It’s annoying af, even without the obnoxious smirk he doesn’t try to hide. Or the multiple sidelong glances that precede the words: “Hanging out with Flint Montgomery isn’t exactly keeping your head down.”
I ignore him, do my best Dory impression. Just keep walking, just keep walking.
“I’m only saying,” he continues when I don’t respond, “making friends with a dra—” He breaks off, clears his throat before trying again. “Making friends with a guy like Flint is…”
“What?” I turn on him, frustration racing through me. “Being friends with Flint is what exactly?”
“Like painting a target on your back,” he answers, looking a little taken aback by my anger. “It’s pretty much the opposite of keeping a low profile.”
“Oh, really? So what exactly is hanging out with you, then?”
His face goes blank, and I don’t think he’s going to answer. But eventually, he says, “Utter and complete stupidity.”
Not the answer I was expecting, especially from someone as arrogant and annoying as he can be. The blunt honesty of it slips past my defenses, though. Has me answering when I didn’t think there was anything else to say. “Yet here you are.”
“Yeah.” His dark, bemused eyes search my face. “Here I am.”
Silence echoes between us—dark, loaded, unfathomable—even as tension stretches taut as a circus high wire.
I should go.
He should go.
Neither of us moves. I’m not sure I even breathe.
Finally, Jaxon breaks the stillness—though not the tension—by taking a step closer to me. Then another and another, until the only thing that separates us is the bulky weight of my coat and the thinnest sliver of air.
Chills that have nothing to do with the cold and everything to do with Jaxon’s proximity dance up and down my spine.
My heart pounds.
My head swims.
My mouth goes desert dry.
And the rest of me doesn’t fare much better…especially when Jaxon reaches for my gloved hand, rubs his thumb back and forth across my palm.
“What were you and Flint talking about?” he asks after a second. “At the party?”
“I honestly don’t remember.” Which sounds like a cop-out answer, but it’s really just the truth. With Jaxon touching me, I’m lucky to remember my own name.
He doesn’t challenge my words. But the corners of his lips tip up in a very self-satisfied smile as he murmurs, “Good.”
His smirk jump-starts my brain—finally—and then it’s my turn to ask a question. “What were you and Lia fighting about?”
I don’t know what I expect—his gaze to go flat again, probably, or for him to tell me that it’s none of my business. Instead, he says, “My brother,” in a tone that doesn’t ask for sympathy and warns that he won’t permit it.
It’s not the answer I was expecting, but as the very few pieces I have start fitting themselves together in my head, my heart plummets. “Was…was Hudson your brother?”
For the first time, I see genuine surprise in his eyes. “Who told you about Hudson?”
“Lia did. Last night when we were having tea. She mentioned that—” I break off at the glacial coldness in his eyes.
“What did she tell you?” The words are quiet, but that only makes them hit harder. As does the way he drops my hand.
I swallow, then finish in a rush. “Just that her boyfriend died. She didn’t say anything about you at all. I just took a guess that her boyfriend might also be…”
“My brother? Yeah, Hudson was my brother.” The words drip ice, in an effort—I think—to keep me from knowing how much they hurt. But I’ve been there, have spent weeks doing the same thing, and he doesn’t fool me.
“I’m sorry,” I tell him, and this time I’m the one who reaches for him. The one whose fingers whisper over his wrist and the back of his hand. “I know it doesn’t mean anything, that it doesn’t touch the kind of grief you’re feeling. But I truly am sorry you’re hurting.”
For long seconds, he doesn’t say anything. Just watches me with those dark eyes that see so much and show so little. Finally, when I’m searching my brain for something else to say, he asks, “What makes you think I’m hurting?”
“Aren’t you?” I challenge.
More silence. Then, “I don’t know.”
I shake my head. “I don’t know what that means.”