Chapter 10
Hunter
“Hot Docs just bit it.”
Kit and I are working at a table in the lobby of the Fairbanks River Lodge, putting the finishing touches on tomorrow’s dog mushing challenge in Nome, when Rick arrives to tell us the news.
“Are you serious? Fuck!” Kit looks pissed as hell. Since she had Team Hot Docs pegged as the winners, she just lost out on the two-thousand-dollar pot. “What happened?”
“Let’s just say they suck at ice carving,” he says. “Should’ve chosen the hot springs detour instead.”
Isabella and Beto did the Chena Hot Springs challenge and finished hours ago. They’re currently in second place, after Team Brady. That means Team Brady, Team Primos, and Team Newlyweds will round out the final three. I’m happy for my girl. Super proud, too. We’ll have to celebrate tonight.
“Where are the rest of the teams?” I ask.
“Special reward for the final three,” says Rick. “They’re getting the full treatment at the Chena Hot Springs Resort tonight: massages, gourmet dinner at the restaurant, and they each get their own rooms tonight. Deluxe, huh?”
I work to hide my frown. Deluxe, sure. And a massage will be nice for Isabella after the rigors of the past few weeks. But it also means that the room I got for us here in Fairbanks will be wasted tonight. The Chena Hot Springs is an hour away from where I’m staying in downtown Fairbanks, and I don’t have my own car.
It might sound needy (so I’d never say it aloud), but I hate spending a night away from her. The truth is that even though I know we’re going to spend July and August together, I’m still a little insecure about our future. There are so many variables, so many things that could go wrong. I want a chance with her, and now that I’ve got it, I resent anything that could threaten it.
“So,” asks Rick, darting his eyes between me and Kit, “what’re you two up to tonight?”
“Crew dinner?” asks Kit. “Hotel bar for a nightcap, maybe. And some sleep. Nome is gonna be cold and intense.”“What about you?” Rick asks me. “Be my wingman. Let’s go out.”
Rick and I haven’t spent a lot of time together over the past few weeks. Kit and I have continued to do all of the groundwork mostly on our own, and since I’ve been paying for my own hotel rooms since we left the boat in Whittier, I don’t share with him anymore.
Plus, I really don’t like him. That’s all there is to it.
“No, thanks,” I say. “I think Kit’s got the right idea.”
“Lame. There’s a place called the Spur that’s supposed to be good times,” he says. “Come on.”
I give him a look. What’s going on with him? He’s never—not once—asked to spend time with me socially while we’ve been coworkers on the race. It’s feeling pushy. And weird.
“Fine,” says Kit. “We’ll all swing by the Spur after dinner…but drinks are on you, cowboy. Happy now?”
“Euphoric,” says Rick. “I’ll meet you two back here at ten.”
As he heads to his room, I turn to Kit.
“What the hell was that?”
“What? Rick being Rick?”
“He never hangs out with us,” I point out. “Why now?”
Kit shrugs like it doesn’t mean anything, but I also notice she’s not meeting my eyes. “Maybe he realizes what a jerk he’s been now that the show’s ending soon.”
I scoff. “Or maybe something’s up. I don’t trust him.”
“Well,” says Kit, gathering the paper confirmations for Nome into a neat pile, “if he is up to something, I’ll be there, too.”
What does that mean?
“I don’t get it,” I say, narrowing my eyes at her.
She shrugs again, a jerky little motion that doesn’t come naturally to her.
“You know Rick,” she says. “He wasn’t going to drop it. Better just to let him have his way.” She stands up and scoops the pile of paper into her arms. “See you back here at ten?”
“Yeah,” I say, with plenty of questions still unanswered.
I guess I’ll just go with the flow until I can figure out what’s going on.
***
At ten o’clock, the three of us pile into a taxi headed to the Spur, even though I’m still missing Isabella, who responded briefly to my texts, telling me that the crew had a whole “itinerary of fun” planned for tonight and she’d text me when she got back to her room later.
