Chapter 3
Thanking her rescuer was possibly the most important thing on Audrey’s list. To finally be able to do it, even if she couldn’t really express what it meant to her, felt amazing. So did being in his arms. She’d expected a perfunctory squeeze, at most. But he’d hugged her back, and what had been meant as a simple thank you had turned into an embrace. Had she ever really let anyone hold her? Not like this. This whole thing had gone on way longer than she’d intended because…well, he seemed to need it. She knew grief and pain, and she’d recognized it in his face. If a simple hug would help even a little bit, who was she to deny him?
He seemed to register the weirdness a few moments after she did. They broke apart, an awkward disentangling of limbs. Audrey didn’t know what to do. She’d said what she needed to say. She didn’t really want to go back to the dance, but he obviously came out here because he didn’t want company. Maybe she’d go find Sam and beg off the rest of the evening. Retreat to the cabin and ice her legs.
“Audrey,” he said. “Your name is Audrey.”
Something warm and fuzzy bloomed in her chest. He remembered her name. “Audrey Graham. I’m sorry, I never knew your name.”
“Hudson Lowell.”
“Nice to meet you, Hudson.” After another beat of awkward silence, she started to turn.
“You wanna sit?”
The question surprised her. She looked around but saw no chairs. If she sat on the dock, she might not be able to get up again. But despite the risk, she didn’t want to leave him. This man who had haunted her dreams for two years. The chance to find out more about the real guy was too good to pass up. “Sure.”
Hudson retrieved his beer, toed off his shoes, and dropped down to the edge of the pier, dipping his feet into the water.
Audrey hesitated. “Isn’t it cold?”
“Little bit.”
Well, maybe this would serve the same purpose as icing. Using his shoulder for balance, she carefully lowered herself. He knew what she’d been through, so there was no sense in hiding the fact that she needed a little help. She pulled off her shoes and socks and tugged up the wide legs of her pants just far enough they wouldn’t get wet. Despite the darkness, she was still paranoid about her scars. Knowing and seeing were two very different things.
The water was frigid and perfect, the coolness immediately starting to alleviate the ache. She flexed her toes and feet, slowly rotating her ankles.
He dangled the longneck bottle between two fingers, looking out over the lake. “How did you end up at Camp Firefly Falls?”
Audrey glanced over at him. “Because of you, actually.”
“Me?” That pulled his attention back to her.
“You talked about it when you were cutting me out. I guess it stuck.” She shrugged with a nonchalance she didn’t feel. “The accident was a kind of wakeup call for me. I’d been putting all this focus on my career, practically since kindergarten—” Which was only a slight exaggeration. “—and I realized I’d been putting off actual living. Once I could do stuff again, I decided to start making up for lost time. I never got to go to camp as a kid, so when I found out they did grown-up camp and had a two-week retro session, I signed up.”
“What is it you do?”
“I’m a professor.”
Hudson gave her the side eye. “You seem kinda young for that.”
She rolled her eyes heavenward, thankful that she was old enough now that not every single person she met had that reaction. “I finished my PhD at twenty-three.”
“Seriously?”
“Seriously.”
He digested that for a moment. “So, you were...how old when you finished high school?”
“I graduated a few months before I turned sixteen.”
“Holy shit.”
She shrugged again, wishing they could talk about anything else but how much of a freak she was. “I skipped a few grades.” She waited for the intimidation or the interrogation about how smart she was. It was what people generally did when they found out.
Instead he surprised her. “That must’ve been hard. Being so out-of-sync age-wise with your classmates.” It was an insightful observation and absolutely true.
“Yeah. I kind of skipped a lot of normal kid rites of passage.”
“Hence camp.”
“Hence camp,” she agreed.
He tipped back his beer. “Well, for an authentic camp experience, you need a number of components.”
Her mouth pulled into a smile. “Should I be taking notes?”
“Reckon you’d be good at that after all that school.”
“True enough. So, the requisite components for an authentic camp experience?”
