Chapter 38
38
HUNTER
He looks so pained, so tense, and she feels so guilty to be the cause.
But just as she opens her mouth to tell him to stop, that it doesn’t matter, he starts to talk.
“So you’re just gonna leave?”
He resists the urge to laugh at the utter disbelief lacing his wife’s voice, at the look of complete confusion on her face. She looks at him like she can’t possibly fathom why he’s shoving all his belongings into a duffel bag.
Like she's not standing there wearing rumpled lingerie he sure as shit has never seen before.
Like he didn't just watch a half-naked man jump out their bedroom window.
Like he didn’t just walk in on her in bed, in their bed, with someone else.
“Baby, please,” Cheryl cries, clawing at his arm in a fruitless attempt to stop his hurried packing. “Please, don’t leave.”
If he was thinking clearer, he wouldn’t. He wouldn’t leave, but not because of any desperate plea. If anger wasn’t clouding his thoughts, if he wasn’t hell-bent on getting the fuck away from her, he’d stay because this is his goddamn house. His hard-earned money bought it, he pays for the upkeep, his name and his name only is on the fucking lease because that way, none of the financial burden would fall on her—just the way she wanted it.
But right now, he doesn’t care that uprooting his life when she’s the one who fucked up isn’t fair. He just needs to go.
When he zips up the bag full of his clothes and slings it over his shoulder, and picks up the other two by his feet, her hysterics kick up a notch. She starts to wail, an ear-splitting noise that bounces off the walls, and to anyone else, they might sound sincere. Anyone else might believe that she's truly upset, that she regrets it, that she was lonely, that his alleged emotional and physical absence pushed her to the edge. If he didn’t know her so well, if he hadn’t spent close to a decade of his life getting to know her, he wouldn’t know how to spot her crocodile tears from a mile away.
But he did, and he does. He recognizes them well when he glances at her one last time before storming out the door.
She follows him downstairs, begging and pleading and crying until his refusal to engage with her performance causes her emotions to flip quick enough to give a guy whiplash. The tears abruptly dry up, irritation fuelling her words now. “Stop ignoring me, Hunt.”
He’s not; he just has nothing to say. Screaming and yelling and giving her tantrum some competition is exactly what she wants, and God knows he’s given her enough of that over the years. Blank indifference is all he has left.
He reaches for his keys on the hallway table, but the moment his fingers graze the cold metal, they’re ripped from his grasp. Forcing himself to remain calm, he turns to face his wife . She clutches his keys to her chest, holding them hostage with white-knuckled fingers. “You’re not leaving.”
He stares at her, and he wonders when this happened. When he stopped recognizing the woman he married. Was she always so manipulative, so selfish, so mean ? He wouldn’t have fallen in love with her if she was, surely.
He thinks about the woman he met his senior year of undergrad. He thinks about dropping out of vet school a couple of years later because she wanted to spend more time together, to start a family, only to promptly decide she wasn’t ready. About moving to Atlanta because the town they lived in was too small for her even though the city made him itch, as did being so far away from his momma and Kelsey. About working an office job he hated so she could cut her hours—and eventually quit—but still buy nice things.
He thinks about finding her in bed with another man. He thinks about six months ago, when she didn’t come home one night and made up a flimsy excuse he never quite believed. He thinks about a few months before that, before she left her job, when she went on a work trip with the same man he just caught her with.
The last straw, he slowly realizes. That’s what this was. His long overdue breaking point.
He doesn’t need the keys. He’ll take a damn Uber to his momma’s house. To get away from here, from her , he’d crawl across broken fucking glass.
Keyless and unbothered, he wrenches open the front door, feeling Cheryl’s temper flare when she realizes her last-ditch attempt hasn’t worked the way she intended—literally. A dull pain emanates from the center of his back as the keys collide with him, the sharp pang of them hitting the floor echoed in the high-pitched scream that leaves Cheryl, “Where are you going?”
He doesn’t waste any time scooping up the thrown keys before heading out the door, knowing she won’t follow him because how would that look to the neighbors? Her chasing him out of the house, half-dressed and screeching?
And he’s right; the only thing that follows him outside are incessant, angry yells.
When he reaches his truck, he tosses his bags in the backseat before turning to give her the attention she’s begging for. The last sliver of attention he’ll ever give her. Feeling lighter than he has in a long time, he says his parting words, “None of your fuckin’ business.”
His momma is waiting for him on the front porch of the house he grew up in, built on the land he honestly thought he’d die on.
She’s always called the fresh air out here ‘ a balm to the soul .’ As he starts up the steps towards her, he’s never understood that phrase more. He breathes in great big lungfuls of it, tinted by the scent of fresh bread and pure comfort as his momma wraps him up in her arms. “My boy,” she croons. “How are you?”
Practically bent at the waist to embrace the parent he most definitely did not inherit his height from, he murmurs, “Okay,” against the top of her head, and he means it.
He doesn't feel like he just walked away from a marriage, from a life. He feels… like he said, okay. Perfectly okay. And he thinks that unsettles him more than walking in on his wife straddling another man did.
“Your daddy never liked her.”
He stifles a snicker. “He barely knew her.”
They weren’t even dating yet when his daddy died. To him, Cheryl was just a girl who visited the ranch a few times and complained about the stench of horse shit. Though, he supposes that would be enough to piss off a third-generation rancher.
