Page 24 of My Brother's Teammates

“To a magical place.” He pulled me into a stairwell that I’d never used before and then pointed up. The stairs narrowed but they did go up another flight. He saw my eyes widen and laughed. “Yeah. This isn’t on the official tour.”

I gripped his hand tight, despite not knowing when I’d held it in the first place. The stairs led to a smaller wooden door and Hudson had to pull a key out of his pocket to open it. “How do you know about this place?”

He pushed open the door and went through before turning around and helping me into the dark space. “Papa DuPont used to drag me around campus when he’d come to show his face once or twice a year. The last thing I wanted to do was be his prized pony or eager audience, so I’d escape as often as I could.”

I hesitated. “Hudson? It’sreallydark.”

He gripped both of my hands and pulled my arms around his waist so that I was pressed into his back. “Just hold on. The light switch is on the other side of the room. It’s a straight shot, though.”

After walking with my chest pressing into him for a few feet and having his muscles rub back and forth against my nipples, I grew suspicious. I knew enough about Hudson to know that he loved to mess with people. Against my sense of self-preservation, I let go of him and stepped to the side as quickly and as cautiously as I could.

It wasn’t either, but when I knocked into something hard and grunted in pain, Hudson swore and a light flickered on overhead. I blinked against the sudden brightness and pointed at where he stood next to the door we’d come in.

“I knew it!” I held onto my hip and winced when I saw I’d bumped into the corner of a waist-high shelf. Looking back at Hudson, I quietly gasped when I found him already in front of me, already focused on my hip. When his hand ghosted over the spot I’d hit, I had to remind myself to breathe. “It’s okay. I did it to myself. I knew you were trying to scare me the same way Jason and his high school friends used to, though. I sacrificed my hip to be right.”

He rolled his eyes. “I’m not an immature high school kid, Jenny. I’m an immature man. I wasn’t trying to scare you. I just thought I’d steal a hug.”

I gently pushed his shoulder. “You could just have a hug if you’re that hard up for hugs, loser.”

He opened his arms and scoffed when I ducked under them. “That was mean.”

I forgot about my hip as I found myself enjoying Hudson’s easiness. “You can have hugs later, when you haven’t just tried to steal them. For now, tell me about this place. What am I looking at?”

“Nothing, yet.”

***Jenny***

“Comeon.Thisis just an old storage room.” Hudson took my hand and pulled me through a room I would’ve loved to get lost in for a while. It wasn’t anything special in size or space, but the old shelves that filled the room were overflowing and I would’ve gladly spent the day looking through them. “So, when I was fourteen or fifteen, there was a freshman who worked here and she might’ve mistaken me for a guy around her age. When I escaped my dad’s clutches, she saw me and showed me around.”

I scowled up at him. “If this is the story of how you lost your virginity and you’re going to take the time to show me the exact location, I’ll pass.”

He laughed and tightened his grip on my hand. “I lost my virginity a while before that trip, Jenny. While I did fool around with that girl in this storage room, she’d never explored what was beyond this room.”

“Ew, Hudson. Don’t tell me about that. You were way too young for that and she was way too old for you.” I pulled him into a hug that he hadn’t been expecting and held him. “That’s a hug for baby Hudson, not you, by the way.”

He grunted when I pulled away. “Felt like it was for me.”

“Just show me the rest.” I shook my head. “Where are Axel and Jason, by the way?”

“Finally noticed they weren’t here, huh? I’m starting to think you’re charmed by me.” He stopped at another door and wiggled the doorknob while using his force to shove it open. “Axel and Ry are still in deep shit with Coach for trying to knock each other’s last two brain cells out. He’s got them working their dicks off. And I thought Jason was coming with me but then I saw him get sidetracked by this girl he’s been into lately.”

I gasped as soon as the door opened. At the other end of the room was the window that I’d stared up at so many times while driving past the library. From the street, it seemed large, but I could see that it filled the entire other end of the room from inside. I’d always wondered where it was inside the library and had just decided it was probably just decor because it just didn’t seem real. With the sunrise showing through it, setting the long room aglow, it took my breath away.

“I kept coming back here after that girl showed me this place and it didn’t take me long to find this room.” Hudson closed the door behind us and put his hand on my lower back to guide me. “Because I’m curious and have too much free time, I managed to do some digging and found out some interesting history about St. Ida University. Have you ever heard the name Ida Elaine?”

I nodded and took in everything I could, as fast as I could. Dust and cobwebs clung to most surfaces, but a crude path had been cleared. Footprints, all the same size, had stomped away dust from the doorway to the window. “Wasn’t Ida Elaine a made-up woman? There were rumors about the founder of the town having a mistress on the side named Ida, right? But really, St. Ida got its name from Saint Ida of Herzfeld.”

“Someone read a pamphlet in the student center.” He moved his hand up the back of my neck and his thumb stroked the sensitive skin behind my ear. “There was more to those rumors than anyone knew. I came up here one night while my dad was doing some bullshit dinner for show and I thought I’d smoked too much on the walk over because there were things that I’d never noticed before all over the floor in front of the window.”

Nervous excitement rolled over my body in waves. “What kinds of things?”

“These weird markings that I didn’t recognize. They lined up in the moonlight that shone through the window, though, and it gave me such a weird feeling that I ran out. I came back a few months later in the daytime and those markings weren’t there.” He shivered and stepped around a circle of space on the floor. “I did some research about this room and I found out some weird shit about Ida Elaine. She was real, Jenny.”

I looked up at him and stepped closer when I saw him look over my shoulder. I was officially creeped out. “No, she was just-”

“She was real and she had two daughters with John Wells. Ida was found dead when the girls were young, just before John founded St. Ida.” Hudson rested his hands on my shoulders and looked as serious as I’d ever seen him. “I found journals up here. The journals of Jane and Julie Smith. They were listed in the old employment documents for the university as caregivers for several of the wealthier students who attended.”

“So, they worked for old-timey Hudson?” I tried to joke, but after the scary movies we’d watched the night before, I was on edge. I grabbed his shirt and held on tight, terrified that he’d run away and leave me standing there all alone.

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