Page 135 of Cherish

A knock on the door has Hudson springing out of bed. “Are you all right?” he asks, reaching for me like I’m the one who woke us.

“Yeah.” I sit up in bed, curls falling over my face and eyes heavy with sleep. “What’s going on?”

“I don’t know.”

The knock comes again, harder this time. “What time is it?” I ask as Hudson walks toward our locked door.

Not that I expected a lock to keep a returning Shadow Guard out when I flipped it last night, but at least it gives ussomewarning.

“Six a.m.,” he answers before calling, “who is it?”

I barely bite back a groan. We didn’t get to sleep until after three, and three hours of sleep is so not going to cut it with the next several days we’ve got in front of us. Especially when those days tend to come fast and furious, with no breaks in between.

But then the person knocking answers, “Macy.”

All thoughts of sleep abandon me in a rush, and I throw the covers back as Hudson opens the door.

“Are you okay?” I ask as I stumble toward the door in my PJs. I’m still half asleep, but I’m determined to wake up. This is the first time Macy has actually sought me out since she joined this trip.

“Yes. Sorry,” she says as she walks into the room, then registers that we were both still in bed. “I didn’t realize how early it is. I can come back later.”

“Don’t bother,” Hudson tells her with a gentle smile. “We’re up now.”

“I couldn’t sleep.” She runs a hand over her face, and I can’t help noticing that we’re seeing the real Macy for the first time in months.

No heavy goth makeup.

No spiked jewelry wrapped around her neck and sticking out from the many new holes pierced in her ears.

Nokeep out!signs screaming at me from every direction.

She looks much younger this way. Much more like I remember her—and much more vulnerable. Which I suppose is the point of all the rest of the stuff. She’s tired of being vulnerable.

I can’t say that I blame her—not with what she’s been through.

If I didn’t have Hudson to keep me grounded and help me feel safe when the nightmares come at three a.m., I might be doing the exact same thing she is right now.

“Want to talk about it?” I ask, settling back down on the bed and scooting toward the middle so she can crawl in on one side of me while Hudson sits down on the other. “Or do you want to just watch TV or something?”

“I don’t know,” she answers, and she doesn’t move from the spot she’s claimed in the center of the room. “I really didn’t mean to bother you two.”

“You’re my favorite cousin,” I tell her. “You’re never a bother.”

That makes her smile a little bit, even as she shakes her head and looks at the ground.

“I think I’m going to go take a shower,” Hudson announces to the room in general.

I shoot him a grateful look as he gathers clean clothes from his backpack. It’s six in the morning, and he’s willing to lock himself in the bathroom for God knows how long just so Macy and I can have the heart-to-heart she seems so desperately to need.

“You don’t have to do that,” Macy says, looking alarmed. “I’m sorry. I’ll go.”

“Bollocks,” Hudson responds with a wink. “I wasn’t sleeping anyway.”

It’s an obvious lie, easily contradicted by his sleepy blue eyes and the hair standing straight up on one side of his head. But neither Macy nor I call him on it—not when he is being so gallant.

After the bathroom door closes behind him, neither of us moves for several seconds. But when it becomes obvious that Macy isn’t going to come to me—and she isn’t going to say anything else from over there—I climb back off the bed and go to her.

“Hey,” I whisper, pulling her in for a hug just as Hudson starts singing “Start Me Up” by the Rolling Stones at the top of his lungs. “What can I do?”

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