Page 28 of The Ex Project (The Heartwood #3)

WREN

I have no air left in my lungs. This view is … it’s incredible. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen.

“Why didn’t I know about this place?” I say, sort of a whisper under my breath.

“I lived here for eighteen years, and I never knew about this. We came up this way all the time,” I add, thinking about the swimming hole that is more easily accessed from the other trailhead.

We used to spend every summer there together, and yet we never thought to venture over here.

“I only found it the summer after you left,” Hudson says, and it feels like there is more to the story about how he discovered it that he isn’t saying. “I used to come up here a lot. I’ve wanted to show it to you for a long time.”

How many little moments have made him think of me? I get the distinct impression it happens a fair bit. Guilt stabs at my gut.

Hudson was the one to break up with me, but I was the one to leave first, wasn’t I? I’ve spent so much time hating him for how he ended things, I haven’t stopped to consider what my role was in our breakup. What it was like for him.

“It’s beautiful.” And it is. Even I can admit that dinner at a fancy restaurant wouldn’t have ever compared to this. It lights me up and calms my soul all at the same time.

“There’s more. Come on.” Hudson twines his hand through mine, sending a shiver up my arm and all the way through my core. His rough, calloused hand is familiar as he leads me down the trail further to a clearing. A small patch of grass with the perfect vantage point to admire the flowers.

Ruby has already taken to rolling around on it, kicking her legs up in the air and creating a cloud of dust and dried blades of grass.

I let out a laugh as she gets up, covered in grass and twigs.

A fallen wildflower is lodged in her fur, right behind her ear, making it look like she meant to put it there as an accessory.

It’s so freaking cute. I feel bad for being so standoffish towards Ruby when I first met her. I was closed off to anyone and everyone, human or animal. Anything that provided joy felt like wasted time, a distraction from what I should be focused on, everything I should be accomplishing.

But there’s something healing about Ruby. Her constant smile and happy tail wag. It’s like she has no cares in the entire world, and sometimes I wish I could be more like her. Being around her makes me feel like one day I can be.

Hudson has taken off his backpack and is rifling through it again.

He pulls out a rolled-up blanket and starts spreading it out on the ground.

Sitting on it, he draws his knees up, one elbow resting on each leg.

I take the spot next to him, folding my legs underneath me, criss-cross.

I twirl a wildflower I picked between my fingers, fidgeting with it in my lap.

The July sun warms my face as I close my eyes, the soft breeze picking up the wispy hairs around my face, tickling my cheeks.

I breathe in.

I breathe out.

There’s a space growing inside the walls of my chest. I haven’t felt it in so long, probably since the last time Hudson and I were doing this same sort of thing together.

Over ten years of feeling a tension in my body that made itself at home to the point where I hardly even recognized its presence.

“This is so peaceful. I could spend all day here.”

“You can, if you want to.” Hudson reaches behind him and into the backpack again, this time pulling out a lunch bag.

When he empties the contents onto the blanket, I see he’s packed enough snacks to last the entire afternoon.

He’s even brought chilled beer, which he cracks for both of us, and the cool liquid on my throat is refreshing.

“All I keep thinking is that this would make such a beautiful painting.” I take another inhale, this time smelling the sweet, floral fragrance of the valley floating on the wind.

When I open my eyes, Hudson has placed some supplies in front of me on the blanket.

There’s a book, slightly different from the one I have at home, but leather-bound and aged.

When I pick it up, I notice my monogrammed initial in the corner. “You kept this?”

It was a sketchbook I gave him before I left, filled with drawings and small paintings. Some of him, some of us. But all from memories we shared together. Like a scrapbook of every beautiful day we spent together in our youth, the memories perfectly imperfect and preserved on paper.

“I kept all the drawings you gave me, Miller. Every single one.” Hudson’s expression is soft, his lips parted slightly as if there’s more he wants to say, but it’s hanging on the tip of his tongue.

He closes his mouth and looks down between his legs, at the ground, and then back up at me, his clear blue eyes landing on my face.

I peer into them, the same blue I see every time I close mine. His face is so much of the boy I used to love, now with more evidence of manhood, stubble and fine lines. But his ocean eyes still hold so much of the kind and gentle heart he’s always had.

My gaze flicks down to his lips, soft and pink, and totally kissable.

I can almost feel his lips still there, can almost still taste him from when he kissed me yesterday.

I look away quickly, before I get any other ideas.

Before I can convince myself I should kiss him again.

Because the night we spent together, the kiss yesterday, it brought up a lot of old feelings.

Feelings that are making it hard to resist Hudson.

“I’ve been thinking about what you asked me the other day,” I say, wanting another subject to put some distance back between us.

“About why I stopped drawing, or painting, or whatever.” He tilts his head at me askance, his eyes still fixed on me.

I keep my gaze glued to the sketchbook in my lap.

“My family always made it seem like art was a waste of time. If you weren’t working towards a specific goal or being productive, then you were lazy. ”

“Nothing that you truly enjoy is ever a waste of time,” Hudson says. “Painting and sketching, it made you seem so … alive.”