Rick sits in the front seat of the cab, saying nothing, texting someone non-stop, and Kit sits beside me, posture tense, looking out the window. The weird vibe continues, but I’m just along for the ride at this point.
We get to the Spur, which looks a lot like a strip club from the outside—especially with the giant poster advertising that Chippendales will be appearing LIVE in three weeks—and hop out of the cab.
“I’m not staying long,” I mutter, feeling annoyed. I assumed we were going to a run-of-the-mill Alaskan bar, but this spot appears seedier than most, which is saying something.
“Nut up,” says Rick. “Maybe you’ll get lucky.”
“I don’t think so,” I say, my voice taking on an edge at the mere thought of cheating on Isabella. We agreed to monogamy this summer, and I have absolutely zero desire to meet anyone else.
“You never know,” he says in this singsong voice that makes me want to pop him in the nose.
“I know,” I growl, following him inside.
As predicted, the scene inside the Spur is rowdy and loud, but also a lot more crowded than I expected. We weave through the crowd to get to the bar, and I order myself a pint of Spruce Tip Blonde, which is a Skagway-made beer. It cheers me up a little to see it on tap.
As I’m sipping on my welcome taste of home, I lean my elbows back against the bar and survey my surroundings. The place has a loose country-western theme, with a small stage in the far corner of the room that’s adorned with white lights, game antlers and a couple of bear skins.
The band on the stage plays decent country music, and the dance floor is covered with guys in wide-brimmed hats and girls in cowboy boots. It’s packed for a Thursday night, which is a little strange, especially with all of the University of Alaska students on summer break, but despite its dive-y appearance outside, I guess it’s pretty popular.
I take another sip of my beer, trying to relax.That is…until I notice a woman on the fringe of the dance floor who appears to be getting some unwanted attention from a couple of drunks. She’s several feet away from the bar, with her back to me, but I have a clear view of the two guys bothering her—they’re a lot bigger than she is, smiling at her in a way that makes my skin crawl.
One of them has his hand around her waist, his fingers spread out wide on her ass. She’s reaching around trying to move his hand, but he’s digging his fingers into her jeans, which makes her twist and wiggle, trying to get away. Meanwhile, the other guy is acting like her wiggling is some sort of voluntary dance move, using it as an excuse to gyrate against her front, while his friend holds her in place.
Fuck!She’s being assaulted on the sidelines of a public dance floor, and no one else seems to notice. Where are her friends? Who is she here with? If that was Harper, Parker, or Reeve being manhandled like that? My brothers and I would have those guys on their backs and bleeding in a matter of seconds. Solo? It’ll take me a little longer to shut this shit down, especially if these two are scrappy and have some fight in them, but I’ve got an advantage in that I’m mostly sober. I’m confident I can take them both on if I need to.
I leave my beer and shove off from the bar, cutting a path through a dense crowd of drinkers and dancers, beelining for the woman in trouble. As I get closer, I can see that she’s really struggling to get away now, crowded by these two nasty assholes who have her trapped, one of them still groping her ass, and the other “dancing” way too close to her for comfort.
Moving faster, I stop saying, “Excuse me,” aggressively pushing through a group of oblivious drinkers, who yell “asshole” at my back as their beers slosh onto the floor. I don’t care. This woman is in trouble, and these guys need to be stopped.
When I reach her, I grab blindly for the guy’s hand on her ass, ripping it from her person and yelling, “Get off her!”
At the same time, the woman turns around, her hot-pink, party-store cowboy hat falling to the floor, and revealing her to be—holy shit!—Isabella.
MyIsabella.
“Hunter!” she cries, reaching for me, tears brimming in her eyes. “Help!”
Instinct kicks in.
First, protect her.
I grab her, moving her to my side, pressing her against my hip, anchored under my arm, in the hollow of my hard body.
Second, hurt those who would threaten her.
And because it’s her—my girl, my woman—I’m not thinking. I’m not right in the head. I’m seeing white. Scalding, calescent, feverish white. These assholes had their dirty fucking hands on her without her permission, and for that…they need to pay.
