through the teasing and ribbing when Cal and Hudson left me to go off to college.
Brenden had loved my smartass ways, and together, we’d spent countless nights on the beach, laughing and talking long after the sun had gone down. So that patch of cool sand, ready to warm in the day’s sun, was a place that meant more to me than just a spot beside the water. It had been my safe haven when I was younger. A place where I could be quiet and reflect as I matured. And maybe the last place I was truly happy, wrapped in a blanket with a guy I’d met in college who had always accepted me for who I was because, in some ways, he was even wilder.
It was also the place I had come to when I was grieving and then again when I was ready to stop.
I had a very complicated relationship with that sandy spot of oceanfront real estate. But at least while I was there, I could stop pretending.
After I’d spread my blanket out and kicked the flimsy shoes off my feet, I planted my ass on the ground and waited. I never believed in the bullshit of meditation, but as I watched the sun paint the horizon heart-stopping shades of orange and purple, I wondered if that wasn’t what I’d done there so many times all along.
I rolled my eyes at myself.
Could you be any more melodramatic, Lex?
Then again, if I had to be caught up in my emotions, that blanket at that hour was the best place for me. There, I could safely unpack the jumbled chaos in my brain. And right then as I dug my toes into the sand, at the forefront of my thoughts was Hudson.
Okay. More specifically, it was me trying to figure out why Hudson was suddenly at the forefront of my thoughts. I couldn’t quite figure out if I was just lonely or if maybe I was having actual feelings for him. Which, let’s be honest, was just ridiculous. He was my brother’s best friend. Hell, he was one of my best and only friends. The father of a kid I looked at like a nephew. A man my parents called son. A guy who was a huge part of our family.
Was it terrible that, over the past few weeks—and dates—I’d not only not found anyone I was interested in, but I’d had to face the notion that I was slightly interested in Hudson? Because none of them measured up to him.
