Chapter 35
35
He sits beside him for a while.
The other man who let Caroline slip through his fingers.
He says, “I really think you should leave her alone.”
He truly, physically can’t.
“You're shaking.”
I jerk at Lux's voice, so startling against the silence that’s settled in her bathroom, only previously broken by the sound of the tap steadily filling the bath with water. The soft rasp of candles being lit. The crinkle of a bottle being squeezed, distributing lavender-scented liquid bubbles into the tub. Glancing down at my hands—which, sure enough, are shaking—I tighten them into fists, squeezing until my nails bite into my palms. “I’m okay.”
I don’t have to see her to know what she’s thinking; bullshit .
She doesn’t say a word though as she sinks down on the tiled floor, crossing her legs to mimic my position, leaning against the side of the tub while I’m propped up by the closed door. In the back of my mind, I recognize that this is how she treated those beloved rescue horses of hers. Careful, distant silence, letting them come to her.
Turns out, her methods work pretty well on people too.
“I slept with him,” I admit, my voice a harsh rasp. “In his bed. We didn’t…” I trail off, not flustered because I’m talking about sex, but because I'm talking about sex with a married man. Sex that I, in the heat of the moment, really wanted to have. Sex it feels like I did have; that doesn’t matter if I had, because we still did something . “I helped him cheat.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“I—”
“ Because ,” Lux cuts off my protest, “I don’t think he cheated. I don’t think they’re together; I think he’s telling the truth about that.”
I don’t admit that my gut instinct says the same thing. “Then why is she here?”
“Desperation, maybe.” Lux frowns, picking at the distressed hem of her jean shorts. “Makes people do funny things.”
Funny. Nothing about this is funny .
“I think it’s complicated,” she continues. Stretching out a leg, she nudges her foot against my bent knee. “I think he’s an asshole of the highest degree for not telling you. I think you’d be well within your rights to never speak to him again. I think if you want, I can have him off my land within the hour.”
I don’t think I want that. I don’t know what I want. I don’t think I can be trusted to decide.
“I don’t think Hunter would be camped out on my porch right now if he felt anything for that woman.”
I hate that my ears perk up. I hate that my first freaking instinct is to agree, to swoon, to get up and go to him. I hate that, “ That woman is his wife,” is a real, true sentence that leaves my mouth.
Lux doesn’t disagree. She doesn’t try to pacify me with sweet words, comfort me with affirmations she has no way of knowing are actually true. Instead, she scoots closer until we’re side by side and leans her head on my shoulder. “He’s a dumbass.”
With a shaky exhale, I slump against her. “What am I gonna do?”
“Take a bath. Eat. Sleep. Figure it out tomorrow.”
How am I supposed to do that? Just sitting here, doing nothing, is killing me. The millions of questions running rampant in my brain are excruciating . I want to talk to him, to let him explain like he begged to. But almost as much, I don’t. I don’t want to know. I don’t want to give the chance to wear me down, to make me believe whatever he tells me, because I know I will.
One question, though, I can get the answer to now. “What did you mean earlier? What you said to Hunter?”
I told you to be careful with her . The words didn't register at the time, lost in a muddled mess of too many thoughts and goings-on, but I remember now, and it’s clear I missed something. That a conversation occurred; one I was never supposed to know about, if the choked, faux-confused noise Lux makes is anything to go by. “Huh?”
I pull away just enough to peer down at her with narrowed eyes. “Alexandra.”
She wrinkles her nose, sighing. “I just had a little talk with him.”
Vague—and ominous. “What did you say?”
“A lot.”
I cringe.
“But the basic gist of it was that you deserved more than what he was giving you.”
Shady, darty eyes suggest the ‘basic gist’ barely skims the surface of what she actually said, but I’m too tired—and maybe a little too scared—to dig for anything more. “Thank you,” I say instead. “You didn’t have to do that.”
An eye roll and a quiet snort precede an inarguable, “Yes, I did,” before her expression shifts, her tone cautious and sincere. “I know it didn’t end great, but I’m proud of you for putting yourself out there. Doing what you wanted. Being all brave and shit.”