My free arm launches back, and my fist smashes into the face of the guy facing me. He spins around, falls into a table covered with empty beer bottles and goes down fast, a rooster-tail of blood spurting from his nose or lips or whatever part of his face my knuckles just broke.
The other guy comes from behind me, his hands landing hard on my shoulders. I push Isabella behind me, to the safety of my back, as I rotate to face him. This was the guy with his hands on her ass, and I see stars as I launch my neck back, then bring my forehead down on his nose with every bit of adrenaline-fueled strength I can muster. His nose snaps, the crunch of cartilage and bone nauseating as his blood splashes hot and wet on my T-shirt. The metallic smell makes my stomach flip over as I step backward to the shrill cry of his scream and reach for Isabella.
I pull her against my chest in a bear hug, my eyes tightly closed and my heart pumping so fast, I’m surprised it doesn’t burst from my chest. I’ve never acted so savagely in my life. She’s trembling in my arms, crying against my blood-spattered chest.
“Are you okay?” I demand. “Baby, are you okay?”
“They were…they were…” Her voice breaks with a hiccup, and I rub her back.
“It’s okay,” I tell her, pulling her closer and burying my face in her hair. “They won’t touch you again.”
“I d-didn’t want…I didn’t…”
“I know,” I say. “You didn’t want their attention. I could see that clear as day.”
“I’m so glad…so glad you’re here,” she says. Then, suddenly, she draws back from my chest, her cheeks slick and pink, her eyes bloodshot. “Wait. What are you doing here?”
The vulnerable way she’s looking at me breaks my heart and makes me furious at the same time. I look over her shoulder at the guy still on the floor behind the fallen table. He’s sitting against a wooden pillar, cradling his face, blood still seeping through his fingers. He’s mumbling something over and over again. I listen more closely and realize he’s repeating variations of: “I didn’t sign on for this shit,” and “That wasn’t supposed to fucking happen.”
I’m still staring at him, trying to figure out what he means, when I mumble a response to Isabella. “Rick suggested a night out on the town.”
It’s now…only now…I realize that the music has stopped, and everyone in the bar is staring at us. I look behind me where I see Carl and Logan, two of the cameramen on The Astonishing Race production crew, with cameras on their shoulders, filming us. Wait. Filming us? I look over Isabella’s shoulder again, and notice another cameraman, getting the other angle. Beside him, a production paramedic is tending to the guy whose nose I broke with my forehead.
“Wait a—what the fuck is going on here?”
Isabella, looking as confused as I feel, looks around, then back at me.
“Was this…?” she asks me, her eyes bewildered. “Was this a setup?”
From behind me, I hear someone break the silence of the bar, clapping steadily. I turn to see Rick approaching us, a huge, cheesy smile on his face.
“That was way better than expected!”
“What’s going on?” Isabella whispers, her arms still tightly around my waist and mine still around hers.
A spotlight suddenly lands on us, and Nat Keegan pops out from behind Rick, approaching us purposefully in his bright blue polo shirt.
Am I asleep? Is this a nightmare?
“Young love! Forbidden love!” he cries, coming toward us, holding a microphone. “An Astonishing Race nation favorite!”
“Oh my god,” Isabella mumbles, looking up at me.
“Holy shit,” I murmur back.
I’m confused as hell, and my adrenaline is still pumping like crazy, but I’m pretty sure that TheAstonishing Race found out that Isabella and I were sleeping together and planned tonight to “out” us. And in the process, Isabella was groped without her permission, and I assaulted two men on camera.
“Astonishing Race nation,” says Nat, channeling Stanley Tucci’s Caesar Flickerman from The Hunger Games movies, “you already know Izzy from Team Primos! But it’s time to meet her lover, Hunter, who works on our production team! About a week ago, a little birdy whispered in my ear that these two were an item. At first we didn’t believe it because we forbid affairs between contestants and the production crew,” he says dramatically, pausing for effect. “But these two knew the rules, and like a modern-day Romeo and Juliet, they broke them!”
