27. Lights Off
LIGHTS OFF
JUNIE
I don’t remember getting in the car.
That sounds like a tragic love song, but it’s the truth.
My brain deleted the thirty feet between the hotel lobby and Hudson’s car.
One moment I was on the marble floor of an atrium, holding the hem of a dress that Katie duct-taped me into, and the next I was buckled into the passenger seat with the engine running and Charleston sliding past my window in streaks of yellow and red light.
Hudson’s driving.
I’m not sure if he’s even spoken since he opened my door.
I feel the burn behind my eyes, but the tears don’t fall. I’m not sure why. If ever there were a time for tears, surely, this would be it.
Instead, I sit numbly. My body has been replaced with someone else’s, and I’m operating it from behind a veil with a ten-second delay.
My hands rest heavily in my lap.
The gold bracelet on my wrist is cold.
The ring on my hand burns, the skin around it is itchy.
Why didn’t I throw it at him? That’s my default, right? React, engage, apologize?
A better woman would’ve tossed it to the marble floor. A woman who knew what she was doing would’ve handed it to Natalie as a parting gift—a final fuck you, you can have him.
But I’m not that woman tonight.
For the second time in two months, I don’t recognize this version of myself.
“Do you want me to talk, or do you want silence?” Hudson asks as though he too can’t bear the heaviness a moment longer.
“I don’t know.” I sound like my mom. Detached. Cold. Empty. The exact opposite of every intention I ever set for myself.
“Okay.”
The silence suffocates us again, but this time because he asked, it’s different. Like a choice we made together.
Time passes with no meaning. A ninety-minute drive happens in flashes of snapshots.
Charleston gives way to the marsh. The marsh gives way to the highway. Then the highway turns into the two-lane road that runs through the Lowcountry back toward The Haven.
The trees close in, the moon hiding in shadows behind them.
When Hudson first drove me to Porchlight Cove, I was a different woman.
I’m morphing into someone new again, and this time, I’m not positive I’ll like the transformation.
“Hud.”
“Hmm?” His gaze cuts to mine, assessing, planning, taking my measure.
“Did you know?”
He exhales through his nose. A long, slow exhale. The kind a man uses when he’s trying to decide which version of the truth will hurt the least.
“He texted me the night before you did, asking for help. I had my suspicions when he left Boston, but I had no idea it was all…this. I can almost understand why he didn’t tell me back then, but if he had, if he’d thought to even go to my motherfucking father, we wouldn’t be in this situation.”
“Does Nolan know?” I press my cheek against the cool glass of the window beside me. My internal body temperature makes it feel like I’m boiling alive in my own skin.
“No,” he says, using the least Hudson-like tone I’ve heard from him in years. There’s no bark, no fight, just the tone of a man who has always cleaned up my messes while ensuring I learned a lesson.
“I— The repercussions of this could be…bad, Junie.” I feel his focus on me, but I don’t turn his way, and he releases a harsh breath.
“Your parents are truly… But this? I had no idea Cole was carrying this. I knew Natalie had stayed in contact with him. I knew he was…holding something back. I knew that something changed him on a molecular level when he left Boston, but I was too much of a coward to push a friend I’d known since kindergarten, even though that’s obviously what he needed at the time.
We all…let him walk away without understanding why. ”
“You’re not a coward, Hud.”
“Maybe not, but I let him be one, and that might be worse.”
I have nothing to say to that.
Hudson’s hands tighten on the steering wheel.
His jaw clenches until he’s one giant wall of muscle.
He’s not crying. Hudson doesn’t cry. What he’s doing is worse—he’s revising in real time twenty-five years of his own behavior.
I watch it happen in his profile. The line of his jaw. The flex of his forearm.
He’s rewriting what he thought he knew to now include all the facts.
“Junie.”
I’m almost scared to hear his conclusion. “Yeah?”
“I want you to know something. Before we get back.”
Blood whooshes in my ears, but I nod.
“Everything your mother said is wrong. Everything. She was a horrible human who lost her heart long before you were born. You’re not responsible for what that cunt of a woman, Natalie, did to you either, and you’re not responsible for what she’s done to him since.
You’re not responsible for whatever fucking bullshit your father pulled.
And…” He meets my eye. “You’re not responsible for Cole’s silence. ”
I open my mouth to stop him. It’s too much, but as is Hudson’s way, he steamrolls over me.
