9. Trust Goes Both Ways
Chapter 9
Trust Goes Both Ways
MEGAN
T he faint smell of fabric softener feels comforting against my skin as I snuggle under the sheets of the king-sized bed I share with Hunter. The problem is, he hasn’t been near it since we’ve returned from Arizona. I think he’s been consumed with uncovering whatever he thinks that Parker knows or maybe he’s just still furious with me for walking out of the apartment that day. After all, if I hadn’t stormed out, I wouldn’t have been taken by Naomi’s father that day.
I’ve been asleep for hours now and with the drapes closed I’m not even sure what time of day it is but whatever time it is, I know that I can no longer rest (hide) in here forever. It’s time to have the conversation that both of us have been avoiding but before I do that, there’s a knock at the door.
“Lena.” I open the door and smile, happy to see a friendly face.
“Were you sleeping?” She stares at the hair on my head sticking straight up in the air.
“Not at all,” I tell her. “I was just getting my day started.”
“Your day?” She grins.
“What time is it?”
“About eight.”
“PM?” I ask incredulously.
“Yes, ma’am.”
Lena pats a few of my curls down and strides inside the apartment.
“Your brother isn’t here,” I tell her.
“I came to see you, obviously.”
“I’m fine.”
“Are you?” She lightly grips my shoulder. “You’ve been through a traumatic experience.”
“My whole life has been traumatic, Lena,” I say dismissively.
“Except for meeting my brother, right? No trauma there.”
“Even my first meeting with Hunter was…eventful,” I recall that fateful night at Table 21. “I guess I attract drama.”
Lena’s kind eyes narrow. “What’s going on with you two, Megan?”
Her eyes avert from mine, a dead giveaway that she probably was sent here on a fact-finding mission.
“Did Hunter send you here to check on me, Lena?”
“I may have spoken to him earlier, but he didn’t send me here. Would it have been a problem if he had?”
“Nope, no problem.”
“I stopped by to give you a hug.” She reaches out to embrace me. “And to suggest that maybe you should go see your doctor and make sure things are okay with the baby. I could go with you.”
There’s a gentleness to Lena’s tone that suddenly makes my eyes water. I haven’t expressed much, if any, emotion about my abduction since Hunter found me. Not in the car. Not on the private plane he chartered to fly us out of Arizona. And not since I’ve been home.
I guess I’ve been numb.
“It’s okay to cry,” Lena assures me, rubbing my back as I openly sob in her arms. “You’re safe now.”
“I’m sorry. I think it’s the hormones.”
“Don’t apologize to me.” She pats my back. “It’s all right.”
Both of us turn our heads when we hear the tone of the keypad unlocking on the front door.
“What’s going on here?” Hunter asks, his eyes focused on the tears running down from my own.
“I’ll let you two talk,” Lena says in a hushed voice and I almost want to stop her because my chest feels tight, and heavier now that he’s in the room.
Hunter leans over, giving Lena a peck on the cheek. “I’ll call you later.”
“Sure.”
“You need anything?”
“No, I’m good. Just take care of our girl here.”
“Always.”
“You’re up, I see,” Hunter says as he carefully places his leather backpack down and pulls off his shoes.
“Can’t sleep forever.”
“Were you able to get a decent rest?”
“Yeah, it was good being back in my own bed.”
“Our bed,” he corrects me.
“Yes, our bed.”
“Are you glad to be home, Megan?” He turns to ask with a serious look on his face.
“What the hell kind of question is that? Of course, I’m glad.”
“Then why are you crying?”
“Sometimes people express emotion when they’ve been through something traumatic.”
“I found you laughing and eating a burrito with your driver. You didn’t seem that torn up to me.”
I wipe my face with the backs of my hands, pissed that I allowed myself to be this vulnerable. He doesn’t deserve my tears.
“You’ve misconstrued this entire situation. Parker wasn’t the one who took me.”
“He didn’t bring you home either.”
“You didn’t give him a chance. He was going to.”
“It didn’t look that way to me.”
