Chapter 16
Devyn
I f Hunter Isaac wasn’t six-foot-two with eyes that bore into my soul like ice daggers with one glance, it would be really freaking helpful.
“God, I understand you’re trying to get me to learn something and change my ways. You don’t throw us anything we can’t handle, am I right? But look, I am so freakin’ tipsy right now, I actually might be drunk. And I’m so sorry, God. I’ll be not-drunk next time, promise. But look, I absolutely cannot be trusted with this plan of yours tonight, so if you could just, like, make him dissipate, distract him with a burning bush or—” Ow. I’m jabbed in the shoulder by Hunter’s elbow, and I realize God is not, in fact, budging on his plan.
Well, I hope you’re ready to pop some popcorn then, Big Guy, because this is gonna be one hell of a show.
“What’re you doing?” He snickers at me. I don’t like it. We are not on good terms, and he isn’t allowed to snicker like we are. So, breaking one of my Bitch-Step Program rules, I say what I think.
“You aren’t allowed to snicker at me like we’re friends.” I sit on the stool, spinning away from him, and fold my hands beneath my chin, my elbows resting on the bar.
That’s that .
But then I decide, in my alcohol induced wisdom, that I’m not done talking to him, so I whip back around, using the stool to propel me toward him with emphasis. It makes me kinda dizzy, but it also makes a point, so it was totally worth it.
“And for your informationnnnnn,” I drag out the n for dramatic flair, “I was praying for guidance. You should try it sometime.”
“Praying?” He laughs. “In the bar? Babygirl, you got your priorities all sorts of mixed up. I don’t think the big man’s scrollin’ through drunk-girl prayers on his iPhone before bed, do you?”
“You said you wouldn’t call me babygirl anymore!” I shove his shoulder, effectively backing him up. It’s then I notice Garrison is gone, and I whine in frustration. “You ruined my night.”
“See,” he says, pointing out my whining, “you don’t want me to call you a baby? Stop actin’ like one.” He sticks his tongue out at me like he’s ten years old, and I lose it.
“Me? Me ? I’m acting like a baby? You are the one who went along with the whole charity competition and let me think I even had a shot at my dream job, and you knew good and well there was no pageant anymore. Did you even think about how much it would hurt me to find out like that Miss Clara died? Or are you just a selfish, lying, fake, Hunter Isaac?” I hold up my hand. “Never mind. Don’t tell me. I think we both know the answer to that.”
Whoops. I stop and inhale sharply as I take in the wince of hurt on his face…and the streams of tears down mine. I didn’t realize I’d let them fall.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that.” I wipe my eyes. “I think maybe this is too much for me.” I gesture widely around the room, insinuating it’s not just the conversation that’s too much for me, but the whole home thing in general. And that thought hurts…not having a home. “I’m gonna go.”
I wipe my face and start toward the ladies’ room.
“Wait, Dev.” He scrubs his hand down his face like he does when he’s stressed out. How is he stressed, though? This is what he wanted. I walked right into his little game, and the only one who wins from here is him. The friends, the job, my dignity .
“What do you want , Hunter?”
My eyes are brimming, burning to let loose a stream of sadness, loss, guilt, self-doubt that I’ve carried with me since I left him here all those years ago. And I’m back now. Because he forced his hand in a way that gave our destiny absolutely no other path. I grind my teeth, still trying to keep it together, retain composure. Like the perfect pretty princess you’re always supposed to be.
Why did he want me back home? Why was it so important he’d lie by omission on the terms of our competition and make me believe I had a shot at a pageant charity, when he knew good and well I’d come home to find it’s gone, discontinued, extinct?
And while that thought pains me, the thought that a program that raised me from a tiny junior princess to a reigning national queen and gave me a place to be myself before I knew who that even was…is gone? The fact that all of it is done and over with in this community and other girls won’t get that opportunity to shine, all because nobody stepped up after Miss Clara and kept it going? While that pains me indefinitely, what pains me even more is the thought that maybe Hunter brought me back here because he did want me to fail. He does just want the job. It is just a competition, and I am his enemy.
Maybe it had nothing to do with his feelings for me at all.
I couldn’t stand it if that were true. I might be able to perform a skilled level of emotional masonry, packing brick by brick into place around my feelings for Hunter and everything we’ve been through, but I can’t stop how much it would hurt if I thought he stopped caring about me altogether. About us and everything we’ve been through.
I need to know.
