Chapter 16
Hudson
If her idea was to make my heart pump faster with worry, then it was working.
Because as Amelia crawled toward our clothes, I noticed the cut on her foot for the first time. It looked like it needed stitches, and a thorough cleaning out if it wasn’t going to get infected. I swore under my breath.
“What?” She paused as she snatched the bundle of wet, bunched up clothes from the ground.
“Your foot.”
“Oh.” She looked down at it. “It’s fine.”
“Then why aren’t you putting weight on it?”
“Because I like crawling around in my underwear,” she quipped. Then her eyes widened, and she threw a hand over her mouth. “Let’s forget I said that.”
“Nope, sorry. Already logged in the long-term-memory bank.”
She threw a wet sock at me, and I was glad to see her looking more at ease. When she’d scrambled away from me earlier, she looked one wrong word away from panicking.
“What else do you like to do in your underwear?” I asked teasingly and another wet sock landed on my face. Was this too close to flirting? I always asked myself this when I teased her, but my walls were down too far for my filter to work.
Besides, when you had to take a breath between every word, it took the smoothness out of it, thus nullifying the flirtatious nature of a statement. It sounded official and therefore was true.
I’d never been so tired in my life, not even when I was working eighty-hour weeks during residency.
And when I made her smile, I forgot how much my body hurt.
It hurt in some small ways that were no big deal, and in some big ways that let me know we’d have to get to the other cabin tomorrow, even if we had to army crawl on our bellies to get there.
And with how shaky my legs were feeling, that wasn’t out of the question.
“I’ll tell you what I don’t like doing in my underwear—lying cold and wet in the forest.”
“Yeah, not my favorite activity either.” Though, with Amelia snuggled up to my side, it hadn’t been half bad.
Amelia paused as she laid our clothes. “I’m never wearing this dress again.”
“Why?”
“It’s all such a blur,” she said, “but I remember being all tangled in it, thinking it was going to be the reason I drowned.”
I was a little sad about it–she’d looked amazing in that dress–but it was definitely for the better.
Her breathing sounded more ragged and shorter, and her movements slow and sluggish. She needed the hospital. Some fluids and a proper vitals check.
But she was alive, and there was a time out there when we were on the water when I didn’t think she was.
Even now, the thought made my breath lock up in my lungs.
A world without Amelia wasn’t one I could contemplate.
Whether she loved me or not, whether she never wanted to see me again after this or not, I was relieved in my soul that she was alive to make those decisions.
“I can finish,” I said to her. I tried to hide my wince as I jostled my shoulder to stand. I didn’t know if it was dislocated or if something had torn, but every time I moved it, white-hot pain made me feel lightheaded.
Amelia placed a hand on my knee, and I paused. “Let me do it, Hudson. Please.” Worry lined her expression, and I figured I must have looked even worse than I felt.
She moved slower and slower as she tried to lay out my pants just right. It didn’t matter. I didn’t see myself even having the energy to put them on any time soon, even if they were dry.
“Is there any water here?”
“No.” There were some rusty old cans catching water that dripped in through the holes in the ceiling, but the water looked sludgy and unsafe. Giardia would only increase our dehydration. “There’ll be water at the other cabin we can get in the morning.”
“If I have the energy to get there.” She let out a discouraged sigh as she sat close enough to me for our arms to touch.
“I’ll carry you again if I have to.”
“You can barely stand yourself,” she said as she stared into the flames. When she spoke again, her voice was quieter, “And yet, I believe you’d manage it anyway.”
I motioned for her to let me see her foot, and she placed it gently on the floor in front of me.
The cut was about five centimeters long, right on her heel, and needed stitches.
It was still bleeding, but there was little I could do out here with minimal resources and energy.
The most important thing was to keep her lungs clear.
“Will I live?” she asked.
“I don’t know.” I tugged on her toes playfully and then gently set her foot down.
