Chapter 37
37
“You’re lucky I don’t shove these up your ass,” the sullen, accented man snips, even as he sifts through the piles of flowers on his stall to find the freshest blooms.
On Monday morning, I find a mason jar of tall, purple flowers outside my door.
Hyacinths. Commonly associated with expressing feelings of guilt or remorse.
I don’t know if Hunter knows that. Just like I’m not sure if the irises that showed up a day later were picked for their perfect, violet petals, or the hope they represent. Maybe Wednesday’s gladioli were just meant to be pretty, not signify endurance and integrity. On Thursday, I Googled daffodils and spent hours trying to decipher what new beginning they might be shepherding. The honeysuckle I almost tripped over yesterday, their meaning, I wish I didn’t know. Today’s delivery…
I’m not thinking about the bluebells I found decorating the doorstep. For my own sanity, I can’t. Literally, I can’t—my brain empties of anything coherent when the bell above the front door chimes and I lift my gaze from the bouquet I’ve been arranging for an hour too long to greet my first customer of the day, and I find it isn’t a customer at all.
Really, it’s pretty miraculous that Cheryl Whitlock waited a week to confront her husband’s… mistress , I jokingly called myself, but I guess that really is the word. I guess that really is what I am. I’m sure as hell not anyone’s girlfriend, despite what the fashionable woman peering at me over the rim of her designer sunglasses might think.
“You’re not at all what I expected.”
The feeling, I think, is most definitely mutual.
Intimidatingly tall heels click against the tile floor as Cheryl invades my place of work, her long nails tapping against the counter I clutch tightly. Instinctively, my gaze flits to the cowboy-boot-shaped vase right next to her hand, filled to the brim with humility, gratitude, and ever-freaking-lasting love in floral form.
Cheryl can’t know who they’re from, but she stares at them like she does. And for a second, she almost looks human. For a second, my knees wobble as I contemplate dropping to them and begging for forgiveness, insisting I didn’t know, promising to do anything she wants.
A fleeting, soon-to-be-forgotten second.
With a flick of perfectly straight hair, the bitch is back.
“I suspected he met someone,” Cheryl muses in that tone that makes me feel two feet tall. “But I definitely did not picture you.”
I’m more than capable of reading between the lines of her thinly-veiled insult—I hear what she really says.
She pictured someone better. Someone prettier. Someone worthy of being left for. Which I, evidently, am not. I’m not a threat to her, is what she’s oh-so-discreetly making clear. I don’t compare.
And maybe that sentiment would sting, if I didn’t already think it.
I resist the urge to fidget. To fix the wisps of hair escaping two hastily-done French braids, to smooth out the wrinkled skirt of my dress, to fret over the evidence of a week’s worth of shitty sleep marring my undereyes. I try so freaking hard to keep the comparisons at bay—who cares if I look like an unkempt child next to a sleek, pristine supermodel?
And even though I know Cheryl isn’t here for a seasonal bouquet, I treat her like a customer anyways. “Can I help you with something?”
Cheryl laughs, but it’s not a joyous noise. “Oh, I bet he loves that. The sweet, polite thing. He’s always been a stickler for manners. Although…” She leans across the counter, something sickeningly conspiratorial about the quirk of her mouth. “Cheating on your wife isn’t very mannerly, right?”
As I swallow down bile, I try to remember what Lux said—that it’s complicated. That Hunter didn’t cheat because they’re separated. That I didn’t do anything wrong. I try, and I can even hear my friend’s voice in my head, but I still sound guilty. “I didn’t know.”
Cheryl cocks her head. “That he was married? I figured, sweetie. Poor thing, you looked sick to your stomach.”
And God, doesn’t she sound delighted about that?
Everything about her screams she’s enjoying this, and I can’t help but wonder if it’s real. If that sneer is genuine or manufactured, if it’s hurt and embarrassment stapled together to create something more palatable. Or maybe she really is getting a kick out of making me sweat; honestly, I’m not sure I can blame her.
The diamond on her finger winks in the light, as mocking as her tone. “I’ll make this quick. I don’t have much time.” Her mouth curls, so wickedly self-satisfied. “I’m already late for dinner with my husband.”
She pauses, really making sure that admission hits home, before leaning in close enough for me to smell her minty-fresh breath. “You are nothing but a little payback. You’re his twenty-year-old bit of meaningless fun before he gets over himself and comes home to me . And even if you weren’t,” she laughs as though the concept is unfathomable to her, “he’s not capable of lovin’, honey. Not the way a sweet little thing like you wants to be loved. I spent years beggin’ for it, and I never got it. You think you’re better? You think he'd leave his wife for you?”
A haughty giggles confirms what she thinks, and I hate it. The dismissal, and how much I let it rattle me, how much I rise to the taunt, how I mutter, “I think he already has,” before my brain can catch up to my mouth.
