Текст книги "Pretty When You Cry "

Автор книги: Skye Warren

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Текущая страница: 17 (всего у книги 22 страниц)

Chapter Nine

The Niagara River flows at approximately 35 miles per hour.

“Where are we going?” I asked, climbing down from the truck.

He grinned, a mischievous twinkle in his eyes. “Wait and see, sunshine.”

Hunter had pulled off a wide dirt road. Parking was always a challenge anyplace but a truck stop, so we stopped in some grass. It was surely illegal but no one seemed to be around. We were in the middle of nowhere, and the thought occurred to me that he could dump my body easily.

But I wasn’t afraid.

He was just too…cheerful, almost. Brimming with anticipation to show me something. Like a kid.

Silly thought.

We hiked along a trail and reached a tall metal marker: Enchanted Falls, 1 mile.

I froze, mouth open. “We’re going to see waterfalls?”

He suddenly seemed bashful. “Figured since we were passing through.”

Squealing, I threw my arms around his neck. He caught me with a small oomph of surprise but after a second, he pulled me to him in a bear hug. It had only been on impulse, but he embraced me as tightly as if he’d been waiting just for this, as if it meant something when it couldn’t.

I backed up, blushing. He cleared his throat and ducked his head, so that despite his foot and a half on me, I was looking at his profile from the top of his head. His hair was curly, I realized in the yellow-bright sun. It was cut short, but light reflected blond strands pulled through the darker brown.

He seemed more human in the light—less sinister. I imagined him in some innocuous setting. We could have met on a trail like this, just two people enjoying the beautiful setting, the smell of pine and gentle sound of water in the distance.

“It’s not too far,” he said gruffly.

We continued along the path. It wasn’t too uneven which was a good thing, considering my shoes were basically ballet flats. I felt the shape of each pebble and twig beneath my feet almost as if I were barefoot, although less sharply. The path turned rockier as we approached, the sound rising to a roar in my ears before it even came into view.

Eager, I quickened my pace. The trail continued at its full width forward, but I heard the waterfall to my right. I began to round a small bend obscured by the trees when Hunter yanked me back.

“Careful,” he warned.

Curious, I cocked my head then turned back to the path. We crept forward together, and I understood his warning. The trail ended on a bluff overlooking the waterfall. We weren’t at the bottom of the waterfall but at the top.

My heart squeezed at the sight. Water streamed down in rushes too fast for the eye to process. Mist rose up like tendrils of steam, the wetness kissing my face as I stood there.

A tall wooden fence, rotting, was all that separated us from a downward hill that met up with the shore far below.

“Can we get to the bottom?”

“Eventually.”

He continued along the main path, and I followed him. We came out upon a wide river—the source of the falls, I realized. Though the water ran swiftly, it was clear and peaceful, nothing like the thunderous violence of the falls.

Looking at the lands untouched by man, I imagined a time when people might have traveled this river without a map. What a shock it must have been to anyone traveling this river without knowing about the falls up ahead.

To my surprise, Hunter took off his shoes and waded into the river.

He turned back, a grin on his face. “Come in.”

“What? No.”

“It’s a little chilly but you’ll get used to it.”

“I don’t do rivers. Or…nature.” That was mostly because I’d never been around rivers…or nature, but I wasn’t about to tell him that. No doubt he’d mock me.

“You don’t do rivers, but you want to see Niagara Falls.”

“I wasn’t planning on swimming in it.”

He made a skeptical sound. “Yeah, because they wouldn’t let you anyway. This is better.”

I shook my head. “Freezing to death. Falling to my death. No, thank you.”

“I wouldn’t let anything happen to you.”

“Oh good, because I trust you completely.”

At that, he laughed. “Just try it out. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.”

I scowled. “What are you, a motivational speaker?”

“In another life, yes. Come on. If you don’t like it, you can get back out.”

Oh fine. I toed off my shoes beside his on the dry, sandy bank. The first touch of water sent a shock up my spine, and I gasped. But I forced myself all the way inside, both fearful and excited of the strange feeling of cool water threading between my toes. The current was much stronger than it looked from the surface. It felt like it was pulling me along with it, and I had to fight just to stand still. The rocks beneath my feet were smooth and slippery.

Exhilarated, I stood in the middle of the river and looked around at the trees and fog-frosted mountains. I’d seen all of this before from just ten feet away on the bank, but it was different here. Now I was immersed, experiencing the sights as well as seeing them.