I took her other foot next to make sure it didn’t have any cuts she’d neglected to tell me about, but it was soft and smooth.
“So far, you’ve been charged by a moose and thrown overboard in the ocean.
Did you do something to Winterhaven? Because it has a vendetta against you. ”
“I did ask Dylan why they didn’t get married on a tropical island instead.”
I winced. “Oof. It all makes sense then.”
“My mom used to say these things come in threes.”
“I hope not.” I’d heard that saying before too, but two close calls were quite enough, thank you. “Did your mom have any advice on how to turn bad luck around?”
“She did. She said it was all about perspective. If you thought you were having bad luck, then you were right. But if you thought you were having good luck …”
“You were right,” I finished. “Let’s take her advice.”
“We’re really lucky this cabin is here,” Amelia said, “otherwise we’d be outside in the rain.”
“I’m lucky there was firewood already cut, so I could make a fire.”
“I’m lucky you’re with me, because I know you won’t let anything bad happen to me.”
Her faith in me was enough to make my heart sink. “I mean, this was pretty bad.”
“The entire time I was fighting the ocean, I kept thinking: Hudson is here. He’ll find me. It’s going to be okay.”
I stared down at my hands, humbled by her confidence in me. I hadn’t been as confident in myself, but I knew I’d either find Amelia or die trying. There was no middle ground.
“We’re lucky we’re comfortable with each other because of this …” She motioned back and forth between our clothesless state.
“I’m lucky I’m here with you and not Dylan.” I winced, and she laughed like I’d hoped.
“You don’t want to snuggle Dylan half-naked?” she teased.
“In a life-or-death situation, I absolutely would. But you smell so much better.”
Her gaze softened to a dangerous degree. “I know you would. It’s something I love about you, Hudson. You do the right thing, even if it’s uncomfortable.”
Love. I knew how she meant it, but the word still seared me all the way to my tear ducts.
We were getting way too close to me crying or confessing my love. Again. As some of the young nursing students at work might say, my filter was not filtering. So I joked. “We’re lucky I decided to wear underwear today.”
She let out a surprised snort, which made us both laugh. I grabbed my shoulder. “I can’t laugh. It hurts.”
“You’re the one making jokes.”
“I wasn’t joking,” I said, which made her laugh again.
“Can you imagine?”
Yes, I could. And that was part of the problem. I was too tired to go through the bones in the human body again today.
“But,” Amelia continued, “I’ve learned that it’s also okay to accept that life can be chaotic and tragic and unimaginably hurtful sometimes. To not immediately push the pain away in service of some sort of performative positivity.”
“That’s one of the things I’ve always liked about you, Amelia,” I said.
“My non-performative positivity?”
I smiled and shook my head. “How you’ve always allowed space for grief. You’re not afraid to sit in hard feelings, your own or someone else’s.”
“What about your grief, Hudson?” Her voice was small. “I was so wrapped up in my own sadness after Shiloh died, I can’t remember if I ever allowed you space for your own.”
From the weight of her tone, I could tell that this was something she’d worried about for a while.
I wished I wasn’t so weak, that I could speak with all the firmness I felt in my heart instead of in raspy, breathy words.
But at least it was true, and hopefully that was enough.
“Without you and Quinn, I never would have taken the time to process my grief. I would have suffocated all my emotions with work. Do you remember when we both sat on my couch and cried after everyone had left after the funeral lunch?”
She nodded softly. “My eyes were swollen for about a week after that. I’ve never cried so hard.”
“I hadn’t allowed myself to slow down enough and cry yet.
But being there with you, I felt like I could finally let my guard down.
Like I wasn’t in this alone. I know I did a lot of practical things that year to help you, but you did a lot of emotional work to help me.
I could not have made it through the worst year of my life without you, Amelia. ”
She reached out her hand to gently squeeze mine.
We both quieted and listened to the fire’s crackle mingle with the sound of heavy rainfall outside.
