Page 14 of Knot the Plan
“My fake name. My character.” He's already moving, rounding the counter, snagging a legal pad from beside the register like a man who's been waiting his whole life for exactly this. “Am I the one who saw you first? I feel like I'm the one who saw you first. Farmers market, you dropped a peach, I caught it. No. Too cute. You'd never drop a peach. You have teacher reflexes. You caughtmypeach.”
“There's no peach.”
“There's always a peach, Josie. The peach is what sells it.” He writes PEACH on the legal pad and underlines it. “Okay. Logistics. How'd we meet, who fell first, where was our first date, what's my song. Couples have songs. Packs definitely have songs.”
“I need you to take this seriously.”
“I am taking this seriously.”
He looks up. The grin's still there, but it's banked, and underneath it is something steadier that people miss about Hudson because the grin does such good cover work.
“Forty-some relatives. A mother with high hopes. A cousin who finds you the most interesting person at every family event. That's a hostile audience and a month-long prep window. You don't need three guys standing around you eating potato salad, Josie. You need a show. Lucky for you, I'm great television.”
“You impersonated your own twin for forty minutes.”
“Against Pete,” he says, with the quiet pride of a man citing his championship season. “A professional. Forty-year record. And here's the thing nobody appreciates about that day. Pete wasn't mad. Pete tells that story better than I do. You know why? Because I committed. A bit half-done is a lie, Porter. A bit fully committed to is a gift.”
The bell over the door jingles. A tourist in brand-new boots wants bear spray and wants to discuss bears generally, andHudson handles the whole transaction in ninety seconds flat without ever fully taking his attention off me, ringing it up one-handed, answering the bear questions with the practiced patience of a man who has answered every bear question that exists. The door jingles shut.
“Where were we.” He picks the legal pad back up. “Right. The con of the summer.”
“There are going to be rules,” I say. “Real ones. About how this works, what we do, what we don't. I'm not getting into all of it standing here.”
“Rules.” He says it like I've offered him dessert. “Love a rule. Lay them out.”
“Friday. Planning session, my place. Everyone at once, so I only have to say it all one time.” Because I'm going to have to say some of it out loud, the part about who touches me and when and how much, and I would rather do that once, to a room, than three times to three faces. “Just know going in there's a line, and I draw it, and it doesn't move.”
“Wouldn't dream of moving your line.” And the grin banks for a second, that steadier thing under it surfacing, the part people miss about Hudson. “You're in charge, Porter. I just do what I'm told, and I do it well.” He flips the legal pad shut. “Save the rest for Friday. I'll come early. I'll bring the good pens.”
“It's a planning session, not a craft fair.”
“Everything's better with the good pens.”
He leans on the counter, chin in hand, and for a second the grin gentles into something that's just looking at me. The juniper in the air turns warmer. Rounder. Like the sun coming around on a trailhead.
I remind myself firmly that this is a man treating the whole thing as the world's best community theater.
“For the record, Porter, your family's going to take one look at you and believe every word. You're very easy to—” He stops.Recalibrates, with visible effort. “It's going to be very easy to act.”
“Friday,” I say, gathering my coffee and what's left of my composure. “Planning session. My place.”
“Who else have you got?”
“You're the first to say yes. I asked Finn and he turned me down. Logan's this afternoon.”
And Hudson Grant goes still. The grin comes back slow, the size of a man who's just been told Christmas is coming twice.
“Oh,” he says. “Oh, Josie. He's going to say yes so fast it sets a record. You know he's been fixing that preschool fence for a month? A month. On a fence that takes a weekend.”
“It's a structural fence.”
“It's a fence, Josie. He just likes the view from your playground.”
I leave before my scent can say anything else on the subject, and walk the two blocks back fast, because the rug waits for no woman. My scent editorializes the whole way anyway. Brown sugar gone warm and stupid in the morning air. I make it through the preschool door at eight eleven, four minutes before the first drop-off, which Lily clocks with one raised eyebrow and files for later.
The afternoon takes a hundred years to arrive.
I teach. I referee. I supervise a craft involving more glitter than judgment. And the whole time, through the window, I can see the back fence line, where at two o'clock sharp a familiar truck pulls up and Logan Walker unloads lumber like the fence emergency continues into its fifth week.