I look around the bar for a friendly face, and find Kit nearby, looking sorry as hell. She shakes her head at me, mouthing, “I’m sorry.”
She knew? Fuck me. She knew.
I look around the room and realize that at least a third of the “dancers” I saw on the dance floor earlier are familiar faces from the production crew. I guess I didn’t notice because I was too fired up about the actors hired to sexually assault my girlfriend.
“What do we do?” Isabella murmurs, her voice soft, but frantic.
“I don’t know,” I say, feeling lost and confused, and wildly out of my depth.
Nat side-steps to us, standing as close as he likely dares with my wild eyes focused on him and my bruised knuckles still covered in blood.
“Izzy and Hunter,” he says cajolingly, like we just shared a secret of our own volition, instead of having our agency completely subverted and manipulated, “tell us! How long has this been going on?”
I look away from Nat, down at Isabella, who’s looking up at me. Suddenly, her brown eyes flare with fury, and she lifts her chin with purpose. Any tears left in her eyes recede, and she steps away from me, dropping her arms from my waist, and standing tall and solid on her own two feet. She looks at Nat with the disdain of a queen dressing down an unruly subject, then leans forward, her lips all but kissing the microphone.
“Fuck you, Nat,” she says before looking directly into the camera. “And fuck you, Astonishing Race nation.”
Then she takes my hand and heads for the door, dragging me behind her, the crowd parting for us like modern-day Capulets and Montagues, stunned and shamed, tracking the exit of their wayward lovers.
***
Isabella
There was a lot Hunter and I didn’t know.
Seated in a conference room at the Fairbanks River Lodge with Nat and the rest of the senior production staff later that evening, they laid it all out for us.
Apparently, Nat had decided a week ago that the show didn’t have enough “drama” this season. “Find a fucking story!” he’d ordered his crew. “Now! And make it good!”
Enter Rick Jones, who—unbeknownst to us—had caught us making out on the deck between Juneau and Skagway and ratted us out to Nat’s assistant. At first, she’d resisted the notion of pitching us as the story, knowing that our relationship was against the rules, and we both might be out of a job for breaking them. But the more she thought about it, the more she realized that because it was forbidden, it was also TV gold.
She was right. Nat loved that it was a “secret” love affair and ordered hotels to comp rooms for us and all cameramen to make footage of us their priority.
Since then, they’ve been filming us on the sly.
With cameras attached to room service trollies, hidden in hotel hallways, and cameramen constantly filming our reactions to one another during both challenges and downtime, the show got a well-documented record of the first week of our relationship.
All they were missing was an admission.
When I wouldn’t admit it to Meghan on camera in Talkeetna, the production crew met again, trying to figure out a way to “trap” us into admitting we were an item. Kit adamantly refused to be a part of it apparently, but also agreed not to tell Hunter, in spite of their friendship. Rick, on the other hand, was only too happy to sell out his coworker when they asked for his help getting Hunter to the Spur.
They hired two local actors from the Aurora Light Opera Theater to hit on me at the bar, but never having been on camera before, the guys got there early, drank way too much to calm their nerves, and committed to their parts with aplomb, quickly crossing the line from flirtatious to aggressive.
Nat Keegan apologized to me for that part—the part where I was groped against my fucking will—and assured Hunter that NDAs had been signed by both actors and no charges would be pressed against him for assault and battery.
Then he smiled at us. Smiled. Like his shitty apology to me and promise that Hunter wouldn’t be arrested meant anything to us.
“I was sexually assaulted,” I say. “Those guys touched my backside and rubbed against my breasts without my permission. I don’t care if they were actors playing a part. And I don’t care if they were drunk. They had no right to touch me.”
Hunter cracks his knuckles and reaches for my hand, holding it firmly. His anger is palpable. I’ve never seen anything like the way he dispatched those guys, and while I should probably be taken aback by his savagery, I was so grateful for his intervention and protection, I’m not.
