Chapter 22
Iunderestimated how hard it was to pull an all-nighter.
On the rare occasions I got to stay the night at Morgan’s, we were in bed before midnight. We were mostly likely out before midnight, drooling and everything. Hudson and his friends were definitely not like that, so spending the majority of the night with them was a good choice.
After they tired of playing videogames—and losing repeatedly to the zombie hordes—Tee rolled out their karaoke system, and I got to learn how truly terrible Derrick was at singing.
Cosmically bad. Hudson refused the mic, of course, but booed along heartily when Derrick tried to serenade him.
After karaoke came out a card game that my mother definitely wouldn’t have approved of, filled with dirty jokes and innuendos that mostly went over my head, but I still laughed along with everyone.
Now, though, somewhere in the back of my head, I knew it was a bad thing that I fell asleep, but there was no keeping my eyes from shutting the longer the hours stretched on.
Especially not when Derrick popped in Evil Killer Babies and I had my eyes closed most of the time because of the amount of fake blood there was.
Jump scares I could take, but apparently not fake blood.
I’d curled myself up enough on the couch to rest my head on the arm, and after a few tries of dodging the gore and the demonic little baby that ran around, my eyes didn’t reopen.
Until now. At first, even though I’d woken up, I just lay there with my eyes closed.
“I’m telling you,” I could hear Derrick say, but it was faint, as if he was on the other side of the room. “They probably barely spent anything on making that movie. That budget had to be microscopic.”
“That’s a big word for you,” Simon teased in reply.
I didn’t hear Tee or Hudson, but they must’ve been over there too, rehashing the movie that must’ve ended. I tucked my nose deeper into the warm blanket—which I didn’t have when I fell asleep. That confusion was what had me opening my eyes.
Hudson was the first thing that I saw over my hip.
Tee might’ve been over there engaging in the Evil Killer Babies talk, but Hudson hadn’t moved from his position at my side.
His attention was captured by his phone, and the blanket wasn’t only over me, but over us.
The yellow, soft fabric was strewn across his lap in a haphazard way that couldn’t have kept him warm.
Hudson looked over, expression going from neutral to happy in a second. The blanket instantly felt warmer. “Welcome back.”
Hudson’s smile was lazy, as if he was the one growing sleepy. For some reason, that caused something sharp to go through me—something like alarm. “You should’ve woken me. This was supposed to be an all-nighter.”
“It’s only three. Plenty of time to do fun things.” Hudson laid his arm on top of my blanket, on the side of my calf. I tried my best not to react, even though my heart skipped. “Speaking of, they’re all going to crash. Tee’s already up in bed.”
I sat up enough to peer over the back of the couch. Derrick sat on the bottom step of the staircase with Simon leaning against the wall beside him. They did both look tired, especially Simon, whose blinks were getting slower and slower. “We should leave then, shouldn’t we?”
“Don’t worry,” he said, patting my leg. “We’ll do something fun. We’ve got a few more hours until sunrise.”
Our eyes met. A few hours. It sounded like a long time. It was seven hours of staying awake, but it was also seven hours of hanging out with Hudson, doing whatever we thought up. The longest time I’d spend with him ever.
Being on the couch now, though…I didn’t mind it. It was against the spirit of pulling an all-nighter, but I wouldn’t have minded if Hudson wanted to stay here for the rest of the night. Lying on my side with him to peer up at, I could’ve stayed here until the sun rose.
“Derrick?” Hudson called, pushing to his feet. “You still okay with me borrowing the car?”
“Knock yourself out, kid,” he replied, digging into his pocket and pulling out his keys. From across the room, he tossed them to Hudson, who caught them easily. “Don’t wreck her even more than she is.”
“I don’t think that’s possible,” Hudson muttered, collecting the energy drinks.
We said our goodbyes quickly, and Hudson led me out to Derrick’s car. It’d cooled off considerably since earlier, and I shivered in the passenger seat while the heat struggled to kick on. Hudson put it on full blast, but even then, it was a sad chug.
“So, want to go for a drive?” Hudson asked me, drawing his seatbelt across his chest. “We could drive out to the beach, kill some time. I’m sure the stars would be easy to see out there.”
The beach at night would be pretty—I could practically imagine it now.
We were quiet for the first little bit. Hudson left me to sift through the songs on his playlist. I smiled at a few artists I recognized before ultimately settling on a slow acoustic song, smiling as it coasted from the speakers.
Betsy might’ve been rough around the edges, but she had a good sound system.
As Hudson merged onto the highway, I thought about my parents and my brother, and how they were fast asleep by now. No doubt they all assumed I was, too.
Instead, I was with Hudson, driving into the night like we were running away.
“Did your parents flip over what happened in the hallway yesterday?” Hudson asked once we reached speed, leaning back into the seat.
There weren’t any other cars on the road, so it was only Betsy’s headlights illuminating the way.
There was something eerie about the scene, like in a world that is usually busy and bright, Hudson and I were the only ones left. “With Wes, I mean.”
“I wouldn’t say flip. They chewed Principal Oliphant out, though, for, and I quote, ‘letting riffraff in the district.’”
“Perfect word for him.” Hudson smiled, but then it faltered as something else occurred to him. He propped his elbow on the console between us, letting his hand dangle. “You shouldn’t have kneed Wes yesterday, you know. You could’ve gotten in trouble.”
“You shouldn’t have stepped in,” I returned. “You could’ve gotten in trouble.”