“I was proud of myself too.” For a minute there, I really was. “You know, until I realized I was an accomplice to adultery.”
As Lux winces through a snicker, I mull over her words a little more. My traitorous brain gets caught up on one in particular— end . “You think it’s ended?”
“Think that’s up to you and my squatter.”
She says it is jest, but I still start to get up, start to say I’ll tell him to leave, but a firm hand on my knee keeps me down. “Don’t bother. I already tried. Jackson tried. Eliza super nonchalantly mentioned the family of rattlesnakes that live beneath the porch.”
I laugh at the well-meaning lie, even if the youngest Jackson sibling being privy to this situation kind of makes me want to die.
“Take a bath,” Lux repeats firmly. “Eat. Sleep. Figure it out tomorrow. He’ll still be there.”
“You think?”
She squeezes my knee. “I know.”
Squinting through the mesh screen door, I hate myself.
I’m weak. Spineless. Completely devoid of any self-control. And so very pathetic as I shoulder the door open and drop down onto the porch steps next to the man wearing a dent in them. “You gonna sit out here all night?”
It’s a weak attempt at a joke—I don’t expect an utterly serious response. “If that’s what it takes.”
“Hunter,” I sigh, scrubbing at my tired eyes. Tired, yet incapable of closing for longer than thirty seconds before flying open again, every attempt to fall asleep futile as the events of today play on a never-ending loop in my head. “Go home.”
“I can’t.” The lightest touch at the base of my neck twists my head sideways, urging my gaze to meet one bleeding sincerity. “I’m so sorry, Caroline.”
Instinct has me opening my mouth to dismiss his apology, to insist it’s fine, but I promptly snap it shut. It’s not fine. Misleading me, making me look and feel like a fool… It’s not okay. Even if Hunter looks like that ; wrecked. Like he’s been raking his hands through his hair for hours on end, scratching at his beard until the skin beneath turns red, rubbing his eyes to the point of being bloodshot. He’s the picture of remorse, but I’ve already let myself down by coming out here. I can’t give in so easily too.
Tilting my face towards the sky, I stare steadfastly at the twinkling stars. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I didn’t want to.”
Such a quick, simple answer, but nowhere near good enough. “Why not?”
“I was fuckin’ embarrassed, Line.”
I picture flushed cheeks, intense eyes, a downturned mouth.
“My marriage was embarrassin’. It wasn’t happy or healthy. But I was stubborn and proud and I didn’t want to just leave. To give up.”
The admission strikes a chord with me. Softens me up, ignites understanding, because isn’t that exactly what I do? Keep everything about my dad to myself because I’m embarrassed? How can I hold—
No . I cut off that train of thought before it continues too far. It’s different. My secrets, my lies, don’t hurt people. And I told Hunter—the worst thing in my life, I told him .
The tiny tendril of anger snaking through my blood, I grasp with both hands. Hold it tightly. Use it to bolster myself, to not buckle as I meet his gaze again. “You thought I would… what? Judge you? Me ? Really?”
“I don’t know what I was thinkin’. I wasn’t thinkin’. I just…” Hunter trails off, his turn to look away. “I left my entire life to get away from her. My friends, my family. I didn’t want to give this up too.”
I hate the bitter resentment that floods me, makes me shrug off the hand still on the back of my neck and snark, “You didn’t want this , remember? You couldn’t .”
A long, defeated noise leaves the man beside me. “You’re right. Not for the reason you think you are, but you’re right.”
I can’t dissect that; I don’t have the brainpower. Curiosity, though, I have in spades. Sick, masochistic curiosity. “How long were you married?”
His throat bobs with a nervous swallow, and he hesitates before answering. “Almost five years.”
Five years.
Deep down, buried beneath the myriad of emotions plaguing me, something ugly rears its head. Something ugly and green and nauseating that hits me far too strongly that it has any right to; I’m jealous of the awful, drop-dead gorgeous woman who got a piece of Hunter for so long, a piece he doesn’t seem willing to give anyone else.
“Do you…” God, I don’t want to ask, I don’t want to know, but I have to. “Do you have kids?”