“That was regrettable,” says Nat with a contrite expression. “But you never know what might happen during filming! It’s unpredictable.”
“You set that up,” I point out. “You made that happen. You’re responsible for the fact that I was touched inappropriately without my consent.”
“So, sue us,” says Nat, glancing at his lawyer with a shrug. “I’ll put your contract and our lawyers in that brawl any day.”
“Unbelievable,” mutters Hunter. “You have no decency.”
“I do,” says Nat, thoughtfully, “when the ratings are high. Until they aren’t…decency costs too much.”
“No, it doesn’t,” Hunter argues, shooting daggers at Nat with his eyes. He turns to me. “Do you want to quit? If you want to quit, we’ll walk out of here right now.”
I stare at him, and in that second, I realize that my feelings for him, which have been affectionate, but nebulous, are coalescing into something real, something wonderful, something that feels an awful lot like love.
But there’s Beto to think of. He’s my family. My blood. And then there’s me, and the effort I’ve already spent on this race. I don’t want it to have been wasted. I shouldn’t have to give up a million dollars because of these Hollywood assholes. It’s not fair. It’s not right.
“No,” I say to Hunter, threading my fingers through his and smiling at him. “Thank you so much for that offer, Hunter, but we’re staying. And we’re going to win.”
“About that…” says Nat, cringing at his coffee cup before looking up at us. “We’ve hit a little snag.”
“What. Fucking. Snag?” demands Hunter.
“Well…” says Nat, ignoring Hunter and addressing me. “You’ve been carrying on a relationship with someone on the production crew, my dear. You’ve had an unfair advantage over the other teams, and both Team Brady and Team Newlyweds have already lodged complaints. They want you off the show for violating your contract.”
“Are you fucking serious right now?” Hunter demands, slapping his palms on the conference table. “She could sue you for the way those fucking rapists—”
“Nobody was raped,” hollers Nat. He looks at his lawyer. “There was no rape!”
“There was groping,” says Hunter. “A lot of fucking groping.”
“I already apologized for that.”
“Your apology means shit!”
I place a calming hand on Hunter’s arm and turn back to Nat.
“So that’s it? My cousin and I are disqualified?”
“Not exactly,” says Nat. “We’ve come up with another solution.”
“What?” I demand.
“It’s two-fold,” he says. “First, you give us permission to share the footage of your relationship and give us an exclusive interview.”
“Fuck that!” yells Hunter.
“And second,” says Nat calmly, “Team Primos does a roadblock challenge tomorrow after the detours and prior to the main challenge.”
“What roadblock?” I ask. “There haven’t been any roadblocks on this show yet.”
“We’ve come up with one just for you,” says Nat. “It’ll make the other teams feel appeased but still give you an opportunity to continue with the race.”
“What is it?” asks Hunter.
“In addition to the mushing challenge, Team Primos will also be expected to harness their dogs. The other teams will have their sled dogs harnessed by professional mushers.”
I turn to Hunter, whose eyes have gone wide. He shakes his head back and forth.
“Do you even know what you’re suggesting? Are you fucking kidding me? Not only is that almost impossible to do for someone who doesn’t work with those dogs, it’s fucking dangerous.”
“There will be a professional dog musher on hand to advise and a paramedic nearby.”
“Oh, great. That’s just great.” Hunter turns to me, his expression bleak. “Baby, these dogs—they’re good dogs, of course—but…they’re working dogs, not lap dogs. Before they race…they are beyond excited. They are jumping and barking and howling. They can barely contain their excitement. And they’re strong, Bella. So strong. Your finger gets caught in the wrong place between two lines, and they’ll snap it off.”
His words scare me a little. They do. But I tell myself that we have the rest of tonight and tomorrow morning to watch YouTube videos of mushers harnessing their dogs. We can try to learn the basics.
The most important thing is that I can’t let Beto down. I can’t. He’s my family, and I love him, and it’s just not fair to him that my behavior could deprive him of his winnings.