“You got your water sports, woodsy stuff, crafty stuff—I always avoided that like the plague, except for that one summer I had a crush on Jennifer Saylor and sat through macramé for two whole days because I thought she might notice me.”
“Did she?”
“Sadly, no. She had a thing for Pete Zimmerman, who was a counselor-in-training at the time.”
“So, you suffered through macramé for nothing?”
“Not nothing. I took home a real nice plant hammock to my mom.”
Audrey giggled.
He continued to talk about all the different activities, ranking the stuff she really needed to try while she was here. And it was fun, sitting here with him, talking about camp, and flirting. She was pretty sure this was flirting. He told more stories about his summers at Camp Firefly Falls, entertaining her with various hijinks. He seemed to relax a little more with each story, until she could almost forget the grief she’d seen in his eyes earlier. She wanted to ask if he’d show her some of these places and activities, because she wanted to spend some more time with him, but that was still a little too far outside her comfort zone. Right now, it was enough to sit here with him as their toes turned pruney.
Behind them the dance was breaking up. People began to stream out of the boathouse, headed back to their cabins or to the nightly campfire.
Hudson looked over his shoulder. “Maybe we ought to call it a night.”
Audrey hoped her disappointment didn’t show. “Guess it is getting kinda late.”
“Can I walk you back to your cabin?”
“That’d be nice.”
He boosted himself up in a fluid motion that had her wishing it was daylight and he was in nothing but board shorts so she could see the easy flex of muscle that enabled him to do that. That was definitely on her wish list of camp memories. Maybe later in the week.
Shifting, Audrey tried to lift her legs out of the water and realized she couldn’t get up. After all the sitting on the bus and the sitting on the hard pier for however long they’d been out here, her legs simply refused to work.
Damn it.
For the last hour or so, she’d managed to forget she was damaged. He’d made her feel normal. Just a woman, chatting and flirting with an interesting, sexy guy. The last thing she wanted was to remind him that she was anything but.
~*~
Hudson slipped his sandals back on.
From where she still sat, Audrey burst out, “You know what? I think I’ll sit out here a while longer. You go ahead.”
She wouldn’t look at him, but he could still see the flags of color in her cheeks, the hunch of her shoulders. Had he said something wrong? Mentally reviewing their conversation, he couldn’t pinpoint anything, but hell, he was so out of practice having a normal conversation these days, how would he know?
Never one to push a woman, he shoved his hands in his pockets. “Okay, I’ll see you around.”
“Night, Hudson.” There was something odd in her tone.
Not your business, he told himself.
He made it to the end of the dock before he looked back. She was dragging herself backward with her hands, maneuvering herself out of the water entirely with her upper body. Hudson cursed long and low for not realizing she was having trouble with her legs. She’d needed him for balance to sit down. Why wouldn’t she need a hand up?
He jogged back to her. “Are you in pain?”
Audrey dropped her face into her hands, the flush creeping up the back of her neck. “God.” She still wouldn’t look at him. “No. Not really, they’re just...asleep.” Her voice was strangled as if she couldn’t bear for him to see her weakness. “They’ll wake up in a minute.”
Not so long as she was sitting on the hard pier. Hudson scooped her up.
Audrey gave a surprised squeak. “What are you doing?”
“Which cabin are you in?”
“Seven. You can’t just carry me all the way back to my cabin.”
“Watch me. Here, grab your shoes.” He bent so she could reach them, then simply curled her close against his chest and started walking. She weighed more than she looked, but he was willing to bet there was a fair amount of metal in her legs now. Not that he’d ask. Either way, she was nothing compared to the hoses and firefighting gear he lugged around on a daily basis.
“People are staring,” she hissed.
He’d noticed that and didn’t much care, but at the distress in her tone, he skirted the remainder of the crowd, most of which was headed for the nightly campfire.
“They’ll probably assume we’re headed off to find somewhere private to make out. That’s another common element of the classic camp experience. Everybody’s nosy about who’s having a fling with who.”