“No,” his response is quick, firm, practically gasped. “Jesus, Line, no .”
“Did you want them?” With her?
This time, he hesitates. Answers softly, “Yeah. I did.”
I don’t know why I’m doing this to myself. Seeking answers I don’t really want, that won’t make me feel any better. Asking things I know are going to hurt. And God, do they hurt . “Were you ever going to tell me?”
“Yes,” he says, and call me naive, but I don’t think it’s a lie. “I just wanted it to be over first.”
“Was I—” My breath catches, the mere idea of what I’m about to ask inspiring a sob I choke on. “Was I payback? Were you just trying to get back at her, like she said?”
In my peripheral, I see a hand reach for me, only to pull back at the last second when I tense. It drops to the sliver of porch between us, twitching fingers fisting in a tight ball. “No. You were…”
Hunter exhales raggedly, inhaling slowly like he’s winding up for something, and I brace for impact.
“Cheryl called me last week,” he starts, slow and pained, and my lungs stop working. “Before I got home the night you stayed at my place. She called to complain because they served her the divorce papers while she was at lunch with her friends, so she couldn’t pretend I was travelin’ for work anymore. She called to chastise me for being so dramatic, for playin’ games, for not gettin’ over it already. She called to say she’d forgive me if I got on the next flight back to Georgia. I hung up on her. I got so fuckin’ mad, and then I got madder because I hated that she could still get to me.”
He pauses. Shifts to face me. Cups my knee and squeezes until I turn to face him too.
“And then I got home,” he continues, softer than before. “And I saw you, and I stopped being mad. I could breathe again. Because you are like coming up for air, Caroline. Those pretty flowers you fill your life with? You’re that for me. You’re bright and you’re happy and you’re good .”
I blink. Swallow. Drop my head to stare intently at the bitten edge of my thumbnail. Pick out the one piece of that speech I heard with any kind of clarity. “You’re really getting divorced?”
“That’s why she’s here.”
I read between the lines; she’s here to contest. To convince him to come home. Because she doesn’t want to be divorced. She wants her husband. And it’s wicked of me, so very vicious, to hope with everything I have that her husband doesn’t want her.
“You should talk to her,” I force myself to say. “Okay? It’s—”
Not only do my words get cut off, but my attempt to stand, to leave, does too. A hand wrapping around my thigh pulls me back down, holding me in place while another curves around my neck, a familiar firm hold that I make no attempt to escape. When Hunter pulls me closer, I don’t stop that either. Forehead to forehead, his nose brushes mine, he breathes me in, and I blink back the tears I feel like only just stopped flowing.
Another apology glides across my skin. So real, so heartfelt, I feel it in my chest. “I’m sorry,” he says again and again, peppering the words along my cheekbones, beneath my swollen eyes, near the corner of my mouth. “Please, honey. I’m so sorry.”
I know he’s sorry. I know I could forgive the lying; I’ve forgiven far worse. What I can’t give him, though, is anything else. I can’t be in the middle of this. “I can’t break up a marriage.”
Silky, brown locks brush my cheeks as Hunter shakes his head. “You didn’t.”
I pull back just enough to gauge his answer, to see the truth. “When did you file for divorce, Hunter?”
The split second pause it takes for him to answer confirms what I already suspected. “After I kissed you.”
“Right.” I retreat another inch. “Because we kissed.”
Easily, he closes the distance once more. “Because I didn’t wanna be married to her. I don’t want to be married to her. I want you, Caroline.”
I wish I could believe that. How am I supposed to believe that? “She’s your wife, Hunter. You married her. You wanted kids with her. You wouldn’t even date me.”
“That’s not fair.”
The soft accusation makes me jerk away, and this time, more than mere inches separate us. I’m on my feet, across the porch, grabbing the doorknob before he even blinks, sad determination driving me. “ I’m not being fair? Really, Hunt ?”
He winces.
I turn away. I open the door, only stepping one foot inside before glancing over my shoulder. “Go home, Hunter. Please. I need you to go home.”
By the look on his face, I can tell he’s not sure if I mean the cabin or Georgia.
Honestly, I’m not sure either.