“What does that mean?” I whisper, willing him to turn around and face me. “Tell me, Hudson.”

He does, but when our eyes meet, there’s something terrible in his. Something dark and desperate and so blindingly painful that I feel it nearly tear me in two.

“You think Jaxon has power?” he whispers to me in a voice that somehow fills up the whole room. “You don’t have a clue what real power is, Grace. If you did, if you knew what I could do, you wouldn’t have to ask me these questions, because you’d already know the answers.”

68

The Truth Hurts

My heart wedges in my throat at the certainty in his voice, at the darkness and the horror he doesn’t even try to hold back.

There’s a part of me that wants to ask him to explain, but there’s another, bigger part of me that’s terrified of the answer.

So I don’t say anything. Instead, I just lay on my bed, Macy’s forgotten pillow clutched to my chest, and listen to the sound of the water running in her shower.

For the longest time, Hudson doesn’t say anything, either. He just stands by the window, looking out at the dimly lit grounds.

Silence stretches between us, as fraught and frozen as the tundra in winter, untouched by even the smallest ray of light or warmth. It’s so cold that it’s painful, so empty that it echoes inside me, reverberating off every part of me until there’s nothing that doesn’t ache.

Nothing that doesn’t burn.

I’m close to the breaking point, desperate to say something—anything—to shatter the icy desert between us, but Hudson cracks first.

“You know, you really were adorable when you were five.”

It’s the last thing I expect him to say, and it has me shooting up in bed as surprise replaces the strange hurt I’ve been wallowing in. “What does that mean?”

“It means you looked adorable when you smiled with your two front teeth missing. I love that the first one fell out but that you knocked the second one out when you went head over handlebars two weeks later.”

“How do you know that?” I whisper.

“You told me.”

“No.” I shake my head. “I never tell anyone that story.” Because if I did, I’d have to explain about how that same front tooth ended up growing in really strange and gnarly because the baby tooth was knocked out too early, and before I got braces, everyone used to make fun of me for it—which is why beavers are still my least favorite animal to this day.

“Well, you told me,” he answers, sounding incredibly pleased with that fact. “And now I’m watching the home movies, live and in color.”

“What kind of home movies?” I ask warily.

“The kind where you look adorable in that navy polka dot dress you used to love to spin around the living room in. I particularly like the matching bow.”

Oh my God. “Are you in my memories?”

“Yes, of course.” He shakes his head, but his eyes are soft and the smile on his mouth is even softer. “You really were an incredibly cute kid.”

“You can’t do that!” I tell him. “You can’t just go into my memories and look at whatever you want.”

“Sure I can. They are just lying around, after all.”

“They’re not just ‘lying around.’ They’re inside my head!”

“Yeah, and so am I.” He holds his hands up in an obviously kind of gesture. “So you see what I mean about them just being here, right?”

“Seriously?”

“Umm, yeah. The bunny outfit when you were six is also one of my favorites.”

“Oh my God.” I pull Macy’s pillow tightly over my head and wonder if it’s possible to actually smother myself with rainbow fur. Not that that seems like such a bad idea right now.

“Why are you doing this to me?” I groan as I rack my brain, trying to imagine what horrible, humiliating memories he might run across at any second. I know there aren’t actually that many, but right now it feels like the supply is limitless.

“I don’t know, even I have to say that you’ve got a few doozies,” he tells me. “That one with the chicken when you were in third grade was pretty embarrassing.”

“First of all, it was a rooster. And second of all, he was rabid.”

“Chickens can’t get rabies,” Hudson tells me with an amused smirk.

“What? Of course they can.”

“No, they can’t.” He laughs. “Rabies only affects mammals. Chickens are birds, therefore no rabies.”

“What do you know anyway?” I demand, flopping over on my side. “What are you, the Chicken Whisperer all of a sudden?”

“Yes,” he answers, totally deadpan. “That’s me, absolutely. Hudson Vega, world-renowned chicken whisperer. How did you know?”

“Oh, shut up,” I groan and throw the pillow at him, but it doesn’t actually connect. Of course it doesn’t, because he’s not really standing by the window. He’s in my head, watching home movies. I grab another pillow to dive face-first into and moan, “You’re such a pain in my ass, you know that? Giant. Enormous. Massive.”