I surprise her, I can tell. For a second, that silver of humanity returns in the form of a flinch, and my gut roils as guilt-fuelled nausea slams into me, my tongue itching with the need to apologize.
I don’t get the chance, though. Cheryl recovers quickly, snickering and rolling her eyes and slicing that freaking ring-adorned hand through the air dismissively. I wonder if it’s a tactic, how she starts towards the door mid-sentence, if she’s reminding me that she’s late—and what she’s late for—or if she’s trying to convey how little this conversation means to her, that she can’t even be bothered to grant me her full attention.
Or if she’s trying to hide. If she’s trying to convince herself as much as me when she says, “He’s just tryna teach me a lesson. It took him six months to file. Does that sound like a man desperate to be single?”
Six months. Six months. A sickeningly short amount of time in the grand scheme of things, in the face of a five-year long relationship, yet twice as long as I’ve known Hunter.
That thought alone is enough to make me sick, it’s enough , yet the sharp, biting words don’t stop. “He has a home. He has a life. And it’s not here.”
Wrenching open the door, Cheryl delivers one final blow before stepping out into the street and leaving me with her voice ringing in my ears. “He has a love, and it’s not you.”
Thigh chafe.
An inevitably sunburned forehead.
Yapping dogs I’m really starting to wish I left at the ranch, the ache in my shoulders as I haul a pack almost as heavy as me along a path definitely too advanced for me, and the sunset I’m trying to outrun.
All of the above are things I have the right to be mad about. It’s okay to be so freaking pissed I want to scream at the quickly fading sun. It’s perfectly reasonable that those minor irritations are making my skin itch and my eyes water and my brain vibrate inside my skull.
A wife telling me to stay away from her husband is not on that list.
Yet, out of everything, that’s what fuels my aggressive stomps through the wilderness the most. That’s what sent me to said wilderness in the first place. What prompted the need for a break, for a chance to be truly alone and to think clearly, and to… well, to run away, if I’m being honest.
Taking to a trail was a rash decision. And inevitably, an incredibly fruitless one—turning back before I even reached my ambitiously chosen campsite has only made me feel worse. And now, I’m at least a half hour from the parking lot and it’s getting dark—because did I mention this was incredibly spur of the moment so I didn’t start hiking until way later in the day than I should’ve?—and the summer heat is unbearable and…
And Cheryl is here. She’s still here. I don’t know why I assumed I wouldn’t see again, that this would be as easy as a one-off surprise appearance. Until she sashayed into my store, I didn’t realize how badly I hoped it would be. How much I need her to be gone. How much her not being in the picture, in my line of freaking sight, softens me. Makes me susceptible to flowers and sweet, sincere words that taste sour now when I mentally repeat them because Cheryl is still here .
And it must be because she loves her husband. She loves her husband, she wants him back, and I’m stopping that from happening.
She loves her husband, and I’m the vicious homewrecker ruining her life.
She loves her husband, and I’m the worst person alive for lo— liking him too. I’m even worse for being mad that she loves him. For hoping with everything I have that he doesn’t love her too. For praying to a god I don’t believe in that Hunter told me the truth, that it’s over, that he doesn’t want her, that he doesn’t want me to be done because he wants me .
By the time I get back to my truck, I’m not just mad; I’m on the verge of tears. Again. For the god-knows-how-many-th time in the past week. Because I’m overwhelmed for the god-knows-how-many-th time in the past week, and when I’m overwhelmed, I cry. Sniffling, I rub at my leaking eyes, wincing at the sharp sting of tender skin and wanting to cry all the more at the reminder that I am a disaster of a person—I can’t even remember to put on sunscreen, that’s how bad I am at being alive.
My ass hits the worn leather of my driver’s seat a second before my forehead hits the steering wheel, a defeated noise leaving me. A canine body wriggles onto my lap and I drop a hand to Herc’s furry back, I stroke Mama with the other, and I let both ground me.
I’m so focused on keeping myself together, I don’t hear the vibration of my phone until Mama starts growling at the foreign noise. And I’m so distracted, I almost answer without checking the caller ID first, the phone halfway to my ear before I pause.
And I laugh, just a little, at the unknown number on my screen as that familiar foreboding feeling sinks its claws in.
When it rains, it freaking pours.
As I stare at the screen, I find another thing to be angry about. Another person to be angry at. Because beside the glass flower left on my doorstep, I haven’t heard from him in a month. And I know he’s not calling to apologize; I know that after everything, he still thinks I’ll rush to bail him out.
I almost do. I almost pick up the phone, I almost press answer, I almost give into the child-like part of me still so desperate for a paternal love and affection I lost long ago. The urge is so strong, I have to sit on my hands, squeeze my eyes shut, hum to cover the ear-splitting, incessant buzz.