“I need to talk to my cousin,” I say, “but I’m ninety-nine percent sure we’ll do it. We’ll do the roadblock.”
“Bella,” mutters Hunter. “Are you sure?”
“We have to try,” I tell him. “It’s not fair to Beto to quit now.”
“Excellent! The ratings gods thank you! This just might end up being our best season ever!” Nat claps his hands with glee and turns to his assistant. “Now get these two wired up for an interview. And make it snappy.”
***
Beto is not happy.
In fact, I’ve never seen my generally easy-going cousin so upset. But I made the right call back in the conference room. He swears we’ll figure out how to harness the dogs quickly and stay in the race. But me? I’m not so sure.
As I take the elevator to Hunter’s room, I think about the interview we just gave, sitting next to each other on a couch they dragged in from the lobby. The questions—especially for a couple as new as we are—were inappropriate, intrusive and embarrassing.
“What first attracted you to Hunter?”
I’d pictured Hunter picking me up at the Skagway Airport last summer—his eyes were bluer than the sky, and his biceps had bulged as he threw my suitcase into the trunk of his car.
“He’s beautiful,” I’d answered honestly. “Isn’t he?”
Meghan had tittered before turning to Hunter.
“And Hunter, what did you see in Izzy?”
I don’t know exactly what he was thinking about as he gazed at me, his eyes warm and soft, but it made a million butterflies beat their delicate wings against the walls of my tummy.
“I’ve never known a woman like her,” he’d said, his voice on the edge of awe. “I’m pretty certain I never will again.”
The elevator door opens and a young couple, dressed in swimsuits with towels around their waists, steps inside, standing in front of me.
My mind drifts back to the interview.
“Izzy, did you know you weren’t supposed to date members of the production crew?”
“I did,” I’d admitted, nodding at Meghan.
“You could’ve gotten eliminated from the race,” she’d continued. “Would it have been worth it?”Hunter had squeezed my hand, as though giving me permission to answer that it wouldn’t have been worth it. But I couldn’t lie. I couldn’t.
“A hundred percent,” I’d told her. “Hunter is…” I’d looked at him, tilting my head to the side, feeling my eyes fill with tenderness. Finally, I’d shrugged, looking back at Meghan. “Wonderful.”
The elevator dings, and the couple gets out, leaving me alone again.
“Hunter, Team Primos will have a tough roadblock challenge tomorrow. Are you worried about how this may threaten their chances of winning?”
Hunter had looked down at our interlocked hands, then back up at Meghan.
“If she loses the race because of me,” he’d said, “I’ll spend the rest of my life making it up to her.”
I don’t know how much of the interview I heard after that statement, and my answers were probably rote and lackluster.
The rest of my life. The rest of my life.
Have any words in the entire world ever sounded so sweet?
As the elevator doors open and I walk down the carpeted hallway to Hunter’s room, I wonder if he meant them. I wonder if it’s possible—in some universe, this one or another—that Hunter Stewart and I could somehow end up spending the rest of our lives together. How could it happen? How would it work? How could a woman with a family and job she loves in Seattle end up with a man from Skagway who has a family and job he loves equally as hard? Is there an answer? A solution? And if there is, why am I suddenly so desperate to find it?
I slip my keycard into the door and push it open.
And there he is, wearing sweatpants and nothing else, this beautiful, tender, savage man that I can’t seem to give up on, no matter how challenging or unlikely our happy ending.
He doesn’t approach me. He stands in front of me with his hands on his hips, his gaze intense. I think he has something to say.
“Tell me,” I say.
He looks down at his bare feet, his jaw clenching then relaxing. When he looks up again, I know what he’s going to say before the words leave his lips, but I don’t stop him. Though they scare me, I want to hear them. I want them in my ears, in my head, in my heart…forever.
“I’m falling in love with you,” he says, the words gravelly and fraught. “I’m sorry—I know you don’t want that…but I thought you should know.”
I close the distance between us, reaching up to cradle his cheeks with my palms.
“Mi corazón. Mi vida,” I whisper. “Make love to me.”