Heartbreaker (Havenbrook #3)

Chapter 3

CHAPTER THREE

MAC

I had no idea how I made it through lunch—and actually ate anything—without bailing. Or puking. Though, to be fair, maybe I didn’t eat a single bite and/or puked up my lunch, because I didn’t remember a damn thing after Rory had dropped her bomb.

Hudson fucking Miller. Here. In Havenbrook. Six months ahead of schedule.

On the one hand, I was desperate to see him. Wanted to knock on every door in town just to find out where he was. Wanted to feel his arms around me, breathe in his Hudson scent, and listen to my name roll from his tongue in the deep timbre of his voice.

On the other hand, I wanted to run away as far and as fast as I possibly could. I’d thought I still had time before he came home, before our pact was in full effect. Time to do something other than sling drinks at the local watering hole. Time to rack up a couple accomplishments—or, hell, even one . Time to get my shit together.

But I wasn’t like my sisters. I didn’t make things happen like Rory. I didn’t work my ass off for them like Will, mostly because I didn’t know what I wanted. And, as much as I wished it were true, I didn’t not give a fuck like my younger sister, Natalie.

So, of course , Hudson would come home without notice. And, of course, he’d do so months ahead of the planned date I’d been simultaneously not watching and obsessing over for the past several years. And, of course, on the day he decided to show up, I’d be wearing a long-sleeved threadbare T-shirt with an owl screen print, its huge eyes placed directly over my boobs, and my holiest jeans that’d give anyone who cared to look a glimpse of my hot pink underwear. Of fucking course.

“Hey, you okay?” Will hooked her arm through mine as we stood up from our table, her voice full of concern. “If you’re not ready to see him yet, we could go out the back, smuggle you home somehow?”

“What she said.” Rory gripped my hand and squeezed. “You just say the word, honey, and we can make anything happen.”

“I could create a diversion,” Avery said, walking backward in front of us. How she did that in her knee-high stiletto boots was beyond me. “Sweet-talk old Gleaves into streaking through the Square naked, maybe.”

Will and Rory groaned, while Avery couldn’t keep a straight face and busted out laughing. God, I loved these women. And I knew they wouldn’t leave my side unless I asked them to. Knew I wouldn’t have to face this alone.

“I’m fine,” I said as we stepped outside into the crisp fall air.

Okay, so I’d said those words approximately seventy-two times since Rory had dropped the bomb, but it was the truth. I was fine. I was steady as a rock. Cool, calm, and collect?—

Even the subtle breeze sweeping up my hair and blowing it around my face wasn’t enough to distract me from the man my eyes immediately connected with.

It’d been years since I’d seen Hudson in anything other than pictures or on a screen, but there was no mistaking that the absolute giant who stood in front of The Sweet Spot was my childhood best friend. He’d been walking but seemed to freeze in place when our eyes connected, just like I had.

Even when someone jostled him from behind, he didn’t take his eyes off me. I couldn’t either. It felt as if all the air in the atmosphere had been sucked out and then pumped straight into my heart, bringing it to life in a way it hadn’t been for so long.

My sisters and Avery were murmuring around me, but I couldn’t make sense of anything they said. There was a steady hum in my ears, my heart beating too loudly, and then he took a step toward me.

And I took a step back.

Dammit, why had I done that? I had no freaking idea, but I couldn’t rewind time and change it now.

Hudson cocked his head to the side, studying me with his eyes in that way that felt familiar and foreign all at once. Asking me if I was all right without saying a word. We’d always been able to do that…been able to read the other person’s nonverbal cues. I just hadn’t been sure it’d still work after this long.

I lifted my chin, speaking back to him the only way I could right now. Lord knew my throat was drier than a desert, and I probably couldn’t get words out if I tried.

He pursed his lips, completely ignoring the ever-growing crowd of onlookers who had gathered around us, all of Havenbrook appearing for the show. “What do you say to a bet?”

A…what?

Of all the things I’d expected Hudson to say, that was at the bottom of the list. Actually, it was so low, it wasn’t even on the list. It probably shouldn’t have surprised me, though. We’d spent our lives betting on everything, from sports games to races to who could eat the most marshmallows in five minutes. If we could make something a competition, we did.

And although it was unexpected, this familiarity was exactly what I needed.

I cleared my throat. “Depends on what it is.”

His mouth tipped up at the corners, and I felt an answering tug in my nipples. Oh, super. Great to know the girls were finally working again after being completely unaffected by every other single man within a sixty-mile radius.

“Used to be, you’d say yes without another thought.”

I offered a one-shouldered shrug. “Things change.”

His eyes said more than I was ready to hear—that he wanted desperately to know what things had changed, what new parts of me he could discover.

But all he said was, “Bet I can beat you to the top of the bleachers on the football field.”

“On foot?”

“Yep.”

