“They must be really proud of you.”

Hudson only shrugged.

Annika remembered how intense he’d been at the tech forum, talking about how success was a way to give back to the people who’d helped him become who he was. Was that what he meant? She didn’t know how to ask. It was a deeply personal question.

Clearing her throat, she said, “So what do you like about sculpting?” She just couldn’t picture him in a sculptor’s studio, his hands all messy with clay. She half wondered if he was just bullshitting her.

But Hudson didn’t smirk or laugh. He ran his index finger gently over the sculpture she’d been admiring, his touch tender and soft and … respectful, somehow. “I like that I’m completely at the mercy of the clay, of the form trying to emerge. There’s no rushing the process. Sculpting’s a labor of love—painfully slow, surprisingly emotional. You have to be okay with failure.” He traced his finger over a tiny divot at the top of the statue that Annika hadn’t noticed before. “You have to learn to live with the imperfections and the flaws in each piece, maybe even come to love them.”

As Annika listened to him, she realized that everything he loved about sculpting was exactly the opposite of Break Up. Break Up was about faster, higher, more. It was quick and brutal and savage and cold, with no room for softness or emotion. She found herself shaking her head slowly.

He caught her eye, and his misty, soft expression cleared. “What?”

She stood there, her upper thigh pressed against the nightstand, acutely aware that Hudson was just a step away. Faint laughter drifted in from the hallway. She breathed, “Why do you act the way you do?” instead of the million and one more appropriate things she could’ve said.

Looking confused, he pushed a hand through his hair. His blond hair flopped onto his forehead. “What do you mean?”

Shit. The moment stretched on, Annika’s mouth opening and closing futilely. Well, it was too late to backtrack now. Just rip off the Band-Aid, Annika. “You … you’re all over the place. You commandeer my first date with a perfectly nice guy and you ruin it for me. You’re completely fine with breaking people’s hearts and being some kind of hero to douchetruffles like Hedge Fund Harry. You tell me you think about Vegas and yet you act like I have a communicable disease when I try to kiss you. You’re constantly in my space and you’re constantly in my head and I don’t know what to do with all that.” She stopped, aghast. She should never have brought up the kiss, or told him he was in her head. Never, never, never. “You know what? Never mind.”