A smile of wonder crept over my face. Hunter grinned back at me, suddenly looking boyish.

“Well?” he asked.

“Not bad.”

“Hah. You love it.”

“Okay, I hate you five percent less.”

He rolled his eyes and turned to walk in the direction of the current. “Come on, let’s go.”

“Wait, where are you going?”

“I thought you wanted to see the waterfall.”

“Uh, yeah. See it. Not fall to my death in it.”

“You’re not going to die.”

“I know, because I’m not going over there.”

He shrugged. “Suit yourself. I’ll meet you back at the truck.”

“No, wait. Okay, I’m coming.”

I followed him through the river, feeling nervous but excited. I was walking through a river in a secluded park toward a waterfall. I was doing this. And I never would have done so without Hunter. I put that thought aside and focused on my steps. I slipped off a particularly rounded rock, and Hunter reached back to steady me.

“You good?” he asked, breathless. His eyes shone with excitement too. I’d never seen him so alive, so intense except when we had sex. In a way these were both carnal things, to roam and to fuck. He was a carnal man, one who found pleasure in doing and living and being. It radiated from him, and I absorbed his enthusiasm by osmosis.

No more attitude, I told myself. Not today. Just enjoy this.

“I’m good,” I said, grinning.

When we reached the edge, I looked down at the rush in awe. I couldn’t see the bottom, just the white, glittery mist a few feet down. But farther along I could see the river continue, calm again. I felt powerful, as if the water running past my shins were channeled through me.

“Crazy,” I said, not taking my eyes off the panoramic view.

“Crazy,” he agreed. “And now we jump.”

My heart sank. “I thought you were joking about that.”

“I never joke about extreme sports,” he said solemnly.

That tugged a smile out of me. I wished he weren’t so endearing when he wasn’t terrorizing me. I looked down at the waterfall again. Not that far. Definitely the kind of thing someone could survive—just not me.

“Evie,” he said in a cajoling tone. “It’s amazing. Trust me.”

“I don’t trust you,” I said automatically, knowing it to be a lie.

“It feels like flying.”

“Not very well, I guess, since you fall.”

“Yeah, but first you soar.”

Just enjoy this. “I can’t swim.”

He was surprised. “Not at all?”

“I have some vague memories of swimming at the Y as a kid. Nothing recent.”

“Well, I’m glad you told me that before I pushed you.”

My eyes widened. “You’re not serious.”

He shrugged. Damn, he had a good poker face. I couldn’t tell if he’d been joking.

“Look,” he said. “You don’t have to do it if you don’t want to, but it’d be fun. I think you’d like it.”

His straightforward words cut through the fear that held me back. Yes, it would be fun. Yes, I’d like it. This was exactly the kind of thing I’d wanted to do but never had the means or the courage to actually do. Now, with Hunter, anything was possible.

“Let’s do this,” I said, feeling terrified and wondrous. “Count of three?”

He thought for a second. “Let me go down first. It’ll be easier for me to help you if you need me to if I’m not also under water.”

“Okay. Right.” God, this was crazy. I was crazy.

“Just hold your breath before you go under, and then kick your way to the top. I’ll take it from there.”

I nodded, unable to speak.

He leaned forward, almost there.

“Wait.”

He looked back. “Cold feet?”

“No, just…is this legal?”

He laughed. “Fuck no.”

Then he jumped, sending a shout that echoed through the trees around us. He disappeared into the mist, and then I heard a splash directly beneath us. A few seconds later, his head emerged farther away from the falls, hair darkened by the water and glistening.

“Come on, sunshine.” The words were indistinct, but I could read them on his lips.

Oh shit. No, no, no. What if I died? What if we were caught? Which was a stupid thing to worry about, all things considered, but my good-girl tendencies had been well drilled into me.

But the thing that decided me was that I couldn’t not do it. I couldn’t walk away from this challenge, from this chance to finally live.

To soar.

I jumped.

I understood what he’d meant about flying. It felt like the air caught me and lifted me even as I drew ever closer to the shore. My vision was suffused with white spray, as if I were bursting through a cloud. The water came up impossibly fast and yet slow enough to watch with wonder. I sucked in a breath and plunged under water. For a second, I panicked—can’t breathe, can’t move. But then I righted myself and found my bearings. A few strong kicks carried me to the surface.

Hunter was right there waiting for me. He must have swum closer to me while I’d fallen. He grabbed me to him, laughing.