My eyebrows flew to my hairline. “That’s all the way across town.”

A slow, cocky grin swept across his lips. “Yeah…I didn’t figure y’all moved an entire high school while I was gone. You worried all my training will have you choking on my dust? I never counted you for a quitter before the game’s even started.”

“Been a while since you’ve been here. Like I said, things change. Maybe I have too.”

“Not from what I hear.”

I cocked my head to the side, eyes studying him, the flutter in my stomach picking up speed. “You been checkin’ up on me, Hud?”

“Always,” he said, without embarrassment or hesitation. “You in or out?”

I wasn’t going to focus on the fact that he’d been checking up on me or what that meant. Right now, I was only going to focus on the competition, so I could escape this impromptu meeting with my sanity intact. I’d tuck those pieces of information away, shove them into the huge padlocked box inside my heart labeled Hudson and dissect them later, when I was alone.

“Name your terms,” I said.

The grin on his face grew, and sweet sparkling Moses riding a unicorn… Where only the slight upturn of his lips sent a jolt of awareness to my breasts, his smile set my entire body ablaze. Oh, this was bad. So very, very bad.

“If I win, you have supper with me.”

I swallowed down my apprehension. “And if I win?”

“Name it, Kenna.”

“Kenna?” Avery whispered. “Who the hell is Kenna?”

“That’s what he’s called her since they were kids,” Will whispered back. “Now, shut up.”

I had been so lost in Hudson, I’d completely forgotten it wasn’t just the two of us out there. I glanced around, noticing the eyes of at least three dozen people volleying back and forth between Hudson and me. At least I knew what was going to be on the gossip circuit for the foreseeable future.

“You stock my freezer with homemade pies,” I called to him.

“Done.”

“Not homemade by Marianne or Lilah. Homemade by you. ”

“Fuck me running, he bakes , too?” Avery whisper-yelled.

He dipped his head in a nod. “Homemade by me. When’s the clock start?”

“You want to greet your adoring fans first?” I gestured to the crowd around us, and he did exactly what I’d hoped.

He dropped his eyes from mine for a second and glanced around. And I took my chance.

I sprinted east in the direction of Havenbrook High, not looking back when the whoops and cheers went up behind me. Didn’t turn around even when Rory said, “For heaven’s sake, you’d think they were ten years old again.”

I wasn’t an idiot—there was no way I could beat Hudson in a physical race. Not when he had at least half a foot on me. Not when it was his job to be a finely honed machine. So I used his long absence to my advantage.

I didn’t take the obvious route the two of us had taken hundreds of times before, instead cutting through lawns and side streets. My feet pounded over the grass of the park that had taken the place of the set of crumbling buildings from our teens, and I ran toward the back of the stands rather than the front. I didn’t want to dodge any students outside for gym class, not to mention I’d probably collapse if I tried to run up the length of the bleachers after flat out sprinting this whole way.

Instead, I’d climb.

My blood was thrumming too loudly in my ears to hear anything as I bounded toward the field and the looming silver bleachers. I used my speed to propel me up a ways, leaping onto the first horizontal bar I could get good purchase on. I didn’t focus on how close Hud was, if he was already up there, or what it’d mean if he were. All I thought about was getting to the top of these bleachers as fast as humanly possible.

And if I lost and had to have supper with Hudson…well, there were worse things in the world.

I wrapped my hands around the railing at the top, heaving myself up. I kicked first one leg over and then the other, my feet thumping on the top stair, Hudson a single step below me.

“Beat ya,” I said through panting breaths.

He pointed an accusatory finger at me and narrowed his eyes. “Cheater.”

I shrugged, still attempting to catch my breath but trying not to show it. The dude didn’t even have the decency to be winded. “You never specified a route. Besides, I’m not stupid. You’re a soldier in peak physical condition. And while I’m no slouch, you’d have squashed me.” I sucked in a huge lungful of air and blew it out slowly. “Sometimes the challenges are as much up here—” I tapped my temple “—as anything.”

He cracked a grin. “You think I’m in peak physical condition, huh?”

I blinked at him. “That’s really all you got from that?”

“It’s been a while, forgive me.” And then he reached out, grabbed the hem of my shirt, and tugged me straight to him.

I didn’t even try to put up a fight because…well, because I was tired. Tired of waiting and wanting and dreaming about him. Tired of aching to hold him and not even being able to remember what it’d felt like the last time I had.

Without conscious thought, I wrapped my arms around him while he squeezed me, his nose in the crook of my neck.

“Missed you,” he murmured, his breath ghosting across my skin and making my knees weak.

My throat went tight, and my eyes stung as I clung to him. Overcome by a bone-deep gratitude he’d come back to me in one piece. He wasn’t here to stay, but right then, that didn’t matter. He was here now, and I thanked every deity he’d made it back unscathed.

