Page 73 of Illicit Illustration

My hands began to sweat as I waited for him to join us, and I averted my eyes when he placed a tender kiss on her cheek, running his hand down her arm. “Hey there, little devil. You’re not encouraging my sister to do bad things tonight, are you?”

“Not exactly,” Charley laughed, standing up and grabbing my much taller brother by the shoulders and forcing him to sit on the stool she’d just occupied. “She’s being naughty all on her own.”

He cringed, eyes darting between the two of us. “Not sure I need to know that.”

“Haz.” Charley stood behind my brother, not so subtly nodding my head in his direction. “Now might be a great time to talk to your brother about that project you were telling me about.”

Eyes wide, I mouthed,you’re dead,but she just laughed and escaped into the kitchen, likely to eavesdrop while she pretended to give us privacy.

“You finally going to tell me about that secret project you’ve been working on for the last few months?” Hudson looked amused, but I knew he wouldn’t pry if I stuttered my way through an excuse to run away and hide upstairs until the embarrassment wore off, which would likely be never.

“Not exactly.”

He nodded, propping his boot on the bottom rung of my barstool, and tapping his foot while he waited for me to speak. “You know both of us could get on with our days if you just tell me. Because you know Char won’t let us leave until we talk.”

“So, obviously you know that I’ve been working on some artwork on the side while I’ve been taking classes.”

He nodded, smiling as his eyes filled with mirth.

“Well, I’ve been taking private commissions to illustrate some scenes from books.” He never needed to know what types of books they were from, and my meddling best friend had better keep that information to herself.

“Sounds pretty cool. I’ve noticed you buried in your tablet a lot down here. So, what’s up? Do you need to cut back on your hours or something?”

“No, not exactly… I kind of wanted to talk to you about something else.”

“Okay. We going to do this the Hazel way, or are you just going to tell me?”

My entire family knew that I was completely incapable of talking to them without laying out all the extraneous details I thought they needed to know ahead of time before I just awkwardly spit out the point, but maybe now was the time to just get on with it and fill in the details later. Not that my brother ever needed to know all the details when it came to what had happened in the last few weeks.

Charley’s head popped up over the counter in the expo window and she mimed me taking in a deep breath, followed by the two words Reid had used last night:Be Brave.

“I think I might, sort of, maybe…beinlovewithReid.”

My best friend’s hand covered her mouth as her shoulders shook with laughter, but my brother didn’t seem to find the situation quite as comical.

“Say what now? You’re in love with who?”

“Um…well, you see… I…”

Hudson’s hands balled into fists, and his eyes suddenly flashed with something that I rarely saw from him, a bit of disappointment mixed with anger. “Did he touch you?”

“Huh?”

Hudson’s jaw clenched, and he shook his head once before refocusing his gaze on me. “What exactly is going on here? Did Reid come on to you or something? Where is this coming from? You’ve barely talked to him in years and suddenly you’re in love with him?”

“It’s not suddenly. I’ve had feelings for Reid for a long time, it was just in the last few weeks that…”

“That he decided he needed to fuck my baby sister?” he yelled, and I flinched, hating that was his response. Hudson loved Reid, and if anything, while he had come on strong about insisting on helping me with my commissions, I was just as much of a willing participant in what had happened between us.

“First of all,no onehas fucked your baby sister.” Hudson flinched, but I didn’t stop, suddenly angry that he was just assuming that Reid was the bad guy. “Second, he’s your best fucking friend. Do you honestly think he would do anything if he wasn’t serious about his feelings for me?”

“But he doesn’t take anything seriously, and he’s never had a serious relationship in his life. Do you really want to be the person he tries out monogamy on? You think it’s gonna last?”

He wasn’t saying anything I hadn’t thought in the last week, but Reid had also shown me multiple times that he was patient enough to wait for me to be ready for him—even though I’d repeatedly pushed him away. My relationships hadn’t exactly been serious until this point, either, so it wasn’t like we were on an uneven footing.

“I don’t know if it’s going to last, just like you don’t know if what you have with Charley is going to last.”

“But at least I—”

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