“That’s why you shook your head? Because you were worried about me?”
“Hey, if I have to be shoved into a locker to keep you from being expelled, I’ll do it.”
I’d meant the words to be teasing, but Hudson’s expression didn’t lighten at all. If anything, the corners of his lips just turned down more as he glanced over. “Gemma.”
“Don’t give me that face,” I ordered, cutting him off. “You should make up your mind, you know. You want me to grow a backbone, you don’t…”
“I want you to be safe. Backbone or no backbone.”
I looked at where Hudson’s hand dangled near the gearshift.
His fingers were completely relaxed, and like before, I imagined what it’d look like if I curled my fingers around his.
I was at that stage of tiredness where my brain tried to coax me into reaching over.
If he jerked away, I could pretend our hands just bumped on accident.
If he wrapped his fingers around mine, then… well, then…
I curled my fingers into fists, fighting the urge. “Speaking of, don’t take this the wrong way, okay?”
“I hesitantly say ‘okay.’”
I shifted so I could face him a bit more fully in the seat, my belt straining against my neck. “Why was Wes so intimidated by you? I mean, you pulled a whole self-defense move on him—which Morgan thought was bad…butt, by the way—otherwise, he easily has twenty pounds of muscle over you.”
“Let’s not exaggerate.” Hudson chuckled once, but his expression relaxed into something more resigned. “It’s kind of like the whole Grim Reaper thing. The rumors. People don’t know what’s true, so they avoid me anyway. I guess Wes listens to gossip.”
I studied his profile. The sharp lines of his face looked even sharper with the shadows, and the flat expression on his face was the one I was used to.
It reminded me a bit of the flowery smiles Mom put on for her friends, or the practiced expression Principal Oliphant always wore.
For Hudson, his mask wasn’t a smile. It was a carefully crafted look of boredom, of barely-there animosity, warning off anyone who dared to come close. “I don’t think you’re scary.”
“It’s because you can’t see as clearly in the dark.”
“That’s not it.”
“The glasses, then,” he suggested.
I reached out and nudged his arm on the console.
“You’re not scary. I wish you’d stop acting like you are.
” His serious expression didn’t change, eyes on the road.
He looked wide awake for three in the morning, like he did this often.
“The Grim Reaper thing. That was the role you felt forced into, right?”
Our conversation from the bridge felt like forever ago. Before, when I’d asked a similar question, he’d refused to answer. Somewhere along the way, his convictions about it all changed. Silently, he gave one nod.
“Why didn’t you fight until something changed?”
His fingers flexed around the steering wheel, shoulders rising and falling with a deep breath.
“Everyone at school started calling me that after the fight with your brother and his friends. I tried to ignore it, at first, but gossip had already spread. With how I looked, everyone had made up their mind about me. It’s hard to change someone’s mind when it’s already made up. ”
I studied him a bit closer. “How you looked?”
He pointed to his cheek, right above where his scar was.
My stomach turned uneasily. “Wait, wait—you got that from the fight?”
“I fell into the brick wall by the school. Cut it on the top. Seven stitches.”
Now my stomach flipped over, thinking about Hudson hitting one of the bricks, thinking of all the blood that must’ve come from the fall. I swallowed hard, trying to push the image away, but it left me feeling sick. “Why did you do it?”
“Do what?”
“Pick the fight.” I tried to see his gaze, but the thick arm of his glasses obscured it. “Why would you go against three people?”
Hudson’s hand grasped the steering wheel tighter. I couldn’t see his eyes, but I could see his mouth, and it tightened before pinching into a rueful smile. “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “It really doesn’t matter.”
His response lacked the warmth his voice had held moments before, hinting that we had reached the end of the rope for the conversation.
My curiosity was hard to crush, though—we’d come so close to talking about what happened, something that’d been weighing on my mind for days now, but none of my questions were answered.
But I knew one thing for sure—bringing up the subject was hard for him.
He might’ve worn a pinched smile, but his body was absorbed in tension, gaze too firmly fixed on the road.
I thought of the way he tensed up when he saw Ashton in the hallway, the way his breathing shook after the encounter. Like he’d been afraid.
“You must’ve been lonely,” I said after a moment, watching for his reaction. “No one deserves to be outcasted. For any reason.”
This time, Hudson didn’t respond. When he drew in another breath, this one seemed to shake.
I reached out and cupped my hand over his, giving the backs of his fingers a squeeze. “You have me now,” I said brightly, waiting for him to look over at me. “So I hope you won’t be lonely anymore.”
I knew this was a night I’d remember for the rest of my life, even if I only ever remembered this moment.
Even if it was just remembering the way Hudson’s eyes softened.
All of the defenses behind his normally carefully guarded glare lowered, and though I’d caught glimpses of it before, I watched as the shield dropped entirely.
Maybe it was the glasses. Maybe it was the darkness of the cab.
Maybe it was the fact that it was three in the morning and he was overly tired.
Whatever it was, it felt like, right then and there, something just clicked.
As confident as could be, Hudson twisted his hand in my grip and threaded his fingers through mine. My breath stalled in my chest as I stared at our hands, at the way the dashboard lights lit them up.
“I hope,” Hudson began, but stopped to clear his throat. “I hope you won’t be lonely anymore, either.”
I curled my fingers tighter around his, thinking about the rest of the night ahead of us. With the music filtering from the stereo, with Hudson’s hand in mine, I couldn’t imagine anything more perfect.