Variation

by Rebecca Yarros

By the end of that summer, she was my best friend. By the end of the next, she hated me. And I didn’t blame her.

“Why are you so certain your mom cares what I think?” Juniper swallowed and glanced back at Hudson, who looked as confused as I felt, then locked her big brown eyes on me. “Because”—she straightened her shoulders—“you’re my biological mother.”

😲😲😲

“Hudson, do me a favor and at least say goodbye to her this time before you go, would you? It would be a shame for me to go to jail for acting on a decade’s worth of intrusive thoughts when it comes to your demise.”

Plus she seems to like you—not that you have an issue in that department—so what’s the problem?” I shifted on my seat. “She’s not Allie Rousseau,”

“Hudson might be the baddest motherfucker alive to the US Coast Guard, but you put Allie Rousseau in a room with him and he’ll trip over his own feet.”

“It is the sacred privilege of an older sibling to embarrass the younger one at their discretion.”

“She was my best friend,” I said just to shut up Gavin. “Her parents have a place here, and we met when we were teenagers. We were close for two summers and . . .” Words failed me, just like always.

“And he was in love with her,” Gavin whispered loudly

“It is.” Gavin glanced my way and pushed the cocktail toward Eric, giving him his full attention and ignoring me. “You see, Barman, I’ve been there, hung up on a Rousseau girl, and it’s an infatuation like no other.” He glanced away, then cleared his throat.

“But the Rousseau sisters always had the look-but-don’t-touch vibe, and a touch-them-and-I’ll-ruin-you mother, and while I let that torch burn bright and hot before letting it go, Hudson here still carries his, and now that she’s been back in town a couple of weeks?”

“Hudson is the Death Star, and that woman is Luke, about to blow his ass up.”

I kind of thought you’d be in uniform after getting off a twenty-four-hour shift.”

“If you want to see me in uniform, all you have to do is ask.”

“I know that. You know that. But it’s hard to overrule anxiety with logic.”

Allie had only let me into the places she felt safe enough to share. I turned at the base of the steps to face Anne. “But now, those walls are thick as hell and easily twenty feet tall, if not more, which is fine—I know how to climb—but we both know those bricks aren’t all because of me.”

Word by word, he’d somehow stitched the wound closed that his unexplained departure had left. Not healing it, not even scabbing it over, but stanching the blood loss.

The first time Mom had caught me with Hudson on the beach, she’d told me, “That boy is like the river. Pretty to look at, but we don’t swim there.”

“Sophie, how could you?” Straightening my posture, I looked right at my mother. “Easily. Though not usually in public.” Rachel gasped, and Mom’s hands curled. Shit, I shouldn’t have said that.

“Go ahead and say it.” I lifted my chin. “It wouldn’t be the first time, and it might make you feel better.” At least one of us would. “Mom,” Anne warned. “Should. Have.” She jabbed her finger my direction, biting out every syllable. “Been. You.”

“Agreement amended. My rule is you can touch me whenever you want, Alessandra. Public. Private. Doesn’t matter to me. Any part of me. With any part of you. Anytime you want.”

“The fact that her bloodline is repugnant has nothing to do with what I’m trying to tell you.”

“One day, you are going to regret you ever uttered those words,” Hudson vowed, and my stomach churned. Caroline had no idea she was maligning her own daughter.

Wanting Hudson had never been the problem. Him sticking around was the issue.

Things change, and I don’t give a shit who she’s dated before, because she’s with me now.” Okay, that was kind of hot. Really hot . . . if we weren’t faking this whole thing.

“I’m not breaking up with Allie. Not today. Not tomorrow. Not ever, if I get a say. Letting her go was the worst mistake I’ve ever made in my life, and I’ll be damned if your inability to pull your head out of your ass is going to cost me the only chance I have with her.”

I couldn’t imagine a lifetime when I would ever tire of looking into his eyes.

“You kissed me.”

“I kissed you.”

“I’ve waited eleven years to kiss you.” Inch by inch, he lowered his head, pinning me in place with those sea green eyes. “Eleven years of thinking what it would be like to cross that line, imagining all the ways—” He shook his head. “Did you even want it? Or was it just to prove her wrong?” “You thought about kissing me for eleven years?” My chest tightened. “Yes. Did. You. Want. It?” he repeated.

This is fake, remember?” “Not right now, it isn’t.”

He’d never looked at me like that before, like I was someone he wanted—no, craved. In fact, I wasn’t sure any of the men I’d been with had ever looked at me with such blatant need.

“What do you want, Hudson?” “I want that first kiss.” He cradled my cheek and skimmed his thumb over my lower lip. “Do you?”

“You broke my heart. Maybe we were just friends, but you broke my heart.”

“Don’t you scoff at me, Alessandra. I drove through the town. You and I both know the second Thanksgiving hits around here, there’s a surplus of Christmas tree farmers just waiting to snatch some Manhattan girl’s soul and teach her the true meaning of the holidays.” She shivered in repulsion.

“You don’t owe Lina anything,” she said quietly. “Not when it comes to Juniper, or your mother, your sisters, or your career.” Except I did. “I’m the one who got out,” I whispered. “You living for her isn’t going to bring her back.”

After that kiss, I knew there would be a first time. And a thousandth. I’d never felt chemistry like that in my life. We were a foregone conclusion.

“You look like you just caught a whiff of a trash pile in the middle of July.”

“Seriously, though. That’s what does it for you? Bated breath and glimmers? Let me guess—he doesn’t tell you he’s about to come, he declares that he’s arriving.”

“And I suppose you’re more of the first variety? Have to warn a girl that she’d better rev her own engine because your race ends before the first turn? Or are you the silent, grunty kind?”

“We’re messy, and you like me just fine when you forget you still hate me.”

Guest. My chest burned like a struck match at the sudden awareness that I wanted my name on that card. I didn’t want to be some anonymous, fleeting, erasable guest in her life like the others who had come before me. I wanted to be engraved, etched, and carved so deeply into her soul that she’d never get me out.

First means nothing. Last means everything.”

I told you I want you. I’m done hiding from it. Public. Private. Don’t care. This is real for me. It’s about to get messy.”

“I’ll fold,” I promised, my voice lowering. “I’ll turn myself inside out if it means I get to be hers.”

I didn’t have to be poised around him or present the illusion of perfection because he already knew I was neither of those things at my core. Inside, I was imperfect, and unkempt, and chaotic, just like him. And he alone had the power to quiet the chaos.

I live in a constant state of wanting you. I have since I was seventeen years old. Wanting you is all I know.”

“I mean . . . on the bright side, we won’t have to push the beds together,” Hudson noted. “Kind of impossible when there’s only one of them.”

“Look at us, making it through the night without falling prey to the one-bed trope.” Her feet hit the floor. “The what?” We both rummaged through our packs on separate sides of the queen-size bed, pulling out clothes. “You know, like in a book or a movie where the couple can’t stand each other, but there’s only one bed left at the inn, and they end up sleeping together.”

“Don’t worry.” I yanked my shirt over my head. “We still have tonight.”

“Were you always in love with her? Or just this time around?” My gaze flew to Caroline’s. “Oh, come on, you’re about as subtle as a hippo in a pet store.”