Why the hell had he said that? Now he was thinking about one of those camp flings and taking it quite a bit further than he ever had as a teenager. Audrey was a beautiful woman, all soft and vulnerable in his arms, and she smelled amazing.
Knock it off, asshole. You’ve got no business looking at her like that. No business looking at anybody like that.
Audrey had no ready comeback.
“Do you have a lot of trouble with your legs?” Not the greatest segue, but he had to do something to get his mind off the mental images that were making his shorts tighter.
“Only when I’ve been sitting too long or when I overdo it. Hudson, you really don’t have to carry me all the way. Please set me down.”
He had a feeling she was minimizing, but he detoured to one of the trail benches and put her down. Because he could still feel her embarrassment, Hudson turned his back, while she wrestled on her socks and shoes.
“Hope you brought some more practical shoes for the rest of the week.”
“It was a dance,” she argued.
One she’d spent all of with him. Not dancing. But he didn’t point that out.
He offered a hand and pulled her to her feet, not asking before he slipped an arm around her. She wobbled a bit but stayed on her feet as they began to walk. Hudson kept his strides short and easy, moving at a pace quicker than the crawl he wanted, to avoid making her feel like an invalid.
“You don’t like to take help, do you?”
“If I’d taken all the help people thrust on me after the accident, I’d never have walked again.”
“Admitting your limitations doesn’t make you weak, Audrey.”
She made a little growling noise that was probably meant to convey annoyance but came across as adorable instead. “Screw limitations. I’m here to push past them. I won’t know what I can truly do unless I try.”
“Which is admirable. But be smart about it. You’ve got two weeks to ease into things. Don’t push yourself so hard you end up benching yourself.”
Her gait began to loosen as they went. “You sound like Chad.”
Hudson felt a twinge of something. That wasn’t jealousy. “Who’s Chad? Boyfriend?”
“My physical therapist.”
The twinge eased. No, definitely not jealousy. Because that would mean he was interested. Which he definitely was not. He had no business being interested in Audrey Graham, or anyone else for that matter. He was a wreck right now. But he found himself reluctant to let her go once she was able to walk on her own. It felt strangely good to have his arm around her and hers around him.
Where was this desire to look after her coming from? Because he’d rescued her once? He wasn’t responsible for her, and he’d more than proved he couldn’t look after anybody properly.
He followed her up the cabin steps, watching her feet like a hawk the whole way. But though she moved slowly, her feet didn’t hesitate.
She turned on the little porch, tucking a chunk of hair behind one ear. “Thanks for the escort, Hudson. And the conversation.”
“No problem.” He liked the sound of his name on her lips. Too much.
The moment stretched out between them, feeling strangely date-like, which was absurd. But he couldn’t help but wonder what she’d do if he slid a hand into that silky hair and laid his lips over hers. Would they be as soft as they looked? Would her body go pliant against his?
Audrey stepped back, opening the door, and reaching inside to flip on the porch light. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Hudson blinked, shaking himself out of the fantasy. “Tomorrow,” he repeated, though he had no idea why. “Good night, Audrey.”
“Night.”
He waited until she was safely back in her cabin before heading back toward his own. Charlie would undoubtedly be at the campfire, so now was his chance for some quiet time. And maybe he’d manage to fall asleep before his cabinmate got back. Or at least pretend to sleep. Tugging out his phone, he typed a text to his cousin, Rachel. It took ten minutes of hiking before he found enough signal to get it out.
What’s the update?
Then he waited.
Three little dots appeared almost immediately. No change. Get some sleep, Hud.
Sleep. Right.
Not that he’d done any of that consistently the past few months. Even if he managed to push himself to physical exhaustion, sleep was no reprieve. The moment he closed his eyes, he was back in that goddamned apartment fire. And that was fine. He didn’t deserve a reprieve. Didn’t deserve to forget, even for a moment. Because that minimized what happened. He’d survived, and he hadn’t figured out how to live with that.
As the familiar heaviness set in again, he realized that talking with Audrey was the first time in months he’d felt like himself.