“You’re not responsible for any of the six years he spent sacrificing himself, or whatever idiotic thing he did to protect us all. Do you hear me?”
“Yes.”
“I’m saying this as your friend, and I’m saying it as your lawyer.
But the thing I really need you to hear, as your family, is that had any of us known what Natalie was putting you through, we would’ve stopped it—Cole would’ve stopped it.
I promise you that, Juniper. You are the biggest pain in my ass, but you’re my family, and we will find a way out of this mess. ”
Holding off tears is suddenly a lot harder to do.
“Whatever you decide to do—whatever version of Juniper Mercer you need to be tonight—you’re allowed.
You have a right to that. Not that you need permission, but you’re allowed to process however you feel is best. The people who love you will still love you in the morning.
Including me. Including Fen. Including Nolan.
And, God help us, including the man we just left behind. ”
“Hud.” Please stop. Please stop talking. I’m not strong enough tonight. I’m just not.
“I’m not telling you what to do, Juniper. I’m simply telling you that whatever you choose, you won’t be alone.”
My chest cracks then, and tears escape—but only for a count of ten. Silent, graceless, embarrassing tears that I wipe off with the back of my wrist, then swallow them down and call on my strength because Juniper Fucking Mercer does not break.
Hudson doesn’t look at me. He keeps his eyes on the road, but he does reach into the breast pocket of his tux and pull out a handkerchief, which he hands me.
“Where the hell did you get this?”
“It’s a lawyer thing.”
I shake my head. “Hudson Tenney carries a handkerchief.”
His signature smirk slips into place. “For clients. And, apparently, for you.”
I laugh. One short, ugly barked sound. Then I fold the piece of cloth in my lap, press my head back to the window, and close my eyes.
We don’t speak again until Hudson walks me to my apartment.
“You want me to come up?”
I shake my head. My mind is too full of warring statements for me to be coherent.
“Are you sure?”
Violent, sad, confused, angry, heartbroken emotions all vie for a chance to escape my lips. Instead, I nod.
“I’m so pissed off at Cole that I can’t stay at his place tonight, but I’ll be at the hotel in town.
I’ll be there until you tell me to leave.
If you need anything—anything, Juniper, I don’t care if it’s tampons, a lawyer, or a getaway car—I’ll be in this driveway within ten minutes. Do you hear me?”
My conflicted mind settles on the getaway car. The image of stuffy Huddy driving a getaway car is apparently the motivation I need to use my voice. “I hear you.”
“Okay.”
He hesitates. Then, against every instinct Hudson has ever had about physical contact, he reaches out and hugs me once, quick and hard, and lets go before I can react.
Hudson walks back to his car without looking back. Then he waits in the driveway with his headlights flooding the darkness until I’m inside my apartment with the door locked behind me.
His lights cut through my apartment, and then he’s gone.
What the hell do I do now?
I stand in the darkness for a long time. It feels right, allowing the darkness to swallow me. But eventually, I peel off the dress and leave it in a pool on the floor.
It’s a three-hundred-dollar piece of fabric, but I can’t bring myself to care. I need a shower. I need to clear my mind. I need a plan of action.
The water scalds my skin, and I scrub every inch of my body with soap that smells like lavender. I stand under the spray until the water runs cold, but I don’t react. I’ve already used too many emotions with the tears I shed on the way home.
I go through the motions. I get dressed in Nolan’s Boston College sweatshirt I stole when I was in high school and a pair of leggings. I pull my hair back into a damp bun on top of my head, all while Juniper, Junie, Viper, and Spite-Berry merge into someone strong enough to handle this shit.
Then I walk into the living room with my laptop in hand.
Even with the lights off, the diamond on my hand still winks at me.
I don’t remove it.
It feels intentional. Like I’ve had so many decisions made without my consent that this is one minor thing I can control.
It’s a specific decision, and I stare at it hard because I need to make sure I’m making this choice for myself.
Not because I’ve forgiven him. Not because I’m his fiancée.
Not because Natalie thinks she’s won. But because I have not decided yet what my future will look like.
And I always decide.
Which means it’s time to build my case.
I log every detail Cole’s ever told me about the veterans’ memorial. I create spreadsheets and timelines. I scroll architecture press and google Natalie’s name.
Forensic accounting was my focus in school. I’ll be one of the best eventually, and this is where I thrive—where my need for spite and facts converge on one specific goal.
Except this doesn’t feel like spite. This feels like…retribution for all the pain that she caused.