“People fear what they don’t understand. They always have and they always will.”
“What does that mean?” I whisper, willing him to turn around and face me. “Tell me, Hudson.”
He does, but when our eyes meet, there’s something terrible in his. Something dark and desperate and so blindingly painful that I feel it nearly tear me in two.
“You think Jaxon has power?” he whispers to me in a voice that somehow fills up the whole room. “You don’t have a clue what real power is, Grace. If you did, if you knew what I could do, you wouldn’t have to ask me these questions, because you’d already know the answers.”
68
The Truth Hurts
My heart wedges in my throat at the certainty in his voice, at the darkness and the horror he doesn’t even try to hold back.
There’s a part of me that wants to ask him to explain, but there’s another, bigger part of me that’s terrified of the answer.
So I don’t say anything. Instead, I just lay on my bed, Macy’s forgotten pillow clutched to my chest, and listen to the sound of the water running in her shower.
For the longest time, Hudson doesn’t say anything, either. He just stands by the window, looking out at the dimly lit grounds.
Silence stretches between us, as fraught and frozen as the tundra in winter, untouched by even the smallest ray of light or warmth. It’s so cold that it’s painful, so empty that it echoes inside me, reverberating off every part of me until there’s nothing that doesn’t ache.
Nothing that doesn’t burn.
I’m close to the breaking point, desperate to say something—anything—to shatter the icy desert between us, but Hudson cracks first.
“You know, you really were adorable when you were five.”
It’s the last thing I expect him to say, and it has me shooting up in bed as surprise replaces the strange hurt I’ve been wallowing in. “What does that mean?”
“It means you looked adorable when you smiled with your two front teeth missing. I love that the first one fell out but that you knocked the second one out when you went head over handlebars two weeks later.”
“How do you know that?” I whisper.
“You told me.”
“No.” I shake my head. “I never tell anyone that story.” Because if I did, I’d have to explain about how that same front tooth ended up growing in really strange and gnarly because the baby tooth was knocked out too early, and before I got braces, everyone used to make fun of me for it—which is why beavers are still my least favorite animal to this day.
“Well, you told me,” he answers, sounding incredibly pleased with that fact. “And now I’m watching the home movies, live and in color.”
“What kind of home movies?” I ask warily.
“The kind where you look adorable in that navy polka dot dress you used to love to spin around the living room in. I particularly like the matching bow.”
Oh my God. “Are you in my memories?”
“Yes, of course.” He shakes his head, but his eyes are soft and the smile on his mouth is even softer. “You really were an incredibly cute kid.”
“You can’t do that!” I tell him. “You can’t just go into my memories and look at whatever you want.”
“Sure I can. They are just lying around, after all.”
“They’re not just ‘lying around.’ They’re inside my head!”
“Yeah, and so am I.” He holds his hands up in an obviously kind of gesture. “So you see what I mean about them just being here, right?”
“Seriously?”
“Umm, yeah. The bunny outfit when you were six is also one of my favorites.”
“Oh my God.” I pull Macy’s pillow tightly over my head and wonder if it’s possible to actually smother myself with rainbow fur. Not that that seems like such a bad idea right now.
“Why are you doing this to me?” I groan as I rack my brain, trying to imagine what horrible, humiliating memories he might run across at any second. I know there aren’t actually that many, but right now it feels like the supply is limitless.
“I don’t know, even I have to say that you’ve got a few doozies,” he tells me. “That one with the chicken when you were in third grade was pretty embarrassing.”
“First of all, it was a rooster. And second of all, he was rabid.”
“Chickens can’t get rabies,” Hudson tells me with an amused smirk.
“What? Of course they can.”
“No, they can’t.” He laughs. “Rabies only affects mammals. Chickens