Twenty-Five
Hudson
It’s almost one in the morning when I pull up to the curb outside Rowan’s house.
I know how to keep my distance. I’ve spent years getting very good at it, but standing in her driveway at one in the morning because she hung up on me, drunk and crying, distance feels like a theory I’ve completely lost interest in.
I can’t stop hearing her voice from the phone call.
Am I the variable, Hudson?
As if twenty-six years of complicated family history could be reduced to one defective piece, and she’d somehow decided that piece was her.
The way her breath hitched when she talked about being born straight into the mouth of her mother’s illness. Whatever happened tonight shattered what little composure she had left.
Goddammit, where are you, Rowan?
My pacing slows as a soft cry comes from the hood of my car. Brenda, one of the neighborhood strays, has hopped onto the warm engine block. She headbutts my wrist, leaving a streak of white fur on my sleeve.
“You’re waiting for her too, huh?”
I call Rowan again, but it goes straight to voicemail.
I’m already reaching for the car door, ready to drive down every street between here and Westbrook, when I hear the slow drag of footsteps on the sidewalk.
Rowan comes around the corner, deathly pale.
Fuck.
I cross the lawn in three long strides, catching her just as her knees give out. “I’ve got you.”
Her skin is cold to the touch.
“You’re not supposed to be here,” she mumbles into my chest. “I was on my way home.”
“You are home.”
“Oh.”
“Excellent awareness.”
She makes a weak sound that might be a laugh.
At least she can still find me irritating.
I steer her inside and straight to the couch. Then I pour a large glass of water and drop in an electrolyte tablet.
By the time I get back, she’s folded herself into the corner of the couch with her eyes closed.
“Drink this.”
She opens one eye.
I place the glass in her hands and wait until she takes several slow sips, then crouch in front of her.
“Did you fall?”
“No.”
“You sure?”
Her eyes open properly this time. “Yes, Dad.”
I ignore that and start unlacing her boots.
“What are you doing?”
“Assessing the damage caused by your excellent decision-making.”
I slide off the first boot, then the second, before pressing two fingers against her foot to check her pulse and assess the swelling radiating up her leg.
“How far did you walk?”
“It doesn’t matter,” she whispers.
I grab her chin. “Look at me.”
It takes a long moment, but her bloodshot eyes finally meet mine.
“I don’t know what was said to you tonight, but whatever made you call me and ask if you were the problem was wrong.”
She pulls her face away from my grip. “You don’t know them. You don’t know my history.”
So, that’s how we’re going to play it?
She wants to build her walls sky high.
Too fucking bad.
“I know the history of a girl who hid a fractured ankle for a week rather than ask her family to carry any of her pain.” I lean in closer, cup the side of her face, and wipe away a tear with my thumb.
“I know you learned very young that hurting at the wrong time could make people question why you were hurting at all.”
She closes her eyes and leans into my palm.
“You don’t have to prove anything to me. You don’t have to perform. You don’t have to convince me that something hurts before I believe you, and you don’t have to pretend you’re fine because you think the truth might be inconvenient.”
A tear slips beneath my thumb.
“You don’t have to be strong either. Not around me.”
That severs the final thread holding her together.
A sob bursts out of her so suddenly that she barely gets the glass onto the coffee table before folding forward.
She buries her face against my neck, both hands twisting into the back of my shirt as the next sob shakes through her.
I slide onto the couch beside her, wrap both arms around her shoulders, and pull her flush against my chest. I hold her tight enough to keep the pieces together, making no move to pull away, content to stay right here in the dark for as long as she needs.