“Hm” is the only response I have. Because I don’t know the last time I felt like that. Alive. In the moment. “All I ever seem to feel these days is stressed.”

“What are you doing this for?” Hudson asks me, and it might be the first time I’ve ever had that question posed to me. People always want to know how I do it. Never why. If I’m being honest, it’s the first time I’ve considered that question myself.

“You know I’m the only woman at my firm?

” Hudson shakes his head no. “Well, I am. And that means that everything I do is an uphill battle. People don’t take me seriously, people underestimate me.

When I do finally do anything worth noticing, they assume it’s because I used my gender to my advantage.

It’s a double-edged sword,” I say, matter-of-factly.

I stopped feeling angry a while ago. I turned it into determination.

“I made a promise to myself that I would earn the promotion fair and square. This project is a chance for me to take something on all by myself. It’s a chance for me to prove my worth based on my merit. ”

Hudson nods, considering all I’ve told him, and I’m sure he’s trying to figure out how this affects our competition.

“I don’t want to change anything about the vote. I still want this to be an honest fight. If anything, it’s more of a reason for us to do this fairly.”

“You’re sure?” he asks, searching my face.

“Well, you said yourself that the arts centre means something to you, too. And I’m guessing it has something to do with your mom?

” I ask. I suspected that was why Hudson was throwing his hat in the ring for this thing when we started.

His mother loved to create like I do, though her medium was clay, where mine was paint.

Cora was lovely, and she loved all the parts of Hudson I fell in love with, too.

He had this special connection to her, and he felt the most loss of all his brothers when she passed.

“Yeah, you got it,” he says, glancing down at the ground between his knees again.

“Then you need to fight for it, too,” I decide, and I hold out my hand to shake his. “May the best man win.” Hudson takes my hand and shakes it, both of us agreeing to make this thing count. To put in our best effort.

“May the best man win,” he repeats.

“I’m serious, Landry,” I warn, my gaze darting back and forth between his eyes. “Don’t go easy on me.”

“You got it,” he answers, his gaze lowering to my mouth. My heart does something funny in my chest, rolling forward in my rib cage as if being pulled toward him. But the moment ends, and Hudson goes back to enjoying the view with Ruby lying at his feet.

I study the profile of his face for a moment before picking up the sketchbook he brought.

I have a sudden urge to draw him like this.

The straight slope of his nose, the square corner of his jaw.

The fine lines at the corners of his eyes that make me think over the last ten years, he’s had some moments of happiness.

Moments of happiness that didn’t include me. But I had moments like that, too, didn’t I? It hasn’t all been bad since Hudson and I broke up. I went on to get my dream career, I dated here and there. I have a whole life back in Vancouver I never would have had if I hadn’t left Heartwood.

I flick through the pages of the sketchbook to find an empty space to start drawing him—I have to flip past dozens of similar drawings.

All different versions of Hudson that existed in the same space and time as I did.

I wonder how many versions of him exist now, how many of those wouldn’t exist if we had tried to make things work.

My heart opens a little more to the possibility that I might get to know this Hudson as a new version of himself. With a decade of lessons learned, new memories, and events that have shaped his perspective.

We stay in the field for hours, moving only to seek shade under the trees at the edge of the meadow when the sun makes our skin tanned and warm. Ruby lolls around next to us, occasionally getting up to sniff around in the long grass, but mostly lying on the blanket at our feet.

For the afternoon, I forget about everything waiting for me back at home.

The vote for the arts centre, the promotion, the fear of judgement from my family and friends.

It’s there, in the back of my mind, but out here, it doesn’t affect me.

And I forget that my adversary is the man lying next to me, his mind in his book.

It’s just me and Hudson, the way we used to be, and I soak in the blissful moment of peace before we return to Heartwood and face the upcoming town meeting.

When Hudson drops me off at home later, the tension returns to the set of my jaw as soon as we pull up in front of my house. It’s like a tangible reminder of everything I’m working for, the point I’m trying to prove .

“Thanks for today,” I say as the last few shreds of animosity I’ve felt for Hudson, that I’ve been holding onto for years, fade away.

“You’re not supposed to thank me, Miller,” Hudson quips from the driver’s seat as I hop down out of his truck and turn to look back in the cab. His left wrist is casually resting on the steering wheel. “That was your penalty for losing our bet, remember?”

“Ah. You’re right. I meant it sarcastically,” I correct myself, but a teasing smile plays at my lips. My eyes linger on Hudson’s, his face serious but his blue irises reflecting only lighthearted playfulness. “Thanks for making it the worst date of my life.”

“Hey, at least you’ll remember me for something.”

“You’ll never be forgotten, Landry. For many things, not just that.” There’s a warmth in my tone that makes Hudson glance down into his lap to hide his smile. He shakes his head, his blond waves falling onto his forehead.

“So, I’ll see you in a couple days?” he asks when he looks back up. He’s supposed to come by and finish the grout on the tile before my new oven gets delivered.

“Yeah, sounds good.”

And after today, I can’t help but notice that it does. Rivals or not, spending time with Hudson again sounds more than good.