Chapter 4
Layla
For half a second, I regret everything. The rock disappears beneath my bare feet. Air snatches at my lungs. My stomach flies upward. The world becomes blue sky, green trees, sun, wind, and a wild, silent scream trapped somewhere behind my ribs.
Then I hit the water.
Cold takes me whole. It shocks every thought out of my head. I go under, deeper than expected, bubbles roaring past my ears. For one panicked second, I forget which way is up. Then my body remembers.
I kick. My butt-ugly toes do their job. I break the surface with a gasp so loud it echoes.
Hudson is there. His hand catches my forearm when I sputter, steadying me as I cough and blink water from my eyes.
“You’re okay,” he says.
I suck in air. “I’m okay.”
“You did it.”
“I did it.”
The words hit me after I say them.
I did it.
A laugh bursts out of me. Not the soft teacher laugh I use when a child tells me a joke with no punchline. A real laugh. A wild one.
I throw my arms around Hudson’s neck before I can think better of it. He catches me. His hands close around my waist, strong and solid beneath the water. My body presses against his, and the laugh dies in my throat.
Oh. This is not safe. This is not safe at all.
Hudson’s chest is hard against mine. His skin is hot despite the cold water. My legs brush his, and every inch of me becomes aware of every inch of him. His fingers flex once at my waist. It’s only for a second, but I feel it everywhere.
I lift my head. Our faces are too close. His mouth is right there, water clinging to his lower lip. His eyes drop to my mouth, and the cove goes quiet around us.
I should move, but I don’t. Neither does he. For one dizzy second, I imagine it. His mouth on mine. His hands pulling me closer. The water holding us up while I let a younger, wilder man kiss me in a hidden cove less than twenty-four hours after I arrived in town.
A woman like me should not want that. A woman like me should remember the word reckless exists for a reason. But I am so tired of knowing better.
Hudson’s gaze comes back to mine.
“Layla,” he says, low enough that it is almost not a word.
It feels like a possible warning mixed with a question. My fingers tighten behind his neck.
Then someone cheers. The sound snaps us apart, but not completely. Hudson still has one hand at my waist, keeping me steady. My arms drop from his neck as heat floods my face.
Across the cove, two teenage boys stand on the far trail, one with a towel over his shoulder and the other holding a phone.
“Nice jump!” one calls.
I want the lake to swallow me again.
Hudson turns his head, expression instantly hard. “Put the phone down.”
The boy lowers it fast. “I wasn’t recording.”
“Good. Keep it that way.”
The tone is calm. The threat is not. A shiver moves through me, and this time it has nothing to do with cold.
Hudson looks back at me. “You good?”
Am I? I jumped off a cliff. I survived. I wrapped myself around a younger man in the water and almost begged him with my eyes to kiss me. My heart is pounding like it wants out of my body.
“I’m good,” I say.
His gaze searches mine.
Then he nods toward the lower rocks. “Swim that way.”
We swim to a sunlit shelf where the rock slopes into the water. Hudson climbs out first, then turns and offers me his hand. I take it. He pulls me up easily, as if my curvy body weighs nothing, as if strength like his was made for lifting women out of deep water and setting them safely in the sun.
My feet hit the warm rock. I wobble. His hands go to my waist again. I freeze. He freezes too.
The boys across the cove continue down the far trail, their voices fading.
Hudson’s thumbs rest against my wet shirt. My tank top clings to me. My shorts cling too. I am suddenly aware of my breasts, my hips, my thighs, the softness of my body and the hard lines of his.
“Sit,” he says.
Hudson lowers himself beside me, close enough that our shoulders almost touch. Sun warms my wet skin. Water drips from my braid onto my collarbone. My pulse is still racing, but now the fear has changed shape. It is no longer about the cliff.
Hudson looks out over the cove. “How do you feel?”
I consider lying. Then I remember the ledge. The choice. The way he waited.
“Alive,” I say.
His head turns. The word hangs there between us, honest and too revealing. I tuck one foot beneath my leg without thinking. Hudson’s gaze drops.
“Stop hiding them.”
I pull my shoulders back. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Your toes.”
“Do we have to keep revisiting this topic?”
“Yes.”
“No, we don’t.”
“They helped you jump. The toes did the work.”
“You’re weirdly passionate about foot mechanics.”
“I’m passionate about useful things.”
“You called them pretty sandals yesterday,” I say.
“They were pretty sandals.”
“Not pretty feet.”
“I wasn’t looking at your feet because they were pretty.”
My stomach dips.
“Then why were you looking?”
His eyes meet mine. For a second, I think he might say something flirtatious. Something easy. Something I can laugh off.
He says, “Because you were trying to hide them.”
I swallow.
Hudson turns more fully toward me. “You do that a lot?”
“Hide my toes?”
“Hide things you think people won’t like.”
The statement is too direct. And accurate. I’m learning that’s Hudson.
I look away across the cove. “You really don’t believe in small talk, do you?”
“Not when something better is sitting right there.”
My cheeks warm again.
He huffs out a quiet breath. “I meant the truth, Layla.”
“I know what you meant.”
With him, everything feels like it could be about one thing and another thing at the same time. Toes and truth. Cliffs and choices. Safety and desire.
I rub my palms over my damp shorts. “I guess everybody hides things.”
“Not everybody.”