I pressed my nose to his skin and inhaled deeply. He smelled the same…but not. There was no longer the underlying hint of sunscreen I’d always associated with him from our childhood spent running around outside. But he still had the same freshness to him—summer rain and dryer sheets now layered with man . I wanted to do nothing but breathe him in for the next several hours. Just take him and keep him inside me the safest way I knew how.

I wasn’t sure how long we stood there like that, clinging to each other. Long enough that damn near the entire town had ventured to the football field, the chatter from the townsfolk reaching my ears all the way at the top of the bleachers.

Reluctantly, I pulled back, but not before Hudson gave me one more squeeze. Then he took the final step up to stand next to me, and I had to tip my head back— way back—to maintain eye contact. Okay, so the half a foot I thought he had on me? It was actually more like an entire foot. And he’d sprouted a crapload of muscles too. Shiiiiit .

I allowed my eyes to roam over him, his shoulders nearly as wide as the goalposts at the ends of the football field, biceps the size of tree trunks straining against his shirt sleeves. A tattoo of three soaring pine trees drew my eyes to the corded muscles of his right forearm. And his legs, all thick and solid beneath his dark jeans…

Sweet merciful fuck. Hudson Miller had certainly grown up during his time in the army.

“Who won?” someone called from below, snapping me out of my trance. Dozens called out their predictions, a fairly even split of both our names.

Hudson stepped to the side and gestured to me with both hands like he was presenting me as the prize on a game show. I pinched the ends of an imaginary skirt and curtsied for the crowd who hooted and laughed, applause and cheers erupting around us.

As I stood to my full height, Hudson leaned close enough that I could see the flecks of gold in his brown eyes. “I would’ve baked you a pie without the bet, you know. As many as you wanted. You only had to ask.”

His minty breath wafted over my lips, and I was momentarily dumb struck. It’d be so easy to lean forward and press our lips together. To just…fall into him, allow him to wrap me up in his arms. To hold me like I meant the world to him and fall right back where we’d left off—namely, in bed.

Dammit, I couldn’t let that happen with him. Not again. We’d had a brief lapse of judgment all those years ago the weekend before he’d left, when we’d given in to temptation and slept together. Multiple times.

But things were good between us again. They hadn’t been at first, and okay, so they weren’t good necessarily, but they were passable. I’d lost my best friend somewhere along the way, which hurt like hell. But I hadn’t lost him , and that was all that mattered to me. We were able to talk once in a while through text, and I had finally gotten to a point where I could ask Marianne about Hudson without feeling like my insides were going to cave in on me at the mere mention of his name.

This quasi-peace between us had taken a long time to reach. Even longer considering I’d been pretending for a great deal of it. But we were there, and I wasn’t going to allow anything to mess that up. Not again.

I smiled, pressing my hand to his chest and not-so-gently pushing him back a step or two. I had no illusions that the only reason I was able to shove him was because he let me. “And I would’ve gone to supper with you, if you’d just asked.”

“That so?” He raised his brows. “All right, then, I’m askin’ now. Will you have supper with me tonight?”

Tonight? No. Absolutely not. I needed to get my head on straight before I saw him again or I’d be in his bed before I could blink. And then when he left in a day or a week or whenever, I’d be right back where I’d been all those years ago.

And Hudson and I? Well, I wasn’t so sure we’d survive the fallout this time.

With a smile that felt wobbly, I turned and jogged down the steps toward where my sisters and Avery stood waiting.

“Sorry, I have plans tonight,” I called to him over my shoulder. “What, since I didn’t know you were making your grand entrance back into Havenbrook after ten years and all.”

When I got to the bottom, I turned back to find him staring at me, his eyes never straying from mine.

He inclined his head slightly. “Fair enough. I’ll get started on your pies tonight, but I expect you there tomorrow.”

“We’ll see.” I pressed my lips together and turned to walk away, ignoring the calls from several townspeople.

“Mac, hey!” Will yelled from behind me. “Wait up.”

“Seriously, slow down, girl,” Avery said, her heels clicking against the sidewalk. “If I’d known I’d be walking all over hell and back today, I’d have worn something besides these cute as fuck but completely impractical boots.”

“Keep up or shut up, ladies,” Rory said, her gait even with mine. “After waving a red flag at that bull, she needs to get the hell outta here.”

Avery snorted at the same time Will said, “About that… Are you sure you wanna go down the route of playin’ hard to get with him? For one thing, you only have so much time. How long’s he here for, anyway?”

“Marianne told me a few weeks when we spoke earlier,” Rory said.

A few weeks. It wasn’t enough time. Though, to be fair, a thousand weeks wouldn’t have been enough time.

“And second,” Will continued, “you wanna give Hudson more of a challenge?” She snorted and Rory joined in. “Let me know how that works out for you.”