“You did it, sunshine. I’m so proud of you.”

I wiped the water from my eyes, laughing too. “You didn’t think I would.”

“Nope, not even a little. You proved me wrong, though.”

I looked around, awareness returning to me. “We’re…”

“Underneath the falls,” he confirmed.

I wasn’t sure where exactly I’d fallen—maybe directly in the stream—but he’d drifted us behind the falls. There was a large cavern here between the curtain of water and the rockface that held them up. A steady stream of water pattered on my face, loose spray from the falls.

I became aware of his body, too. The weight of him, the heft as he supported me in the water. The hands that clasped my waist. Neither of us had removed our clothing and though my light sundress was comfortable enough for swimming, he was wearing jeans and a T-shirt.

“You’re a little bit crazy, you know that?”

He grinned. “Just a little? I’ll have to work harder.”

His words tumbled into place in my mind, solving a riddle I already understood. He wanted to be this way, crazy and mean and awful. But he wasn’t really. It was a struggle for him as much as I had struggled to be a good little girl in that house. A role we had to fill to keep someone else happy, except what made him think he should be this way? Someone, somewhere had forged Hunter in fire and although it didn’t absolve him of his sins, I was more than ever curious about who.

Droplets hung on his eyelashes, on the coarse, stubble-covered skin of his face.

Just enjoy this.

I leaned forward and kissed him—right on his nose. A little silly maybe, but he didn’t laugh. He looked startled first, then his eyes darkened. He held me still, steadily kicking to keep us afloat. But he made no move to pull away or to initiate another kiss. Just holding steady for my exploration, if I wished to continue, and I did.

His eyelids, his forehead, the rough cheeks and much softer lips. I stayed there, sending small kisses along his mouth, from one corner to the other and then back again. It was a thank you for bringing me here, for convincing me to do this. More than that, the jump had given me permission to do this thing I’d wanted, to kiss a beautiful man who held me. One who seemed to want me but was unable to express it except in the harshest of ways.

“What next?” I whispered, expecting him to do something obscene and maybe painful. For the first time, I thought I’d welcome it. It was crazy, but so was this.

His lips curved knowingly, as if he guessed the direction of my thoughts.

He raised his eyebrow. “Wanna jump again?”

And I did. We jumped five more times until we were both exhausted from the swimming and the climb. Still in our wet clothes, we sprawled out under a tree at the base of the waterfall, letting the steady hum of it lull us into a half-sleep.

“One question,” he murmured. “I see them in your eyes all the time. I’ll answer one question.”

A million sprang to mind. What made you this way? When will you let me go? But one stood out.

“How many others?” I asked.

Beside me, he tensed.

Minutes passed and lengthened. I might have drifted off and then returned.

Finally he said, “You were the first. The only one.”

I sat up. “What about your conviction?”

“You asked me once if I did it. I didn’t.” He shrugged where he lay, eyes on the sky. “Believe me or not. It’s your choice.”

I had no reason to believe him, and we both knew it. A court of law had found him guilty. And I knew how he’d been with me, so it stood to reason he could have done this to another girl—countless girls. Sometimes that bothered me more than what he’d done to me. I really had nowhere better to be. I was already broken in countless ways. And after today? I felt a strange and twisted kind of gratitude for what he’d done. But to imagine another girl made helpless turned my stomach.

And he said it had never happened. I was the first. I was the only.

I believed him.

He laughed, so bitterly that goose bumps raised on my chilled skin. “I told myself I was getting what I’d already paid for. They locked me up for it, so I might as well do the crime, right?”

I was silent.

He spoke in a raw kind of horror, like a man desperate, a man divided. “But the truth was, I just wanted you. I saw you looking at the sunrise, and I wanted to have that. To have you. So I took you. I knew full well how wrong it was, and I did it anyway. And the most fucked up part about it all is that I still don’t regret it. No remorse. Really fucking crazy, right?”

Yeah. It was pretty crazy. And terribly sad. My heart ached for him, for me, for this crazy, messed-up world where we were enemies when we could have been friends.

“Wanna jump again?” I asked softly.

He turned to me, incredulous.

“I think I’ve got the hang of the landing now. We can jump together.”

He answered slowly. “Yeah. I’d like that, sunshine.”

Chapter Ten

Niagara is a Native American word for “Thundering water”.

