It’s not even about the sketch he gave me, either—or at least not exclusively about the sketch. I can see why he might want to get rid of it, I guess—I don’t even have his history with it. And yet, every time I open my desk drawer and see it staring at me, it reminds me of what we’ve lost and makes me wonder for the hundredth time if he’s really been able to move on.

I’d totally get it if he wasn’t as good with Hudson and me as he seems, too.

He doesn’t know what I know—that we were manipulated by the Bloodletter. That Hudson is my true mate. So for the thousandth time, I wonder if I made the right decision not telling him. But like every other time, I decide it would only do more harm than good.

Besides, it’s not just our breakup going on. I sense it. Something feels off with him, and it has for a while. Jaxon has always been a little aloof, a little cold, a little hard to reach. Just because he let me in doesn’t mean I didn’t see how he was with others. What’s going on now, though, is very different. I don’t like it, and I don’t think the members of the Order do, either. I just don’t think any of us knows what to do about it, especially when he’s closed himself off so completely.

I text Hudson that I’m on my way to his room, and he immediately texts back that I should meet him by the front steps instead. Which is weird, but he’s the one doing me a favor, so I’m not going to question it.

He’s waiting by the door when I make it down the main steps. “Hey, what’s up?” I ask when he turns around to smile at me. “Do you want to go to one of the study rooms instead?”

“Actually, I thought we might go outside,” he says, and the British is heavy in his voice again—which means he’s upset or nervous. “It’s a right gorgeous day.”

“It is,” I agree, searching his face for some clue about what’s going on in his head. There’s no reason for him to be nervous, so I ask, “Everything okay?”

“Sure, why?”

I shake my head. “Just checking. And yes, I’d love to study outside. I just need to run upstairs and get a coat real fast.”

“You can have mine,” he says as he slips out of his wool Armani jacket. “It’s not like I need it anyway.”

“Are you sure?” I ask, even as I slide my backpack off my shoulder.

“Yeah, absolutely.” He holds it up, and I start to take it before I realize that he’s waiting for me to slide an arm into one of the sleeves…because he’s a total gentleman, apparently.

When I was in San Diego, I probably would have thought it was strange if a guy did that, but there’s something about Hudson that makes the move so smooth, so debonair, so sexy, that I just kind of go along with it. And then sigh with delight when the ginger and sandalwood scent of him envelops me from all sides.

Nobody smells quite as good as Hudson does.

“How do I look?” I ask, giggling as I hold out my arms to show the sleeves falling way past my fingertips. It’s a blatant effort to hide the fact that I’m still sniffing his coat like a weirdo, but hey. Any port in a storm.

“Charming,” he answers dryly. But he’s smiling as he straightens out the front of the jacket and then rolls up both my sleeves until my hands are once again visible.

“Better?” I ask, doing a little pirouette before I bend to pick up my backpack.

I expect him to laugh, but his eyes are serious when he answers, “I like seeing you in my clothes.”

And just like that, my mouth goes dry. Because there’s no doubt I like wearing his clothes. Or at least this jacket.

The relaxed atmosphere between us evaporates, replaced by a tension that has nothing to do with our former enmity and everything to do with the attraction that keeps growing between us a little more every day.

It’s just the mating bond, I tell myself even as my breath catches in my throat.

It’s not organic, not real, I remind myself even as my heart stutters in my chest.

It can vanish as easily as it came, I repeat like a mantra even as he leans closer and turns my whole body to liquid.

At least until I realize he’s only leaning in so that he can take my backpack and slide it over his shoulder. “Ready?” he asks as he pushes the front door open.

“As I’ll ever be,” I answer with a roll of my eyes. “This history class is kicking my butt.”

“It’s just because you’ve never heard it before. Once you get the basics memorized, you’ll do fine.”

“I’m not so sure about that.” I turn my head up to soak in the warm rays of the sun. “I can memorize with the best of them, but I think my problems are coming from the fact that I’m having a terrible time wrapping my head around these alternate versions of history.”