As the temperature dropped, I was feeling colder and more sluggish by the minute, but I didn’t want to stop this moment with Amelia.
It was like lightning in a bottle: rare, special, and unreplicable.
She ran her fingers over the rough wood-planks we sat on. We were lucky these weren’t dirt floors, like so many of the old cabins in Alaska had been. The wood was splintery and buckling, but it offered some protection from the ground.
“Give me your hand,” Amelia said suddenly. I held it out to her, and she cupped it in her hands, palm up. She stared at my cold, battered palm as though it might tell her something she desperately needed to know.
“My grandma used to read palms,” Amelia said. “Did I ever tell you that?”
“No.”
“She never got paid for it, or anything. It was something she said her grandmother taught her to do, and she would do it for her neighbors and friends when they came over for tea. She’d say it wasn’t telling the future, but helping people connect with their potential and all the many possibilities life could hold when we didn’t allow ourselves to lose hope.
She said it was as much free therapy as anything, but it was more than that.
When she held my little hand in hers, it was a gift.
Her touch pouring love into me, into my future.
Mom promised to teach me how Grandma did it, but then she died before I ever learned how.
” Amelia’s finger traced the line in my palm that ran beside the pad of my thumb, sending a searing heat through me.
“The day I stole your seat was my first day back to class after her funeral.”
“I didn’t know that.”
She didn’t look up as she traced another line, this one running horizontal across my palm.
Her nails were ragged and torn, the manicure she’d had done for the wedding destroyed.
But her hands were still beautiful to me.
The delicate lines of her knuckles, the smooth skin that tapered at her fingertips.
The very fact that they belonged to Amelia.
“I was so cold all day,” she said. “It was like Mom’s death took all the warmth from me, and I was desperate to replace it somehow.
You always got to class before me, but this time, your seat was empty.
I felt the nudge from my mom, her whispering: Go.
Get warm.” The pressure of Amelia’s fingers increased as she traced exploratory lines on my palm.
I was finding it impossible to breathe. “When you walked in and saw me there, I held still, waiting for you to come and ask me to move. But you didn’t.
Your eyebrows just did that quirk thing they do when you’re trying to figure something out, but I didn’t know that’s what it meant at the time.
So I decided to save a seat for you next class.
Partly out of guilt, but mostly because you had a safe vibe.
There were so many guys at school who I had to be on my guard with, but not you.
This is going to sound so weird, but when I was with you, I felt closer to my mom.
I missed her still, but the pain wasn’t as overwhelming. I never told you thank you for that.”
“I wish I could have met her.”
Amelia nodded. “Why’d you bring me a drink after I stole your seat?”
Because even then I was in love with her. Or, at least, drawn to her in a way that irrevocably changed me. I was like the man who wouldn’t ever leave this cabin, hoping for his family to come back. And just like him, I was destined to die alone, longing for the one I loved.
Well, that was dark. I closed my eyes as physical pain rolled through me, more intense than before. It was making it hard to focus on the things I was lucky about.
“I brought you a warm drink because you’d said you were cold, and I wanted to help you.” I was out of breath. Out of energy.
She pressed her palm to my cheek. Her touch was cool, the pad of her thumb softer than a ripe peach. She brushed her thumb hesitantly over my skin, sending a wave of sparks through my body. I would give her my seat a million times over, bring her a warm drink every time she was cold.
“I know you would, Hudson.” She pressed the back of her hand to my chest.
“I didn’t … say that … out loud,” I told her. Why was it so hard to breathe and talk?
“No. I’m reading your mind.”
My hair shifted as she ran her finger through it. “Well, that’s … dangerous.”
“Why? Do you have secrets you need to confess?” She said it teasingly, but I could hear the underlying worry in her voice.
Just that I loved her, but I was not going to say that out loud. “My secrets … are locked … tight.”
Her hand paused over my heart. “You’re feeling really warm, Hud.”
“Then why am I so cold?” But the moment the words left my mouth I knew. Fever.