A woman stood in front of a wide porch. She was obviously pregnant, her belly rounded beneath the loose pink sundress and her hands supporting her back. A young boy rode a tricycle in circles on the gravel driveway. There were no other houses in sight, just a line of trees and then open grassy land.

The peacefulness of the scene took my breath away. It was like a living portrait, something I’d only imagined but never experienced. My heart began to pound as we pulled up close. What did it mean? What would he do?

My mind spun all kinds of horrible scenarios. Robbery and hostage situations. I silently vowed not to let him hurt the woman or her child, though I had no idea how I could accomplish that.

She didn’t seem concerned that an eighteen-wheeler was pulling off the road onto the grassy area in front of her fence. Run, I thought. Get yourself and your kid inside and lock the door. But she stood there, shielding her eyes from the sun with her hand. Then she waved. Actually waved her hand in greeting though she still didn’t move from her spot.

Then another idea came to me. Was she possibly…his wife? Or girlfriend? Was that his child? And as messed up as everything had been, it somehow offended me worst of all, the idea that he would bring some random girl home to his family.

Anger bubbled up inside me, warring with the helplessness. “Who are these people?” I asked.

He finished shutting off the engine. “Friends.”

I narrowed my eyes. “That’s not your kid?”

His eyes widened. “I don’t have any kids. I wouldn’t be driving around the country if I had a son waiting somewhere.”

“Oh right, because you’re a pillar of morality.”

The words slipped out with a dry humor before I’d thought them through. He stared at me for a moment, clearly as shocked as I was. My heart beat a worried tattoo. What had I done?

He threw back his head and laughed. “Jesus. You’re a troublemaker, you know that?”

“I’m really not,” I said sadly.

If I had been rebellious, I never would have stayed holed up at home for so long. And I would have fought harder against him all this time. What did it say about me that I hadn’t? Clearly I was too weak to stand up for myself.

Or I secretly thought I deserved it, but that was even more disturbing.

“Come on,” he said. “You’ll like them.”

He opened his door and started to climb down from the cab.

“Wait.”

He turned back.

“You aren’t going to hurt them, are you?”

Something flickered in his eyes. “No. I understand you have no reason to believe me when I say that, but I’d die before I hurt my friends.”

I believed him. The words settled into place inside me like a jigsaw piece. Sometimes it felt like that, like he was a puzzle and I had to search for every piece to put him back together again. He wouldn’t hurt them because they were his friends—I trusted that. What would it take for me to become his friend?

Strange thought.

But I dutifully stepped down from the cab and followed him up the driveway. When we’d gotten halfway there, the little boy jumped off his trike and ran over. He hit Hunter like a rocket, right in the stomach, and Hunter stumbled back, laughing. I gaped a little, staring at the open, happy smile on his face that I’d sure as heck never seen before. They wrestled right there, while I stood off to the side, feeling oddly bereft, as if I were missing something and only just realized it.

The woman walked over to me, smiling. “Good to meet you.”

I shook her hand. “Evie. Nice to meet you too.”

Weird but also oddly nice. We were a couple visiting friends, two lovers on a road trip. It wasn’t far off from our actual identities if I ignored the whole kidnapping bit, and as time passed, I was tempted to do just that. Maybe it wasn’t even Stockholm Syndrome but simply exhaustion, resignation—sometimes it was easier to pretend.

“Hunter’s never brought anyone by. You must be someone special.”

That answered one question. He didn’t make a habit of this. Did that mean she was right, then? If I were someone special, it was a dubious honor at best. Someone special who let people imprison her. Someone special who imprisoned herself with her fears, preferring to live through her dreams.

She continued. “We hope you’ll stay a few days.”

I had no idea what Hunter would do. I never did. I smiled. “I’d love to, but I’m not sure what our plans are.”

“Of course.” She waved it away. “I’m sure you two would rather get on your way than hang around boring married folk, but you know you’re welcome as long as you want. And you feel free to ask me if you need anything. Any friend of Hunter’s is a friend of ours.”

What I needed was an escape plan, but I doubted she would be amenable to that considering her devotion to Hunter. And I found myself strangely reticent to tell her otherwise, to say that the man tossing a baseball with her little boy was a monster.

The screen door squeaked, and I looked back to see a middle-aged man emerge. He wore a sweater vest and a friendly smile. Hunter stopped playing long enough to shake hands and formally introduce me.

They were Laura and James Truluck with their little boy, Billy. They’d lived in this house for the past six years, but they seemed to know Hunter from before then. I was introduced as simply Evie, and I knew they assumed I was Hunter’s girlfriend. The way he curved his hand around my waist and held me to his side seemed to endorse that. The worst part was I didn’t even want to pull away.

