Page 58 of Twisted Heathens
“Nope. Not my story to tell,” he answers eventually.
“Mate, it kinda is. You’re the one she attacked.”
“If she knew that I’d told you, we’d never see her again.”
I let out a laugh. “We don’t see her anyway, thanks to you.”
“Seriously Nix, don’t push it. Choose something else.”
With a sigh, I accept my stack of cards. “Fine, start.”
Hudson offers Kade a hand, but he refuses. It’s just the two of us facing off, and I’m determined to walk away with at least some idea of what we’re dealing with.
“I want to know why you call her blackbird,” I state.
He looks surprised, but that quickly turns to exasperation. “Bloody hell. You won’t drop this, will you?”
“Nope. Time to fess up.”
I can tell the others are interested too, their heads perking up as we begin to play. Even Eli, peering over his book when he thinks nobody is watching. I’ve got a pretty decent hand and despite Hudson’s confidence, his face reveals too much. He always runs hot, full of emotion and anger. Where I’m cool and unfeeling, he’s all fire and brimstone. I can use that against him.
“Fine. But if I win, you have to convince Brooklyn to talk to me. In private.”
I snort at his demand. “You really think she’ll go for that?”
“I didn’t say to tell her the truth. Get her there by any means necessary.”
Looks like Hudson is ready to play dirty. I don’t have any qualms with that. We play in complete silence, both spurred on by the prospect of our respective prizes. When I eventually win, he tosses the cards down with a disappointed sigh.
“You lose,” I boast smugly.
“Yeah, whatever. We got anything to drink?”
Kade jimmies the loose floorboard up and hands a beer over, slotting the wood back into place over our secret stash. “We need to pay our tab off with Rio before he breaks this door down and kills us all. You know what he’s like about late payment.”
Taking a long draw, Hudson nods. “I’ll handle it tomorrow.”
We all settle in and he rolls the drinks in his hands, picking his words carefully. “You guys know that Kade’s folks adopted me five years ago, when I was sixteen. What you may not know is that before then, I lived in foster care. Bounced from place to place over the years, I entered the system at twelve. I eventually ended up at a place called St Anne’s, a Catholic-run abusive hell hole. Nothing about that place was holy.”
He drains his beer in a few desperate gulps.
“I was only there for a few months before I was adopted. That was lucky compared to others that were just swallowed by the system and forgotten. We all went to the same school a few miles away. First day, the jocks got hold of me and I ended up in the nurse’s office with a black eye.”
Hudson laughs, like the memory is funny somehow.
“I wasn’t the only one in there. She was sprawled out across the chairs, tissues stuffed up her bloody nose and sporting a big fat lip. When I sat down with the ice pack, she looked me in the eye and said I hope the other guy looks worse than you.”
Kade snorts, shaking his head with amusement. I spare a glance at Eli, furtive eyes hiding behind pages as he hangs onto every spoken word. We’re all in far too deep with this girl for our own good.
Hudson crosses his arms, tensing up at the memories. “I’d seen her around back at the home, but we never spoke before then. After that I didn’t let her out of my sight. We were inseparable. Brooklyn was just so damn tenacious. Fragile, innocent… but fucking fiery when she needed to be. If she ever saw a kid getting bullied or one of the foster carers beating someone, she was the first person to throw herself into the fray. Even if it got her in trouble. Hell, she got off on the thrill of it.”
Hudson’s voice dries up and he avoids all our eyes. “Truth is, I… admired her. Everything about her. I’d sneak into her room at night whenever I heard her crying out, and crawl into the tiny bunk bed just to hold her close. Man, she was so tempting and fucking beautiful.” He smiles to himself at the memory. “She’d just spread her legs for me and it was like nothing else mattered beyond the two of us. I couldn’t get enough. But even then, she was haunted. The others said that she was one of St Anne’s original kids, having been there since she was ten years old. Nobody knew why, she refused to talk about it.”
I drum my fingers on my leg, growing more aggravated by the second. Why does her shitty childhood bother me so much? Or is it the idea of Hudson taking advantage of a damaged girl that was so clearly desperate for love? It sets my teeth on edge. I try to shove the feelings aside, but Brooklyn’s grumpy face refuses to leave my mind.
“What about the nickname?” I prod.
Hudson runs a frustrated hand through his hair. “I came home from school one day and found Mrs Dane, the head carer, beating the shit out of her. She was curled up on the kitchen floor, bloody and bruised. I later found out they’d caught her stealing food and sneaking off with it. When I asked her about it that night, she made me swear that I could keep a secret. The answer was in the drawer by her bed. Inside, I found a tiny, injured blackbird. Tucked away in a matchbox that she stole from Mr Dane, eating crumbs that she stole and got beaten to pay for.”