Chapter 18

When Hudson smiled, Bailey promptly lost her train of thought. They were fifty feet in the air, and their feet were dangling over nothing but snow and trees. She should’ve been her usual anxious.

Instead she wanted to crawl into his lap, wrap herself around him like a monkey, and get some more of his mind-blowing kisses.

Not going to happen up here with people both in front of and behind them. So instead, she opened the Snickers and offered it to him.

He flashed another smile, leaned in, and took a bite, and then nudged it back to her.

Something fluttered low in her belly at his smile, and she took a big bite of her own and let out an entirely involuntary, heartfelt moan.

“You okay over there?”

“Oh, my God,” she said, licking her lips. “You have no idea.”

Hudson’s eyes darkened and she quickly searched her brain for a diversion. “So… you were a juvenile delinquent?”

His gaze lifted from her mouth to her eyes. “Yes.”

“Did you find the trouble or did it find you?”

“Both.”

She smiled. “A real badass, huh?” she asked.

“Still am.”

“Okay, let’s make a deal,” she said on a laugh. “How about you answer my questions with more than two words and I don’t push you off this lift? Sound like a good plan?”

He grinned. She couldn’t push him anywhere and they both knew it. A good wind could blow her away.

“Jacob and I came to Cedar Ridge when we were twelve,” he said. “We were just about as feral as they come.”

She blinked. “Wow, a whole sentence. Keep going.”

He glanced around them as if looking for his own distraction and she laughed. “Oh, no you don’t,” she said. “For once the radio on your hip is silent. There’s a lull on the mountain, probably because most of the skiers and boarders are at the lodge filling their empty bellies and warming their extremities. Talk.”

He studied her for a long beat and then let out a slow smile. “Maybe you’re the badass.”

“Uh-huh,” she said, “and don’t ever forget it. Talk.”

He smiled at her. She was pushing him but they both knew that he wasn’t going to say a single word until he was damn well good and ready.

“Jacob and I didn’t grow up here,” he said, surprising her. “We grew up near Jackson Hole. My dad came into town on some business, during which he took advantage of a very young, sweet girl working as a hostess at a dive bar and grill.”

“Your mom,” she breathed.

“Yeah. She got pregnant, kept us, and did so with minimal help from Richard Kincaid. She did the best she could with what she had.”

“She’s pretty amazing.”

“Yes,” he agreed. “But there were plenty of problems. You’ve seen her fade in and out of reality. It made holding down a job difficult for her. It all kind of collapsed around the time we hit middle school.”

“That must have been awful,” she said. “What happened?”

He lifted a broad shoulder. “Jacob and I took over for her. We got jobs.”

“In middle school.”

“I didn’t say they were legit jobs. Which they weren’t, by the way. But we were already dodging child protective services and didn’t want to get taken away from her. She needed us. And we needed money to keep our heads above water.”

Bailey’s stomach sank thinking of him at that age, doing whatever he had to do to keep his family together.

He took in her expression and gave her a small smile and a shake of his head. “You don’t want pity, so don’t you dare give it to me.”

“Not pity,” she said, and forced herself to swallow the lump of empathy in her throat. “Admiration. What happened?”

He shrugged again. “We did what we had to do. Jacob worked at a local vet’s office at night cleaning up all the cages and walking the dogs for cash. He’d then take that cash and go play cards with the older kids in someone’s garage. Jacob had a thing for numbers and could count cards.”

She blinked. “And you?”

“I cooked at the old folks’ home. The breakfast shift. That’s where I learned to get up at four in the morning.”

She tried to imagine him as a kid cooking breakfast for an entire old folks’ home. “Seems slightly safer than what Jacob was doing.”

“Hell if it was,” he said. “I got my ass pinched every single morning by all the old ladies taking too many hormones. All these years later and my ass still hurts.”

She covered her mouth but the laugh came out anyway.

His eyes lit at her humor. “Would you still feel sorry for me if I told you at night I’d go play pool at some guy’s house down the street, conning him and his buddies out of their hard-earned cash to double my own cash flow?”

“You didn’t.”

“I did,” he said. “The rent had to be paid and my mom’s meds weren’t cheap.”

And then there were food and other necessities, she thought, aching for the twin boys who’d never really had a childhood. “But then you came here?”

“And inherited three half siblings,” he said. “Aidan and Gray’s mom took us in as her own so my mom could get the help she needed.”

“Wow,” Bailey breathed. “That’s a good woman right there, considering you were the offspring of the woman her husband had cheated with.”

“Char had dumped Richard Kincaid’s sorry ass by then,” Hud said. “And she has a heart of gold. She not only took us in, she took us on, loving us the same as she loved Gray and Aidan.”

“So things got better?” she asked.

He paused and she found herself holding her breath. She wanted that for him and wanted that badly. And she’d seen how much Gray and Aidan and Kenna adored him.

“It was better for a while,” he said quietly. “But before we got here, before we knew what we’d find, Jacob and I made a pact. We swore to each other that we’d leave the second we turned eighteen. We’d strike out on our own and stick together, just him and me.”

Her heart kicked hard because she knew she was finally going to get the story on what had happened to Jacob and why the twins weren’t together.

“But then we settled in here and I took to this place, hard and fast,” Hudson said. “It instantly became home for me. But not for Jacob. He wanted to leave before we ever even got here, and he never lost sight of that goal. Unlike me. I actually forgot all about it until high school graduation.”

“What happened?” she asked.

“Jacob said it was time for us to go. He’d been biding his time, counting down, and he wanted to leave as soon as possible. I didn’t. We fought about it.”

“But what about your mom and your siblings?” she asked.

“Jacob never got attached here like I did. And because of it, he held himself back. He didn’t get close to the others. And though he always paid for half of my mom’s care—and still does—he was bound and determined to leave no matter what. He needed adventure. He needed to live the way he’d always wanted—untethered.”