Chapter Eleven

Around 40 people are killed each year when they go over the falls—most of which are suicides.

We went inside, where the men broke off to watch a football game in the basement while Billy played with trains. I offered to help Laura with dinner, especially now that we’d added to her load.

She set me up with the ingredients for a large, colorful salad and I went to work chopping vegetables, a mixture of store-bought and ones grown in their backyard. As she cooked the steaks and prepared garlic bread, she chatted about Billy, about the renovations they were doing on the house.

She sent me a guilty look. “I’m just talking your ears off, aren’t I? It’s not often we have visitors here. It’s good to talk to another woman.”

“Not at all.” I smiled. “I don’t…I haven’t gotten out much, so this is nice for me too.”

“You know,” she said, a smile playing at her lips. “I’m so glad you’re here. I know I said that already, but I…I can just see how happy you make him.”

I kept my gaze on the carrot I was grating. “I don’t know about that.”

“Oh, it’s right there in his face, the way he looks at you, the way he talks about you. I recognize that.”

My throat constricted as I imagined him looking at some other woman, talking about her, even though by all accounts I shouldn’t care. But maybe this would be an opportunity to learn something new about him, to gather a new puzzle piece.

“Who do you recognize it from?” I asked, and my voice came out husky.

She looked at me, surprised. “From James. When we were together, still dating. He didn’t admit it was love for a while, you know men, but I knew. And I just gave him patience, you know? He came around.” She laughed a little, gesturing toward the house. “As you can see.”

“Oh.”

Her nose scrunched. “You thought I meant some other woman? No, Hunter’s never been in love before. At least, not that I’ve ever seen. In fact, I’m pretty sure he never expected to be.” Sadness weighed down her smile, and her eyes looked into the past. “But life can take us to crazy places. I like to think things turn out for the best, you know? No matter how we got here.”

“Right,” I said, but my voice cracked.

Her gaze met mine, her green eyes filling with concern. “Is everything okay with you? Here I haven’t given you a chance to get a word in edgewise. If something is bothering you, I’d love to lend an ear.”

“No, I…” What could I say to that?

“I know men can be stubborn sometimes, always thinking they know what’s right for us. It’s damn annoying, that’s what it is.”

I gave a watery laugh. It was a little funny, that everything she said was so true…and yet hopelessly irrelevant to us. Hunter and I weren’t in a real relationship.

“I don’t think it’s the same,” I tried to offer by way of explanation. “As you and James. You seem so happy together.”

“We are.” Her gaze darkened with remembrance. “It wasn’t always that way though. There were some bad times.”

I was tempted to ask what they were. Not out of morbid curiosity. I wanted to see if they were anything like mine, either back home or with Hunter. I wanted to know if there was hope for me.

“How did you know?” I asked instead. “How did you know everything would be okay when things looked bad?”

“I didn’t.” She thought for a minute. “I guess at some point I found faith, in myself, in the world. Hunter helped me with that.”

Hunter helped her with faith? Shock ran through me, but then I remembered the rosary that hung in his truck. Was he religious at some point? Was he still? And if so, why the hell was he doing this? This wasn’t even a puzzle piece. It was the torn off edge of one. A hint of something broken.

I opened my mouth to ask her what she meant exactly, but just then Billy ran inside. He begged for a snack from Laura who insisted he wait until dinner. James and Hunter followed. James stood behind Laura and gave her a wraparound hug that hurt my heart to see. It was like someone had taken a picture book and made it real. Exactly the opposite of my life right now or ever.

I stiffened when I felt Hunter come up behind me. He slipped his arms around my waist, mimicking James’s actions. It felt like a mockery, and tears stung my eyes.

“What’s wrong?” he whispered.

“Like you care,” I muttered, my voice wavery.

“Don’t be mad,” he said, and I hated that he said that. I hated that I responded to that inside, softening a little. The truth was, I didn’t like to be so full of rage and fear. It was like carrying around poison inside me, infecting me worse than the world around me. It was a relief to loosen the valve and let a little bit out. I sank back into his embrace.

His arms tightened on me. “That’s my girl.”

James and Billy began to set the table while Laura gently chastised them for their rough handling of the dinnerware.

I shut my eyes against the wholesome sight. “Why are you doing this?” I whispered.