“Well, how did it fucking look?” I stand in front of him now, hands on my hips, staring fiercely into his steely gray eyes.
“Watch your mouth, Megan.”
“No, you watch your mouth! I don’t appreciate what you’re insinuating. You think I planned to run away with Parker because he’s closer to my age than you are?”
Hunter glares at me. “That was a fucked up thing to say.”
“Why? It’s true.”
He steps an inch closer.
“Why do you keep bringing him into this?”
“I’m not! You are. The fact that you didn’t find me lying dead somewhere in a ditch and safe with Parker is blinding you. You’re focused on the wrong person right now.”
“Then who should I be focused on?”
“Me, asshole!”
“You? I am focused on you! This is what being focused on nothing but you looks like. Look at me. I mean really look at me, Megan. I tell you that I’ve bought you a house, and you storm out of here like I committed some sort of a crime, then someone snatches you right from the front door of our home, and you think, what? That I’m thinking about anything else but finding you? Protecting you? You’re all I can think about every single moment of the fucking day. My life has been turned upside down since the day we met. My work is shit. My club is practically running itself. I don’t even recognize myself anymore. And you think I need to focus more on you?”
Hunter’s breathing is labored, almost violent. I can hear his heart pounding from where I’m standing, but I can also hear my own after the hundreds of tiny cuts his cruel words have just made into it.
“Forgive me for ruining your oh-so-perfect life. I’m glad we cleared that up before we made a huge mistake.”
“And what mistake would that be?” He lifts my chin with two of his fingers.
“Well, you don’t think we’re getting married now, do you?”
“You’re carrying my child.”
“This is not the Gilded Age. I can raise a baby on my own.”
“Not my baby.”
“Watch me.”
“Megan, you’ve misunderstood the situation. You can’t just bail every time we disagree. That’s not how this works. We’re committed to each other, and we’re bringing another human being into the world based on that commitment.”
“I will not marry and raise a child with a man who doesn’t trust me.”
“Trust goes both ways, and I never said I thought you were fucking Parker, but you are holding back something from me. That I know.”
“What do you want to know!” I exclaim, angry tears streaming down my face. “For fuck’s sake, let’s just get it over with.”
“Did Parker hurt you?”
“No! Never.”
“Was he there in Arizona to help you?”
My eyes immediately drop.
“Not exactly.”
Hunter runs a few paper towels underneath some warm water from the kitchen faucet and uses them to tenderly wipe my face clean.
“Then why?”
We sit on the couch, and I calm down long enough to explain how I wiggled out of the motel bathroom window, away from Mr. Fabre's henchman, and ran into Parker during my escape. I tell him the deal Parker supposedly made with Mr. Fabre and how it momentarily impaired his judgment.
“He was never going to take me back to them. He was going to call you and tell you where to come and get me. He was just mustering up the courage to do it when you miraculously walked inside that rest stop.”
“This could have ended much differently,” Hunter says with a tinge of regret in his voice.
“What do you mean?”
“All he had to do was tell me that he needed the money.”
“He didn’t know he could ask you that. He’s your driver, not your friend.”
“He could have asked Lars.”
“I don’t think it was a thought-out plan. I think he saw an opportunity and, in the heat of the moment, said yes. He didn’t know that I was going to be involved.”
“But, Megan, he knew I would be.”
I pause for a moment to consider Hunter’s words and I have no logical response to them. Anything else I say at this point would be an excuse, so I simply say, “Just forgive him.”
“It’s too late.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means we’re past the point of forgiveness.”
My chest tightens.
“What have you done, Hunter?”
He pulls me gently into his arms, nuzzling his face into the side of my neck.
“God, I’ve missed your smell. I couldn't breathe when I thought there was a chance that I'd lost you forever.”
I close my eyes, reveling in his touch.
“Please don’t do anything you’ll regret, Hunter.”
His hand gently eases under my sleep shirt, tracing the length of my spine with his fingers.
“That’s the thing, baby, when it comes to you and ensuring your safety, there’s nothing I could do that I’d ever regret.”