Page 25 of Amelia and Her Prince Charming
Her faith in me was enough to make my heart sink. “I mean, this was pretty bad.”
“The entire time I was fighting the ocean, I kept thinking: Hudson is here. He’ll find me. It’s going to be okay.”
I stared down at my hands, humbled by her confidence in me. I hadn’t been as confident in myself, but I knew I’d either find Amelia or die trying. There was no middle ground.
“We’re lucky we’re comfortable with each other because of this …” She motioned back and forth between our clothesless state.
“I’m lucky I’m here with you and not Dylan.” I winced, and she laughed like I’d hoped.
“You don’t want to snuggle Dylan half-naked?” she teased.
“In a life-or-death situation, I absolutely would. But you smell so much better.”
Her gaze softened to a dangerous degree. “I know you would. It’s something I love about you, Hudson. You do the right thing, even if it’s uncomfortable.”
Love. I knew how she meant it, but the word still seared me all the way to my tear ducts.
We were getting way too close to me crying or confessing my love. Again. As some of the young nursing students at work might say, my filter was not filtering. So I joked. “We’re lucky I decided to wear underwear today.”
She let out a surprised snort, which made us both laugh. I grabbed my shoulder. “I can’t laugh. It hurts.”
“You’re the one making jokes.”
“I wasn’t joking,” I said, which made her laugh again.
“Can you imagine?”
Yes, I could. And that was part of the problem. I was too tired to go through the bones in the human body again today.
“But,” Amelia continued, “I’ve learned that it’s also okay to accept that life can be chaotic and tragic and unimaginably hurtful sometimes. To not immediately push the pain away in service of some sort of performative positivity.”
“That’s one of the things I’ve always liked about you, Amelia,” I said.
“My non-performative positivity?”
I smiled and shook my head. “How you’ve always allowed space for grief. You’re not afraid to sit in hard feelings, your own or someone else’s.”
“What about your grief, Hudson?” Her voice was small. “I was so wrapped up in my own sadness after Shiloh died, I can’t remember if I ever allowed you space for your own.”
From the weight of her tone, I could tell that this was something she’d worried about for a while. I wished I wasn’t soweak, that I could speak with all the firmness I felt in my heart instead of in raspy, breathy words. But at least it was true, and hopefully that was enough. “Without you and Quinn, I never would have taken the time to process my grief. I would have suffocated all my emotions with work. Do you remember when we both sat on my couch and cried after everyone had left after the funeral lunch?”
She nodded softly. “My eyes were swollen for about a week after that. I’ve never cried so hard.”
“I hadn’t allowed myself to slow down enough and cry yet. But being there with you, I felt like I could finally let my guard down. Like I wasn’t in this alone. I know I did a lot of practical things that year to help you, but you did a lot of emotional work to help me. I could not have made it through the worst year of my life without you, Amelia.”
She reached out her hand to gently squeeze mine.
We both quieted and listened to the fire’s crackle mingle with the sound of heavy rainfall outside. As the temperature dropped, I was feeling colder and more sluggish by the minute, but I didn’t want to stop this moment with Amelia. It was like lightning in a bottle: rare, special, and unreplicable.
She ran her fingers over the rough wood-planks we sat on. We were lucky these weren’t dirt floors, like so many of the old cabins in Alaska had been. The wood was splintery and buckling, but it offered some protection from the ground.
“Give me your hand,” Amelia said suddenly. I held it out to her, and she cupped it in her hands, palm up. She stared at my cold, battered palm as though it might tell her something she desperately needed to know.
“My grandma used to read palms,” Amelia said. “Did I ever tell you that?”
“No.”
“She never got paid for it, or anything. It was something she said her grandmother taught her to do, and she would do it for her neighbors and friends when they came over for tea. She’d say it wasn’t telling the future, but helping people connect with their potential and all the many possibilities life could hold when we didn’t allow ourselves to lose hope. She said it was as much free therapy as anything, but it was more than that. When she held my little hand in hers, it was a gift. Her touch pouring love into me, into my future. Mom promised to teach me how Grandma did it, but then she died before I ever learned how.” Amelia’s finger traced the line in my palm that ran beside the pad of my thumb, sending a searing heat through me. “The day I stole your seat was my first day back to class after her funeral.”