“Most of history has alternate versions,” Hudson tells me as we walk down the steps and take one of the paths on the right. “It just depends who’s telling the story.”

“I don’t think I agree with that,” I tell him as we pass by a small path of lawn complete with a couple of tree-stump seats that I had no idea even existed until the snow started to melt. “I mean, yeah, there are two or more sides to every story, but facts don’t change. That’s why they’re facts.”

“I agree,” he says with a nod. “But I think you need to know the whole story before you can decide what’s truth and what’s opinion. History makes it easier, not harder, to do that, because it pulls the lens back. Lets us see more of the whole picture.”

“Yeah, and if you’re lucky, that whole picture won’t blow your tiny human brain all the way up.”

He grins. “Well, yes, that would be the hope.”

We come to a fork in the path, and he puts a hand on my lower back as he steers me toward an area I’ve never been to before. “Where are we going?” I ask.

“A place I know.”

“I never would have guessed.” I roll my eyes. “Can you give me a little more of a hint?”

“Where’s the fun in that?” he asks.

“Just so you know, I hate surprises,” I tell him.

“No, you don’t,” he answers absently as he concentrates on steering me around a giant mound of snow that has yet to melt. “You just tell people that so you always have the inside scoop. It’s not the same thing.”

“And the hits from having you in my head for so long just keep on coming…” I make a face at him. “You know, this whole you-knowing-everything-about-me-and-me-knowing-nothing-about-you thing really sucks.”

“What do you want to know?” He glances at me out of the corner of his eye. “I have no problem sharing.”

“Somehow, I doubt that. Doesn’t sharing equal weakness?” I snark.

“It’s not like I’m planning on announcing my neuroses to the entire campus,” he answers dryly. “But if you want to know something, just ask.”

There’s so much I want to know that I don’t even know where to start. What was he like as a child? Did he have a best friend? Where did he go to school? What was his favorite holiday? But every question seems like a minefield of sadness for him, and I don’t want to make him relive anything painful just to satisfy my curiosity. “Can I think about it?” I finally ask.

“Of course. Think away.” But his voice is stiff when he says it, and I get the impression I somehow said the wrong thing.

“Hudson—”

“Don’t worry about it.” He yawns. “Psychopathy isn’t that interesting anyway.”

“That isn’t what I meant.” I rest my hand on his arm, trying to get him to look at me, but he isn’t going for it. Which isn’t frustrating at all. “Why do you do that?”

“Do what?” His tone is as smooth as canned frosting—and twice as sickly sweet.

“Shut down!” I all but yell at him. “Every time I say something you don’t like, you just shut me out.”

“Why should that bother you when you’ve been shutting me out for months?”

“Seriously? That’s what you’re going to go with? I thought you were evil—because you were so busy keeping me out that you didn’t let me see the real you.”

He starts walking faster. “I showed you the real me. You just conveniently forgot it.”

His words land like blows. “Is that what you think? That I don’t want to remember?” I narrow my eyes. “That’s not fair, Hudson.”

“You’re going to talk to me about what’s fair?” he stops and asks with a laugh that is anything but humorous. “Nice.” Then he shakes his head and adds, “This was a bad idea.”

He turns around, starts to walk away. But I grab onto his hand, try to hold him in place. “Please don’t go.”

“Because you need help with your bloody history?” he asks snidely.

“Because I want to talk to you,” I tell him.

“What do we have to talk about, Grace? I know everything in the world there is to know about you—even the things you wish no one knew—and yet I still want to know more. But you, you can’t even think of one question to ask me? I’m just tired of it all. Of being the only one here.”

“Don’t you mean tired of me?” I throw the words at him like a gauntlet, then freak out when I watch them hit.

“Yeah,” he says after a second, his eyes as flat as a frozen lake. “Maybe that’s exactly what I mean.”

My breath catches. Hudson, who has never once given up on me, is giving up. And why wouldn’t he? I’d told him I wanted to take things slowly, but instead of going slowly, I pulled him into the quicksand with me. And then watched him sink.