I step closer to him, brushing away tears on my sleeves and smearing them into the fabric, wanting nothing more than to be held by this man I keep running from. Wanting to stop being so damn fickle with my heart and just let it be. Do what I want. Fuck him, date him, make him mine.
And wanting to know he wants me, too.
“At first, you know, I thought maybe you were in this for both things. The job and the time we’d have to spend together. I let myself think we could be friends and fair competitors. But now? Now I don’t know what you’re doing to me, Hunter. This push and pull, hot and cold thing you have going on. You spill coffee on me, then save my ass in the interview and try to kiss me in the elevator. Help me with my Jeep and my bags, but then screw me out of a pageant and potential job of my dreams? And now you’re here chasing away a nice man who could have been my happily ever after, for all we know—”
“A nice man, Devyn? Garrison is not a nice man . And he is most certainly not your happily ever after. I saved your ass from something you don’t even understand. He’s distanced himself from everyone for reasons, Dev.”
“Oh, my gosh. You are insufferable! Men are all the same. It’s all appearances, ego, and who you know.” I stalk back and forth. “Well, you know what? People used to talk shit about me, too, remember? But look at me now.” I slam my hand on the wall behind him. “Look at me, Hunter!”
His face darkens and his eyes flare with something that looks a lot like anger, but more like something else. Something that makes me hot and bothered in more good ways than bad.
He lowers his voice almost to a growl. I always used to roll my eyes when men would growl in romance novels.
…I get the appeal now.
“Garrison Presley is an animal abuser,” he says, looking around to make sure he’s not drawing attention. “He’s a disgrace to the farming community, Devyn. Not only does he use inhumane methods with his cattle, but he keeps his chickens in those little cages you hate, so come at me if you want, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
Oh, my God, he’s so fucking hot when he’s mad, and I need to rein it in.
“ Okay ,” I grind back at him, trying hard to school the cavewoman attraction I just experienced and get back to the stuff that really matters. Still, note to self…screw Garrison. I hate those tiny cages.
I’m not admitting that to Hunter, though.
“Are you in it for the job?” I finally ask. Because the answer to that makes the difference in everything going on between us right now. “Are you trying to sabotage me, or are you playing fair? What do you want?”
“You.”
He looks at me like I’m an absolute idiot who should have already known this. Like it’s been obvious.
Like his answer to that question hasn’t changed since the beginning of time.
Oh.
We stand in silence, or it feels that way, at least, because I can’t hear or think about anything around me right now, and despite the sadness and anger bubbling in the pit of my stomach, there’s something more there. It’s something good .
And the only thing I really know about it, as confusing as it may sound, is that it comes from Hunter saying he wants me.
Me.
“And I’m just supposed to believe you didn’t have any selfish motives? That you weren’t trying to screw me out of the job by tricking me with the pageant? How do you even explain that, huh?”
He sighs dramatically—exasperated, it seems—as he yanks at his hair. “The only selfish motive I’ve ever had was to get you back here, Dev.”
I want to believe him. To run to his arms and let him scoop me up, wrap my legs around him and kiss him with everything I’ve held back for so long, but I can’t. Not for the man who had someone to replace me the minute I left. Not for someone who got over pain that still lives within me daily. I turn away from him again and press roughly on the corners of my eyes, willing them to give me their everything, to hold back my tears and keep me from falling apart right in front of him.
I feel him touch my shoulder, soft and slow, my skin heating beneath him. He spins me back around, gently wiping my eyes with his thumbs, then tilts my chin up so our eyes meet.
“If you knew there wasn’t a pageant program anymore, I wasn’t sure you’d have a reason to come back home. You could have raised money from the city, doing your library readings and women’s club fundraisers, or whatever it is you’ve been doing all these years…it’s not like I Google you or anything.” He smiles, magnetically attracting my own to do the same. “I couldn’t chance it, Dev. Once I saw you in that interview room— shit , once I saw you on the street, mad as hell and dripping in coffee, it was over for me. I had to get you back.”
“So you made up a reason for me to come back to Pine Forest…to be with you?”
“Yeah. I did.” He shuffles back and forth like he’s seventeen and picking me up for homecoming, nervous as hell while my dad shines his shotgun, even though he’d never use it on Hunter. He was like a second son. Still, I see glimpses of that boy I remember in the man before me now, and pieces of my heart shift together in ways that feel natural. Even if that does scare me.
Will I always feel this way when I look at him? He sifts his hand through his hair and then holds it out to me like he’s decided something.
“Will you dance with me, Devyn?”