Hudson leans back on his hands, water still sliding down the hard planes of his chest. The movement makes the muscles in his arms shift. I should look away. I do not.
“No?” I ask.
“I don’t hide much.”
“That must be nice.”
“Not always.”
The answer surprises me. He keeps his gaze on the water. “People like a man who looks simple… easy to understand. They decide what you are before you open your mouth.”
“And what do they decide you are?”
His mouth curves without humor. “Temporary.”
The word slips into me like cold water. Temporary.
I should like that word. Temporary is exactly what this should be.
I am here for a short time. Hudson lives a life built around movement.
I have a classroom, an apartment, parents who still think Harold was unfortunate but reasonable, and a long list of practical concerns waiting for me after summer break.
Temporary should be comforting. Instead, it feels like a warning.
“Are you?” I ask.
His eyes come back to mine. “To most people.”
“And to yourself?”
“I move with the seasons,” he says. “Cady Springs in summer. Warmer places when winter comes. Work where there’s water, trails, repairs, guiding. I don’t stay in one place year-round.”
“That sounds free,” I say, just like I did on the trail.
“You keep saying that like you’re not sure you’re allowed to want it,” he says.
I look down at my hands. “Maybe I’m not.”
“Who told you that?”
No one, yet everyone. Life dictated it in veiled ways with doctors in soft voices. My mother, with her safe hopes for me. Harold, with his careful love and endless postponements. And my own fear, which has been louder than all of them.
I pick at a loose thread on the hem of my shorts. “I built a life around being useful.”
Hudson says nothing. I keep going, because apparently the cliff jump knocked loose more than my common sense.
“I teach second grade. I love it. I really do. The kids are…” I smile despite the ache. “They’re messy, funny, exhausting and wonderful. They ask questions adults are too polite to ask. They forgive quickly. They notice everything. They think stickers are currency.”
Hudson’s mouth softens.
“I became a teacher because I wanted to,” I say. “But also because…” I shake my head. “Never mind.”
His voice stays gentle. “All right.”
That is worse than if he pushed.
I glance at him. “You’re not going to ask?”
“You’ll tell me if you want to.”
“Does that work on women?”
“What?”
“The whole patient, respectful alpha male thing.”
His mouth twitches. “Wouldn’t know.”
“Oh, please.”
“What?”
“You look like that, Hudson. You know.”
His smile fades slightly, but not in a wounded way. More like I have touched something he usually keeps turned away.
“Looking like something doesn’t mean people see you,” he says.
The words hit too close. I sit with them for a second. Then, because I cannot handle how intimate the silence feels, I say, “How old are you?”
He turns his head. My face goes instantly hot.
He watches me with those impossible eyes. “Twenty-eight.”
So there’s a nine-year difference. Not twelve or twenty. Not some scandal large enough to require pearl-clutching and group texts. Nine is still significant.
“That’s a good age. I’m thirty-seven.”
The cove goes quiet around us again. Nine years. I should make that matter more than it does. I should let it become a wall. I should let it protect me from wanting what is sitting beside me, wet and warm and younger and too dangerous to be wise.
But Harold was six years older than me, and all that safety still became a cage. Maybe age is not the thing that saves you. Maybe nothing saves you except telling the truth before your life goes quiet.
Hudson looks toward the ledge. “Want to go again?”
I stare at him. “Again?”
“You said you wanted to jump.”
“I did jump.”
“And now you know you can.”
I look up at the rock. The first time, it looked like a threat. My body remembers the fall. The shock of the cold water. The wild bursting laugh. Hudson’s hands at my waist.
Maybe that is the real problem. I do not only want the jump again. I want the afterward. I want the moment when I surface and he is there.
Something newer, quieter, and braver says, What if the wrong life taught you to be afraid of the right one?
I look back at the ledge.
“Okay,” I say.
Hudson’s eyes sharpen. “Okay?”
“I want to go again.”
He stands and offers me his hand.
I look at it for a millisecond and take it. His fingers close around mine. His hand is warm and feels so strong. This time, when he pulls me to my feet, I do not wobble. Well, not much. He notices but is kind enough not to comment.
Barefoot, we climb the path back to the ledge together. He walks behind me this time, not crowding, just near enough that I feel watched in a way that does not diminish me.
At the top, I step toward the edge before he tells me to. Hudson comes up beside me.
“Look at you,” he says quietly.
Warmth blooms in my chest.
“Don’t sound too proud,” I say. “I’ll get a big head.”
“I am proud.”
My throat tightens. I blink fast and look across the cove.
“Arms in close,” I say.
“Knees soft,” he adds.
“Look across.”
“Breathe.”
Below us, the water waits. This time, I am still afraid. But fear is not the only thing in me.
There is want too -- for the fall… and the after. Want for whatever version of me stands at the edge and does not step back.
Hudson shifts beside me.
“We go together this time,” he says.
My heart kicks. “Together?”
I look at him. Dark hair. Blue eyes. Young enough to be dangerous. Confident and reliable enough to make danger feel like something I can survive.
“Yes,” I say.
His hand finds mine. We stand there, fingers locked, toes at the edge, the sun rising higher over Cady Springs Lake.
For one second, I think of Harold with a strange, gentle goodbye to the woman who waited beside him for a life that never came. Then Hudson squeezes my hand.
“Ready?”
“Ready,” I whisper.
We jump. This time, I do not close my eyes.