and discomfort replaced by abject, slack-jawed shock. It doesn’t help that Hudson has suddenly gotten just as quiet. More, I can sense him deep inside me, still and silent and listening.
“It’s not what you think,” I tell her finally.
“Okay,” she answers with a nod, and it’s totally not what I’m expecting. Then she stands up and crosses over to her pajama drawer. “I think I’m going to take a shower, wash off some of today’s grime.”
“You don’t want to talk about Xavier some more?” I ask as she heads toward the bathroom.
She smiles at that, a quick grin that lights up her whole face and finally breaks through the seriousness that’s been there for the last couple of minutes. “There’s not much to say yet,” she tells me. “Except…you liked him, right?”
“I really did. He seems great. And perfect for you.”
“Yeah.” She nods, the smile slowly dropping off her face. “I think so, too.”
As the bathroom door closes behind her, I go over our conversation in my head, wondering what could possibly have made Macy act so strangely. But there’s nothing there, except for her weird reaction to the fact that Hudson and I talk.
But seriously, what am I supposed to do? The guy lives in my head. Should I just ignore everything he says?
“Please don’t do that,” Hudson tells me from his favorite spot near the window. I think he likes it there because it makes him look like a brooding Brontë hero.
“As if,” he answers with another one of those proper British sniffs. “Brontë heroes are weak and pathetic and strange. I’m definitely an Austen hero.” He gives me an arch look as he lifts his chin and sticks out his chest. “Mr. Darcy himself, perhaps?”
I crack up, exactly as he intends, because how can I not? He looks so ridiculous posing there that I can’t help laughing and laughing and laughing. Especially when he adds a mock-offended face.
“Don’t tell anyone,” I say when I finally stop laughing. “But I’ve never been a Darcy fan.”
“What? That’s blasphemy, I tell you, blasphemy!”
And now he’s laughing with me, his face all lit up, blue eyes shining. And I don’t get it. I just don’t get it.
“What don’t you get?” he asks, the laughter fading away to be replaced by a serious look that I can’t quite interpret. Then again, maybe he feels the same way about me.
“The fact that you can be like this with me and yet also be so evil. It doesn’t make sense.”
“That’s because you don’t want it to make sense,” he tells me, and this time there’s no mocking in the offended look he gives me as the rest of my sentence must register. “Evil? You think I’m fucking evil?”
And just like that, our mutual decision not to have this conversation fades into mist. “Well, how else would you describe what you did?”
“Necessary,” he answers, shaking his head like he can’t even believe we’re having this conversation. Then again, maybe I can’t, either.
“Necessary?” I repeat flatly. “You really think killing all those people was necessary?”
“Don’t do that,” he tells me. “Don’t judge me when you don’t know what you’re talking about. When you weren’t there. Am I proud of what I did? Not even a little bit. Would I do it again? You’re damn straight I would. Sometimes you have to do horrible, awful, terrifying things in order to prevent something even worse from happening.”
“Is that what you think you were doing?” I ask.
“I know that’s what I was doing. The fact that you don’t believe me doesn’t make it any less true. It just means that you don’t know shite.” He shoves a hand through his hair and turns to look back out the window. “Then again, why should I be surprised? My baby brother doesn’t know anything, either, and yet you trust him over me every single time.”
“What do you want me to say? That I trust you more than Jaxon? That I believe you over my mate?”
“Your mate.” He gives a sharp bark of laughter that sends chills down my spine, though I don’t know why. “Yeah. Why would you believe me over your mate?”
“You know what? That’s not fair. You want to pretend that it’s just your word versus his, but the whole school was so scared of you that they were literally plotting to kill me at the mere idea that Lia might be able to bring you back from the dead. People don’t do that just because they don’t like