Nevertheless, Momma insists, “He was an excellent judge of character.”
Yeah, well. If only he’d been as excellent at sharing his opinions. But that was his daddy, he guesses. Not much of a sharer—or a talker.
Following Momma inside the house, he’s not even a little bit surprised to find a home-cooked meal waiting on the dining room table, the same hearty food he grew up on, and he’d bet all the money in his wallet there’s a peach cobbler keeping warm in the oven.
“There’s work for you to do after supper,” she tells him, making him smile—how predictable. “You know everythin’ breaks this time of year.”
That, he does. He used to compare the short, busy days of winter to a stint in hell.
“I made up your room for you. But— Kelsey ,” she yells the latter up the staircase before ushering him into a seat. “But there’s room in the bunkhouse if you’d rather stay there.”
He’s never considered himself a particularly prideful man, but the idea of staying with the other ranch hands, most of whom he grew up with in some way or another, and having to explain why he’s back makes his stomach roll. “I don’t know how long I’ll be stayin’, Momma.”
She doesn’t pout, exactly; she just dishes mashed potatoes onto his plate with a little more gusto than necessary. “You’re not goin’ back there, are you?”
“No,” he quickly confirms, even quicker to snag a dish of green beans from her grip before he ends up with one in his eye.
Momma makes a little harrumph as she settles across from him, and he’s saved from more questions he doesn’t have the answer to by his sister bustling into the room. “The prodigal son returns,” Kelsey hollers, wrapping her arms around his neck from behind and squeezing in a way that feels dangerously close to a strangulation attempt. She kisses his cheek before taking a seat beside Momma. “I can’t believe she let you leave.”
Her comment earns her a whack on the back of her hand with a spoon and a brisk, “ Kelsey May. ”
His sister just grins, mumbling about honesty as she reaches for a bread roll only to be whacked again. Clucking her tongue at her, Momma takes her outstretched hand and holds her other out towards him. Like with every meal he can remember, she closes her eyes and starts to say grace.
Like with every meal he can remember, he peeks at Kelsey through one squinted eye and swallows a laugh when she pulls a face their momma would call devilish .
And when they start to eat, it strikes him that this is the first normal, peaceful meal he’s had in a long, long time.
A couple of weeks after crossing the border into California, he ends up in a tiny town nestled beside Sequoia National Park.
He’s not sure how. The Golden State wasn’t exactly his goal destination, and when he says Haven Ridge is tiny, he really does mean it. It’s not really the kind of place you just happen to stumble upon, but somehow he did.
And as he drives down Main Street—the only street, as far as he can tell—something in his chest… settles. Like a puzzle piece slotting into place, accompanied by an overwhelming wave of relief after months of hopping from one state to another, from one ranch to another, from barn lofts to bunkhouses to the backseat of his truck.
Pulling into the first parking spot he finds, he grabs his wallet from the center console and gets out of his truck. As he locks it, he’s struck with this weirdly soothing thought that he probably doesn't need to—that this is one of those towns where kids play in the street safely and front doors are left open.
He does anyway, years living in a big city hammering that habit home, before striding across the street—completely devoid of traffic, he notes—and into a building that has a sign saying ‘Bishop’s Bar’ hanging above the door.
The guy behind the counter greets him like they’re best friends, taking his order with a smile on his face. He bets the guy would pepper him with endless friendly questions if he didn’t turn his back and pretend to check his phone even though he knows there’s nothing to check—only his momma and Kelsey have his new number, and it’s the middle of the working day back home.
Once the bartender disappears to help someone else, he lets his eyes wander. It’s busy for an early morning in a small town establishment—for an early morning in a bar . Full of chatting, friendly people who eye him with unnerving interest.
Avoiding their gazes, his snags on the wall directly in front of him, on some kind of bulletin board, and curiosity draws him forward. Of its own accord, almost, his hand rises to sift through the stacks of pinned advertisements for everything from businesses to services to… jobs.
A business card catches his attention. Small with a simple logo and plain writing, only a handful of words. Serenity Ranch, Help Wanted.
Instinct has him tucking it in his back pocket. It has him asking the bartender about this ranch too. With breakfast and directions in hand, he shoulders his way outside again, making it all of two steps before abruptly stopping.
He saw the flower shop while he was parking; it’s hard to miss an orange building with an array of colorful flowers blocking half the sidewalk. But he didn’t see the woman crouched over a bucket of daisies, even though she’s pretty hard to miss too.
She’s alone, but she’s smiling, her mouth moving like she’s talking to herself, to the flowers, who knows. A skirt pools high on her thighs, a cropped shirt showing off a sliver of midriff, cowboy-style boots molded to her calves. The late spring light hits a dark blonde braid and sun-kissed skin in a way that makes the stranger glow , and the sight socks him in the gut. The fact that he notices her, that his brain chants pretty girl pretty girl pretty girl , hits him like a slap to the face, because he can’t remember the last time he noticed, admired , someone who wasn’t his wife.
It makes him panic. It makes him feel guilty, as if that’s something he deserves to feel. It makes the ring still on his finger burn the skin beneath—psychosomatic or real, he’s not sure, but either way, he finds himself slipping it off. He finds himself staring at it, then the girl, then the business card.
He finds himself relishing in the clink of metal hitting metal as he drops the circle of silver into a sewer grate.