I didn’t expect him to answer me. He never had before. But I felt the tension that ran through him and was reminded of that jagged piece of the puzzle.

A burst of laughter pulled my attention to the family settling down at the table. Laura looked over at us, clearly happy to see us linked this way.

“How long are you planning on staying?”

The question was directed at both of us, but we all knew she was asking Hunter.

He was quiet a moment, then he said, “I’m not sure. Not too much longer, I think.”

The phrasing was strange with a special weight on the words. I got the idea that he wasn’t answering her but me. Why was he doing this? He wasn’t sure. And the one always at the tip of my tongue: how much longer would he keep me? Not much.

Which was exactly what I wanted, so there was no reason to feel disappointed.

Laura’s pretty face fell. “Oh, but you two should stop by again on your way back through.”

The way back? That implied that Hunter had a home somewhere and Laura knew where it was. It implied we were going somewhere and would return. Hunter must have felt me tense, because he squeezed my hips gently.

The timer went off and Laura pulled the steaks out of the oven.

Hunter turned me in his arms. His eyes were clear in the waning afternoon light of the kitchen, and Laura had been right—he looked happier. I remembered how he’d been in the diner, mysterious but also…scary. Intimidating. And kind of sad. Laura seemed to think the change was due to me, and I couldn’t really be sure. It shouldn’t matter to me if it was true, but it did.

He pushed my hair from my forehead and pressed a kiss there. “Are you okay here? Do you want to leave?”

His solicitousness felt at once foreign and comfortable. He was a little crazy, swinging back and forth between cruelty and kindness, but I sensed that the former was an act, a meanness he forced on himself as much as me. This seemed natural, and I decided to embrace it for the night. Ironically, he would be himself for once, and I would be the one playing a role.

We ate dinner while James regaled us with tales of fishing with Billy at the nearby river. Apparently this house butted up against an area popular for camping and inlaid with trails.

I ended up telling them about all the places we had been. We’d ended up going through Little Rock after all, though I left out the fact that Hunter had bribed the owner of the bath house so we could have a private room in the hot springs, which was technically against the rules. I told them about digging for quartz crystals and showed them the necklace Hunter had ordered made from the pink-tinted gem I’d pulled from the earth with my own hand. I told them about rock climbing and fly fishing and then ran out of time and breath before I’d even gotten to tell them all the things we’d done.

Hunter had been very true to his word when he’d promised to show me new things.

Strangely enough, we’d come closer to my end goal. I had mapped the route enough times to know that I would probably have passed through here on my own if I had made it this far. Kind of weird that Hunter had been going the same direction. Or had he driven this way just for me? I knew he’d looked through my things, which would include the picture of the dam.

The idea that he could have done something that nice for me was too much. It expanded my chest so I couldn’t breathe. It was easier to ignore the good along with the bad, and pretend we were just a regular couple on a little road trip to nowhere. A couple of wild explorers with no bond at all.

I laughed alongside them during dinner, included like we were some sort of extended family on holiday…or at least how I imagined that would be. I didn’t have a large family—only my mother, and I doubted I would even see her again. Even though our relationship had eroded to almost nothing, I missed her. I especially missed her when Billy grinned at his mother and told her he loved her with his mouth full.

We finished dinner with some frosty chocolate pudding, the perfect conclusion to an idyllic day. It was made of plastic, this day, pretty to look at but an imitation nonetheless.

After dinner we cleared the table and continued quiet conversation until James whisked Billy upstairs for his bath. Laura mentioned something about fresh towels for us and disappeared, leaving Hunter and me at the table. I wondered if Laura had engineered this so we would be alone, but that didn’t make much sense as we’d be alone together all night. She’d already told us which room was ours—the bedroom downstairs in the basement. One bedroom, one bed.

Hunter toyed with his mug from after-dinner coffee, apparently lost in thought. I should have been nervous, wondering what would come next, but somehow I wasn’t. We’d have sex tonight, probably. And it wouldn’t really hurt, would it? It wasn’t like Hunter could be rough with me while the family was just upstairs. It would be regular sex in a regular house…exactly what I’d always wanted and all of it made in sand, destined to melt away with the next salty wave.

“Hunter,” I said.

He grunted softly, though his eyes remained fixed on an unseen destination in the distance.

“How did you meet Laura?”

His gaze met mine. Turbulent. Pained. “Why do you ask that?”

“She seems to trust you.” And I want to trust you. But how can I do that? Help me.