Page 48 of Accidental Abduction

“Wow.”

“Shut up. This isn’t about me and my lack of firsthand penis knowledge. This is about whatever is going on with Hudson. Where is he? I thought you two would be attached at the cro...”

“Hazel,” I scolded. “No crotch talk if you don’t want details.”

She giggled, but raised an eyebrow, not letting me off the hook. And she deserved to know what was going on. Hazel had more at stake than either Hudson or me. She could potentially lose a friend or a brother if things went wrong between us. But I’d never make her choose.

“He’s coming in later to catch up with the staff who’s on tonight to make sure they’re ready to open.” At least that’s what I hoped he still planned on doing.

“Then I’m sure Mikey will fill him in on how the shit hit the fan right after you guys left.” Hazel scowled, her hands clenching at her sides, and I had a feeling that psycho Harley had made a reappearance after Hudson drove away with me tied up in his back seat.

“What happened? Did someone get into a fight?”

“Yeah,” she laughed. “I guess you could say that. Viv cornered me and started yelling about someone stealing Hudson’s car. I guess she saw it leaving the lot when she came back after getting escorted out the first time, and she wanted to know where he went. I knew it was Hudson leaving with you since I’d just read your last text message and refused to tell her. She lost it when I told her that Hudson didn’t leave alone, and Reid came over to rescue me. When she tried to pull my off my halo with a chunk of my hair, I grabbed the bat you left behind on the table and shoved it into her twat.”

I choked out a laugh at her usage of the wordtwat,but I was proud of my friend for sticking up for herself.

“Mikey had to drag her out to the parking lot to cool off. And then sent her home with her friends when Reid threatened to call the cops. She saw me watching the whole thing and warned me she’d be back for answers later.”

“Fuck,” I sighed, knowing that it was inevitable Viv would show up at some point. She’d basically told Hudson that she wanted him to wait around while she hooked up with other guys to make sure she actually wanted him. Which I told him was bullshit, because he was a catch and if she didn’t realize that she was stupider than I thought she was, but he wasn’t hers anymore.

“You don’t think he’d go back to her, do you?”

“Fuck no,” I hissed. But I wasn’t entirely sure. My heart said he wouldn’t, but she’d manipulated him for years. Other than our brief conversations about how she’d mistreated him, he hadn’tbrought her up again. We’d been too busy doingother thingswith our mouths to waste words on her.

“Are you two dating?”

Pausing, I tried to figure out how to answer her. We’d spent the entire drive back this morning holding hands, but he’d never actually said where he wanted things to go from where we’d left them. He’d implied that things would continue once we were back home, but I’d been disappointed by promises made in the heat of the moment before. It was why I’d never committed to a relationship after undergrad.

Was I just a fling? Did the forced proximity of the storm heighten things unrealistically between us?

“Shit. You’re gonna freak out now, aren’t you? Do I need to go beat some sense into him?”

That was the last thing I needed. Hazel could be fierce when she was pissed off, and I didn’t want this to drive a wedge between them. Hudson hadn’t defined things between us, but the kiss he’d laid on me once we’d parked behind the bar had to mean he didn’t want this to be over.

“No. No...” My knee shook as I tried not to let the panic overtake me.

“I’ll fucking kill him,” she growled, pushing up from the couch.

I grabbed her arm, pulling her back down beside me. “No, you’re not going to kill him. I just need to talk to him.”

“He should have fucking told you what he wantedbeforeyou two came back here. You two have to be the shittiest communicators on the planet. Spend 72 hours snowed into a remote cabin and neither one of you thought to come up for air and talk about this?”

“The whole thing was an accident. You think we were concerned with reality when this all started?”

“La la la la...” she hummed, covering her ears. I smacked her in the arm, and she cracked up laughing, sticking her tongue out at me.

“You’re the one who wants to talk about this. It’s not like I told you how big his di...” her palm smacked againstmy mouth, cutting off my words. I licked her palm, and she narrowed her eyes at me in warning.

“Okay, okay, no talk about the size of...” I trailed off laughing at the look on her face. “I’m done. But anyway, we talked, about more than...stuff, but I was too afraid to ask him about what happened when we were forced back into reality.”

“Do you want me to text Reid?” Hazel looked just as eager for answers as I was.

“You mean the guy you can’t formulate complete sentences around and run the opposite way from whenever he looks in your direction?” Clearly a lot of things had changed at that party.

“He was actually surprisingly sweet after Mikey dragged Viv out of the bar. He made sure I was okay, and several times for the rest of the night I saw him watching me from across the room.”

Oh, my poor, sweet oblivious friend. She spent too much time with the imaginary—apparently horny—characters in her tablet.

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