Letting it ring out doesn’t feel as good as I expect it to.
No, it just feels so incredibly lonely.
It’s paranoia, I’m sure, but I swear someone’s watching me.
An ominous pit in my stomach, I glance anxiously over my shoulder as I fumble with my keys, taking twice as long as usual to locate the one for the front door. Just as I slide it into the lock, the sound of my name makes me jump, my keys hitting the floor with a clang that drives the dogs wild.
Spinning around, relief is only a fleeting emotion when I lay eyes on the man lurking a few feet away. “What’re you doing here?”
Cautiously, Hunter brandishes the grocery bags in his grip. “Thought I could make you dinner.”
I scoff a sad, defeated noise as I stoop to retrieve my keys. “Thought you already had dinner plans.”
Hunter doesn’t match my retort with one of his own. He remains silent, staring, emanating this calm composure that only serves to irk me further. “ What? ” I snip when the weight of his gaze gets too much for my poor, overstimulated self to handle.
“You wanna talk?” he drawls, quiet and crooning and careful. “Or you wanna yell?”
His tone is like a chisel, chipping away at my patience, at my willpower, at the freaking paper-thin wall holding frustrated, defeated tears at bay. “Don’t condescend to me,” I snap because snapping is so very easy. “I know I’m your twenty-year-old walk on the wild side , but I’m not a child.”
It’s like the light goes out in Hunter’s eyes, that subtle smile dropping along with his hands. “Who said that?” he asks, but something tells me it’s not a real question. Something tells me he knows the answer; it’s just not the answer he wants.
And boy, does that do a little something to fuel my ire. “Your wife. Remember her? Tall, beautiful, still in town?”
His grimace is telling. So telling. Of so many things, too many things, enough to make my mind spin with all the possibilities. He doesn’t like that Cheryl talked to me, that much is clear. The why, not so much. Because of what she said? Because of what she might have said, a secret she might’ve revealed, something else he’s hiding from me? Because of what I might have said, what I might have revealed, something else he’s hiding from her?
“You talked to her,” is all he says, grim and giving nothing away.
As paranoia rears its ugly head again to try to convince me there’s an accusation lurking somewhere in that statement, I turn away to let myself into the store. The dogs rush in first, barking their way upstairs, and as Hunter follows behind me, I feel the need to clarify, “She came to see me.”
A pause. “You okay?”
Something between a scoff, a snort, and a wail escapes me. Letting my bag drop to the floor with a loud thud, I force myself to face him again, force myself to ask, “Why did you file for divorce?”
Hunter gives me that look. The one that disarms me, makes me dizzy, makes me weak and forgiving and useless. “You know why.”
I shake my head, fingers twitching where they rest on my hips as I fight the urge to cup my cheeks, to cover their instinctive reddening—he filed after we kissed, I know that, but that’s not what I’m asking. “I mean why now ? Why not when you left? Why did you wait for six whole months ?”
“Because I needed time, Caroline.”
“Because you didn’t know if you wanted to leave her.”
A glimmer of frustration harshens his features. “You’re hearing things I’m not saying, honey. You’re mad—”
“Mad.” A bitter laugh leaves me as I reach my limit, and I snap. “I’m furious , Hunter. I hate this. I hate her, and I hate myself for it. I hate you for putting me in this position. For making it worse because I’m trying to be the better person, I’m trying to do the right thing, and you’re making it so hard. And for what? Why? Because you like me ? She’s your wife, Hunter. You married her. You won’t even date me, so what’s the fucking point?”
“The point,” Hunter bites out, breathing as hard as I am, our pants echoing around the store, “is I wasn’t having dinner . I was signing divorce papers. I was begging Cheryl to sign them too. She won’t for the same reason she tried to scare you off; she thinks I’m making a choice, just like you do. But it’s not a choice . I’m not picking between you or her. I’m getting divorced, Caroline, whether you want me or not.”
My mouth opens, but nothing comes out. What the hell am I supposed to say to that? Cool? Great? Thanks so much, all is forgiven?
All can’t be forgiven. I can’t just fold. He lied to me, he hid a wife, a life , and I can’t be the girl who forgives and forgets because of some dramatic declaration, even if it is a really good one. Even if he’s saying all the right things. Even if I want to, so badly, so things will be easy again.
I have so many questions. So many things I want to know, so many things I’m scared he won’t tell me. So much I don’t understand, that I need to understand before I lose my damn mind.
“I need to know what happened,” I find myself blurting out. “With Cheryl. I need to know.”
Hunter mimics me momentarily, doing that open-mouthed, silent thing. Clearing his throat, he rolls his lips together. His throat dips with a swallow. And he says, “Okay.”