“Wow. How did I miss the memory of you swallowing a thesaurus? I should probably get right on finding that one. Maybe it’s next to the one where you lost your bikini top at La Jolla Cove? You remember, right? You were thirteen and had to get your mom to bring you a towel while you waded neck-deep in the water.”

“I hate you.”

He grins. “No, you don’t.”

“Yes, I do,” I insist, even though I know I sound like a cranky toddler.

His laugh dies away. “Yeah, maybe you do, at that.” He sighs and seems to consider his words carefully before he continues. “You know I’m only looking at the memories you already shared with me, right?”

“That can’t be true,” I answer. “There’s no way I tell anyone about my tooth. Or the bikini top. Or—” I stop myself before I can blurt anything else out.

“Or the time you threw up all over your kindergarten teacher’s shoes?” he asks quietly.

“Why would I tell you these things? I don’t tell them to anyone. Not even Heather or Macy know about most of them.”

“I think that’s something you need to ask yourself, isn’t it? If you hate me this much, why would you tell me all these things?”

I don’t have an answer for him. Hell, I don’t even have an answer for myself. Maybe that’s why I roll over and face the wall. Because suddenly, it feels like there’s a whole lot I don’t know.

The darkness is back, the yawning chasm that I’ve been trying to push my way through since I became human again. Only this time, I don’t just see the emptiness. Instead, I see the wreckage, the destruction, the total wasteland of what is…and more, what could have—maybe even should have—been.

It hurts so much more than I expected it would.

Hudson doesn’t disturb me again. But he does finally walk away from the window and slump down on the floor next to me, his back resting against the edge of my bed.

I keep my eyes closed, and suddenly, right behind my lids, a different memory begins to play. This one is of two dark-haired little boys, the older no more than ten years old, and both dressed in what look to be period costumes in the middle of a dark, tapestry-filled room. A giant table dominates the center of the space, with huge, elaborately carved wooden chairs tucked in all around it.

Standing beside the table is one of the little boys, his blue eyes filled with tears as he begs, “No, Mummy, no! Please don’t take him. Please don’t take him! Please don’t take him!” He just keeps saying it over and over, and I can feel my chest growing tighter with each word.

“I have to take him,” she answers in a cold, clipped voice. “Now, stop your crying and say your goodbyes, or we’ll leave without them.”

The little boy doesn’t stop crying, but he does stop begging as he walks across the room to the younger boy—this one with dark, confused eyes. The blue-eyed boy hugs him and then fades across the room to grab something from the table before fading back to the other boy, a small, wooden horse gripped in his tiny hands.

He gives the other boy the toy and whispers, “I made him for you and named him Jax, so you wouldn’t forget his name. I love you.” He glances up at his mother before adding in a voice so raw, my heart breaks, “Don’t forget me, Jax.”

“Okay, that’s enough,” his mother tells him. “Go finish your studies. I’ll be back for dinner, and I’ll quiz you on them.”

His mother and the dark-eyed boy turn and leave the other little boy all alone in the room. As the door clicks shut behind them, he falls to his knees, sobbing the way only a child can. With his whole body and heart and soul. The devastation, the pain, tears through me like an avalanche.

Just then, a man in a suit walks into the room and towers over the boy. Then smiles. “Use the pain, Hudson. It will make you stronger.”

The child turns to look at the man, and a chill suddenly slides down my spine. The hatred in his gaze should belong to someone much older, and it has my breath catching in my throat. The boy narrows his eyes on his father, and everything goes still—the man, the child, the very air they breathe. And then everything explodes into particles. The table. The chairs. The rug. Everything but the man, whose smile grows wider.

“Fantastic. I’ll tell your mother to get you a puppy tomorrow.” And then he turns and leaves the room, leaving the boy on the hardwood floor, with the carpet disintegrated now, the splinters cutting into his knees.

He could have destroyed his father as easily as the chairs, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. He wouldn’t be what his father wanted him to be. A killer.

And then the memory fades away as easily as it came.

Oh my God. “Hudson—”

“Stop,” he tells me so matter-of-factly that I almost start to doubt what I just saw. At least until he says, “I don’t have many childhood memories, at least not ones that a human would understand, so my pickings were fairly slim. But it only seemed fair that I show you something after all the ones that you’ve shown me. I mean, you’ve seen it before, but you don’t remember, so…”