Page 68 of Wilde's End
“Than look after your town?”
He’s baiting me, and it almost works. I bite down on my tongue because the more I talk, the more he’ll stick around, and I’m ready for him to go now. He couldn’t take the return for what it was, could he? Then again,Idon’t even know what it was, so it’s a bit much to expect him to.
All night, I was unsettled, overly aware of the tools I’d hidden at Ziggy’s place and knowing that when it came right down to it … they didn’t matter. The brothers would get more. They’d keep coming and coming, mindlessly focused on their end goal, and while I could delay them as much as possible, the end result would be inevitable.
“Can we talk?” Hudson asks suddenly.
“Isn’t that what we’re doing?”
“No. I’m talking. You’re ignoring me.”
That sounds about right to me, but I still maintain that’s as close to talking as we get. I don’t want anything more than that, especially not from someone determined to ruin my whole life.
He knows better than to wait for a response that won’t come, but instead of cutting his losses and heading back to his bike, Hudson climbs my front stairs. He passes by close enough that a wave of sweet scent fills my nose, and then he drops into one of the two chairs sitting behind me.
I refuse to turn toward him, but having my back to him doesn’t feel smart.
“I have a shitty temper,” he says, and it makes me snort. I knew that about two seconds after meeting him. “I don’t know why. My parents weren’t ever angry people, and my brothers aren’t like that either.”
“Maybe you’re just an asshole.”
“Maybe. I got mad at your friend. Ziggy.”
That makes me whip around. “What did you do?”
“Nothing.” He eyes me suspiciously. “Got angry and shoved him into a wall. Our foreplay, basically.”
If he weren’t sitting, I’d probably do the same to him now. “Ziggy had better be okay.”
“He is. I apologized.” Hudson slumps down further in his chair. “Made me feel a bit bad about it, actually.”
“Good.”
He looks me over. “And how many times have you manhandled me?”
“Yeah, but the difference is that Ziggy is a sweet guy. Unlike either of us.”
Hudson doesn’t argue because he knows I’m right. As muchas I don’t want to admit it, there are similarities between us that stretch deeper than us both ending up in Wilde’s End.
“How did you know his name?” I ask, hating that I’m extending the conversation.
“He told us.”
Ziggy willingly speaking to people he knows is rare; him willingly speaking to strangers … I almost don’t believe him. “You didn’t beat it out of him, did you?”
“No.” He has the audacity to look offended. “Kennedy isalsoa sweet guy. Ziggy told him.”
That sounds closer to what I’d expect. “Why are you here?”
“That question again …”
“If you’d stop showing up, I’d stop asking it.”
Hudson pats the chair beside him, and it’s natural instinct to refuse. I’m curious though, and I know it will shock him if I take his offer, so on a whim, I do. I shouldn’t move closer; everything in my body, from my racing heart to my unsettled gut, lets me know it. I settle back in the chair, the creak of the wicker a warning that I’m way too close. Which is ridiculous when I literally had my dick in his mouth last night.
He glances over at me, and I’m struck again by how close he was as we jerked him off, how those same eyes burned into mine.
“How many of you live here?” he asks.