I nod, taking his hand and letting him lead me to the dance floor, like we’ve done a hundred times before. But we were just teenagers then. And this feels more intimate with him than it ever has in any of the memories I recall. I resist the urge to squeeze his palm three times…once for I , twice for love , thrice for you . It was our secret thing. And it feels almost robotic for me when our fingers are entwined like this.
“She Is” by Lady Antebellum plays in the background as we walk to the center of the floor and sway. One hand holds mine, while the other comes to rest on my hip, creating a spark of electricity that makes my thighs tense.
I can’t help it. I whimper. Always me whimpering involuntarily. What the heck is wrong with me?
He smirks, eyeing me suspiciously. I feel my face flush, wondering if he can read the inappropriate thoughts, or if his smirk has something to do with whatever he and Lemon were whispering earlier, when I was talking to Garrison Presley, King of the Glow Ups.
They may think I didn’t notice their plotting, but they are sorely mistaken. I might not know what they’re up to, but I know it does involve me.
“Make me a deal,” Hunter says.
I raise my eyebrow in question. I’m listening.
“If I can sweep you off your feet with one song, you’ll get drinks with me and the old crew.”
“I don’t know,” I tell him, backing away. “They don’t really like me anymore.” I notice Katie Simmons is at the table, too, and she had some words to say to me the last time I was here.
I did flake out on the pageant council the year I left, though, and I may have screwed some people out of references I’d promised to give them for the larger pageant circuits. Katie being one of them. But the rest of them just hate me because of Hunter. Because I left and got out of this town. And they stayed here and believed whatever version of things people think they know.
Whatever.
“They’ll like you just fine, Dev. Look how it turned out with Lemon.”
I raise a brow, still unconvinced.
“People grow up, and you’re the first one to remind me of that, so take your own advice. Let’s put the past behind us. Please, Dev?”
“Fine,” I say. “If you sweep me off my feet with one dance, I will hang out with your friends—”
“ Our friends.”
“I will hang out with our friends, tonight. If your dance moves knock my socks off. That’s all I’m promising.”
“And I get to call you babygirl whenever I want.”
I twist my lips. Seriously?
But it is kind of cute, and I half like it.
“Fine.”
T he slow song ends, and “Backroad” by Tanner Adell starts to build in the speakers. I smile because this song always takes the energy up a notch. I used to take some swing classes growing up here, and I surprise myself as I fall into the moves with Hunter, leading me along in a pas de bourrée that comes one hundred percent from his sexy, TikTok-famous hips. He’s so good at this. I lick my lips, eyeing every muscle in his arms as he twirls me around the floor.
Why is he so good at this?
The way his hips move to the music, and his strong grip presses into my curves as he leads me across the dance floor, it’s both sexy and exhilarating. The bass rumbles as he swings me out then twirls me back into his arms where I’m surrounded by his smell. Sandalwood and pine trees . I can’t breathe in without feeling him all over me, around me, and all I can think about is how I wish he were inside me.
I gasp as he grabs my neck with his huge hand, a hand that somehow has the power to kiss my whole body, even though it’s only in one spot. He’s not quite choking me, but he is at the same time. And the messed-up part about that is I don’t seem to mind.
I like it.
My whole body likes it.
His fingers curl around my neck, pressing into my flesh, but still offering me protection as he lowers me into the sexiest fucking dip I’ve ever experienced in my entire life. Our eyes lock while my head is inches from the floor, and my heart thumps in my chest so loud I swear he must hear it. This feels dangerous, raw, passionate.
And I want him to consume me.
My skin flushes, electrons and atoms and pieces of the universe itself shooting through me, as he flips me over twice mid-dip and catches me between his straddled legs, pressing the obvious bulge in his pants against my body as he pulls me up by my actual fucking throat…so slowly, and so sensually, that I don’t even realize it when I reach the top and I press my lips to his, and my heart falls faster than it ever has before.
Hunter kisses me back, wildly, erratically, and like he hasn’t kissed anyone in ten years. I know it isn’t true, but I let myself think it all the same. Think about how familiar he tastes. How safe he feels. How he’s mine.
He’s all mine. He’s always been mine. The thought fills my brain, and it’s all I can think. Mine. Mine. Mine .
Hunter’s fingers grip my sides as we grind to the music. He spins me around, so my back is flush with his body, my ass pressing into his hardness as he roams my neck with his hot tongue, and the same word running through my head seems to be haunting his too.
“Be mine, babygirl.” Mine.
The words fall from my lips before I can take them back.